Redesign my site without starting again

Where to find it

Open the Your style tab in Bernard’s Workshop. You’ll see “Here’s how I read” and your site’s name, and underneath it three things.

Bernard’s reading. A few plain sentences: who he thinks you are, who your customers are and what they want to know, and how he thinks the site should feel. It’s a guess, not a verdict. If he’s wrong, tell him.

Two ways you could look. Your own homepage, with your words, your photos and your menu, dressed in two of Bernard’s three looks side by side, each with a line like “like a good independent bookshop” to give you the feel. Each look has its own lettering, its own spacing and its own colours, mixed from your own colours:

• Clear and confident: plain, heavy lettering with small capital labels, tidy measured spacing, a white page and one cool colour of yours for the buttons.
• Quiet and considered: a book-style serif with a centred headline between thin rules, generous space, a warm off-white page and your warmest colour on rounded buttons.
• Bold and direct: very large headlines, short space inside and big gaps between sections, a white page with a dark band behind a headline that has no photo, and your strongest colour used once, on the main button.

Bernard’s pick is already selected. Tap the other one if it feels more like you. Each picture opens on the top of your homepage, where your headline is, so you can see the look at a glance.

Six dials. Each one has plain words at both ends:

• Airy to Packed (how much room there is)
• Editorial serif to Plain sans (the lettering)
• Pictures framed to Pictures full
• Still to Lively (how much moves as people scroll)
• Formal to Warm (how the headline, intro and main button read)
• Soft corners to Sharp

The dials start where Bernard set them for the look you picked. Move one and the picture above changes a moment later.

Getting it right

• Try a third look swaps the look you didn’t pick for the third of the three.
• Not quite me because... takes a few words (“too fussy”, “we’re more playful than that”) and Tell Bernard reads your site again with them in mind. There is a daily limit on these re-readings for each site, and the screen tells you when you reach it.
• Keep what I have sets the dials to your site as it looks now. Once you have put a look on your site, move a dial and tap Show me this on my whole site to see the change in a draft. Before that, pick one of the looks first.

Seeing it on every page

When it feels right, tap Show me this on my whole site. Bernard dresses every page of your site in that look as a draft, usually in under a minute, and gives you a link to see the draft. On a very large site Bernard dresses the first 200 pages. The rest keep their current look for now. Nothing reaches your live site until you approve the draft.

Bernard then keeps to that look in everything he builds or edits on your pages. Leaving the screen without tapping it changes nothing.

Good to know

• Motion is gentle and optional. Still means nothing moves. Further along, headings fade up as people scroll, then grids arrive one after another and big photos zoom in very slowly, and at Lively cards tilt, buttons shine and pages fade into each other. Visitors who have asked their phone or computer for less motion always see a still page. An animation you added yourself stays where it is whatever the dial says. See My animation is too much, or I want it off if something moves more than you’d like.
• Each look paints its own page colour behind your sections, but never over a photo. Where a section was dark before, its words and links take the look’s text colour so they stay readable, and a link colour from your old theme is replaced there. On a light section your own text colours stay.
• Bold and direct and Clear and confident set your heading sizes over your old theme’s, and so does any look with the lettering dial near Plain sans. A size written directly on the element still wins.
• Fonts come from the visitor’s own device in this version, so they show at once and never slow the page down. A heading font you locked in Your style always wins.
• Brought your site in again from your old host, or threw the draft away? Open Your style, pick your look and tap Put this look on my pages again to put it back on the pages.
• Rather tell Bernard about yourself first? The “I’d rather brief you first” link at the top opens eight quick questions, and the reading is rebuilt from your answers. See What does Bernard already know about my site?.

For a single change rather than a whole new look, you can still change the fonts or tidy the layout on their own.