Cause marketing news, advice and commentary just got better (looking). Welcome to the new and improved Selfishgiving.com!

Late last year I started thinking of refreshing my blog with a new look that I could extend to all my other social media platforms and offline activities. A lot had happened since the last redesign two years earlier!

At first I only thought about changing the look of my blog, but John Haydon was writing some great posts on how Headway Themes could enhance your blog. That’s when I came into contact with Grant Griffiths, who kindly gave up a couple hours of his time to talk about my business goals for Selfish Giving and how Headway Themes might help.

After talking to Grant and John, I was sold on the benefits of Headway Themes.

The next step was to find a designer who could take Selfish Giving in a new direction. Grant brought a talented woman to my attention, Mikhaela Craig. Mikhaela came up with some great designs, and while I ultimately chose a look that had a lot of similarities to my previous design, it was for no lack of options.

Mikhaela also came up with the Selfish Giving crest you see to the right. I love it. It’s something I can use on business cards, slides and proposals that isn’t clunky like a wide banner image.

In addition to my blog, Mikhaela also redesigned my Twitter page, email newsletter, Six Figure Cause Marketing landing page (which I’m still tweaking) and Posterous blog.

I highly recommend Mikhaela if you have an upcoming design project. She’s professional, twitterific (and active on Twitter too!), dedicated and very, very patient.

With my new Headway Theme and design in hand, it was time for John Haydon to put the two together. John did a great job, and you’ll never know how much work it was for him to get the devil’s tale on “Selfish” to hang just right!

The best thing about John is that he treats my blog like his own. He makes tweaks to it when I haven’t asked him to or expect it (like the Wibiya navigation bar at the bottom of my blog, which I think is just great). He’s making my blog better like he tries to do with his own every day.

You don’t need to be too familiar with my blog or tweets to know that John and I are good friends. We live just a couple miles from each other outside Boston and our kids play together.

But in this instance John treated me so much better than a friend. He treated me like a client. Now that’s a true friend.