Realign, design and inspiration...
Filed under: design
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Tagged with: I'm starting to get that tickling, itchy feeling again. It's been quite a while since I last touched the design of this weblog. In fact I'm still quite happy with it. But, like everything in this world, there's room for improvement. Therefore I'm planning a 'realign'. And I really mean a realign because I still love the overall look of this blog. Whatever I'll come up with, the (in my humble opinion) quite unique feel of what it is now will be preserved. At some point I may totally revamp the site but I didn't quite get bored with what I have now yet. So what's next? I guess a little call for help might bring in some inspiration.
Stuff that won't change
There's plenty of stuff in this site's design that I don't plan to change because I happen to like it a lot. Let's go through those first:
- Color scheme
- I like to think the color scheme of this site is rather nice. It's not a scheme you'll find on many sites, which is good. I've always liked being different.
- The scan lines
- Yep, the header has scanlines. They're totally unfashionable considering the current trend of subtle diagonal lines and glossy looking graphics. A while ago someone criticized them in a discussion on another weblog which got me thinking for a moment. It actually made me want to keep them in my design even more. They're a little bit of retro-feel in a weblog dealing with mostly modern issues. The eighties-style favicon I designed is part of the same slightly melancholic sentiment that's complemented by the name of this weblog. I'm an old-school internet junky with roots going back to the early nineties. I definitely want to preserve that, how unfashionable it may be.
- Overall layout
- I don't plan to change the overall layout. I'm not planning to go 'liquid' or start 'hugging my bottom'. I guess all of this is part of my recalcitrant nature. Currently there seems to be a movement going on in design land that makes everybody want to use big ass headers, huge form elements, glossy looking graphics and well... I'll just say it, everything else 37Signals is using on their website. Nope, no 'web 2.0 style' for me. I guess I just don't want to do what everybody's doing already, regardless whether the current design trend is 'good' or 'bad'.
Damn you're vain, what the hell DO you want to change?
After reading the above you might start thinking I really don't want to change anything. You might even think I only wrote this post to tell the world how great I think this design really is. This however isn't true. There's room for improvement:
- CSS and overall HTML
- Let's start with the dirtiest part. My CSS file is a total mess. It's in need of some thorough spring cleaning. The same goes for several parts of the HTML structure. While this site started off as a mean & lean CSS/XHTML project it has gradually deteriorated by adding / changing stuff all over the site. Even if I wouldn't change a thing in the visual design of this site I still plan to rebuild the CSS/XHTML frame from scratch in order to get rid of all the crap that got it's way into it.
- Interesting reads section
- The top section on this site is reserved as some sort of 'linkdump'. Whenever I spot something noteworthy on the net I make a quick post with a couple of lines to describe what's noteworthy about the link I'm posting. It's kinda messy, the text is kind of small and the section isn't all that flexible. Ideas for improvement in this little 'sub blog' are welcome!
- Grainy icons and other graphical elements
- My icons are sort of grainy. Pixelated, to be precise. I think the overall look of the site could be improved by making them all look smooth. Maybe a new icon style even. Same thing goes for the comments. While the speech bubbles look nice, the graininess should be eliminated. Ideas are welcome!
- Chitika ad integration
- There's a Chitika ad on this site. It totally breaks the nice clean look. Update: done!
- Calendar
- I'm thinking about removing the calendar. Who cares about calendars anyway. Should I ditch it?
- Earlier on The Net is Dead
- This section could use a revamp. What I should change however I'm not sure about yet. Once again, ideas are welcome!
- Postings and general typography
- Typography has always been a weaker point when it comes to my design skills I wholeheartedly admit that. When surfing the net I can see which sites have great typography and which sites don't. When trying to apply those ideas on my own designs however I often fail miserably. Therefore input in this area is highly appreciated as well.
Closing notes
I hope I've made myself clear when it comes to what I really don't want to change and what I DO want to change. In the months to come I hope to be able to improve this design without changing the overall look and feel and without becoming another one of those 'Web 2.0 style' designed weblogs. Don't get me wrong when I say this though. There's plenty of awesome looking sites that follow this current design trends. I just want this site to stay different, that's all really.
I decided to make this posting as a little experiment. I hope some nice ideas / pointers will result from it. So speak up and let me know what you think this site needs in order to improve!
At 03 December '05 - 17:54 bosmeneer wrote:
Second; get rid of the calendar as you said, because you already have the archive listed. Tip for a new thing: a (short) list of (recently) used tags. In the current design the tags are placed after the comments, not a place on a site where I’m directly scrolling to.
Interesting reads section: change the font-size to the same you use in the normals posts, show only the first 2 lines of the text and the tags you used. People then may be getting more interested in the ‘interesting’ read?
Icons: I’m not sure they could make the site better. A fancy look may destract the viewer.
You can add some (standard) icons to the Menu and Stuff-list. These texts are a bit err.. dull. Sorry :)
And a tiny thing: your site is not valid XHTML1.0 (!!!)
But stay focused and keep on (re)designing. And keep up the good blogging.
At 03 December '05 - 23:35 Tobias wrote:
Second, maybe add an icon to the archives links to get them more in line with all other links in the right bar (or just add a bit more padding-left)...
Third, the meta info in the right bar sort of ‘breaks’ the bar because of the color…
And finaly, maybe you could use the moblog section for more than just moblogs…
But i’m glad to read it’s just going to be a realign, wise decision. To me this is still one of the slickest looking pivot templates around…
At 04 December '05 - 02:59 Marco wrote:
About the XHTML validity: I’m not bothering with that right now as there are some issues with the current Pivot version changing some of the HTML. Until that’s resolved there’s no use in trying to get things valid again. It will be taken care of eventually though!
At 04 December '05 - 10:56 Max Roeleveld wrote:
I’d make the fonts larger, and increase the whitespace around the larger blocks of text. So the sidebar can stay the way it is (in this respect), but the “broodtekst” (don’t know the proper English word for it) should be slightly bigger. Not 37Signals-big (by the way: when picking a name, they first tried “37 points”, as that’s the average point size they use in web apps… =]), but a point or two bigger.
I’d also change the sidebar. Currently, you have two meta sections, one about the post, one about the blog. On the separate post pages, I’d dump the latter, and at least take out the “title” field from the former. Really, if they hadn’t figured out what the title was by then they’ll never figure it out… Also, the “tags used” stuff could move to the meta part, as that’s what it is. As a bonus, your visitors will actually see the comment for when they hit “End”. Maybe you should dump the whole “do all the work to retrieve 10 entries about every tag I tagged the posting with” and only display those lists after a click (either through some AJAX luvvin’ or on a separate page in the archives.
The archives, ah yes. I’d split those up. Have a “master page” that only lists categories/tags/years/months, and nothing else. Well, maybe a “the best of…” list, giving your finest writings some more exposure. But really, having 234875 posts on that page only scares me away.
Oh, and have something in the header that links to / (home). 99% of all web sites (well, all decent sites anyway) have that, and it’s confusing to miss it here. That tiny title/description line looks like a fine candidate.
The graphics, in all their jagged glory: I like them the way they are. If you’re going retro, you should go retro all the way and have none of this fancy schmancy anti-aliasing stuff on you site. Some jaggies don’t bother me, it’s not a distraction.
Current interesting reads: a tough cookie, I wouldn’t “split up” my blog like that anyway, but maybe that’s just me. I think Pivot really invites you to do that. Aw hell, just leave ‘em there. =]
And one final remark I just can’t resist to make:
You do know there’s a certain blogging system that doesn’t screw over your code, right? It seems that there’s even an importer to migrate all those Pivot posts, too… =]
Good luck with the revamping! =]
At 04 December '05 - 11:14 Marco wrote:
About the WP thing: I actually have a WP site ! I will have another one quite soon even but that’s still a covert operation. More on that later. Being a Pivot developer I’m of course not going to change this blog into a WP blog. That would be blasphemy
At 08 December '05 - 14:33 Leo Kennis wrote:
At 09 December '05 - 07:48 Marco wrote:
At 17 January '06 - 11:12 Marco wrote: