A good blog design is prudent and central to any popular blog. Popular blogs like Vandelay Design, Zen Habits stand testament to this. This certainly a lot of controversy surrounding the term web-design. So before we go further and explore the details let me share some interesting information with you.
When I set up my first blog at Blogger, I was too excited about blogging and designed my blog dark. Later as the viewership increased and the content became the focus, I found that dark backgrounds are not the most comfortable for reading. So I then switched my blog’s theme to a clean white one. Later when I moved to Binary Turf, I realized that the content had increased a lot and sadly the only way to reach for it was to use the search engine. Thus I created the navigation and a sitemap. Today as I look back I realize there was more happening under the surface than apparent.
I was slowly moving from a decoration oriented design to usability oriented design. And that brings us one step closer to my perception of web design.Web design has two elements – decoration and architecture. While decoration enhances the visual appeal of an interface, the architecture focuses on the usability element of the design. The purpose of the design is to bridge the gap between the gap between the visitors and the content (or the purpose of the site).
However, as you go deeper into the subject you’d realize there’s more to it than styling. And there are various elements like typography and incremental leading which come into play both on the decoration front as well as architecture. And it’s still debatable how much of it should suffice.
How much of it is right? While you could go on styling your site endlessly there’s always is a point beyond which things do not matter all that much to the visitors. If you have to focus on things like incremental leading and grid layout etc. it may be too much to be justified. While if you are trying to add the element of elegance, center layout this is the least you could offer your visitors. Your mileage may very depending on the purpose of the site.
What to focus on? Architecture or usability always comes first. It makes your site usable or accessible, searchable, navigable and more. The decoration element supplements the usability with appeal and elegance a site should have. If you count on either of them alone, it would not work for long. A good design is always primarily measured by its usability.
Should I redesign my site? Redesign is a big decision to make. You should know what your design lacks and what you are trying to achieve. You should also understand the investment (in terms of money or time – if you design yourself) required and envision how much of a difference it will make to the end-users. After all that’s what counts at the end of the day.
Photo by . SantiMB .
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Figuring out what and how to design your site and blog can be a very difficult task. For our site it took a long time to get the design right. We are doing the blog now and are debating whether or not to stay with the current theme of our site.
I totally understand what you mean. For some bloggers the first blog was a challenge, a learning process and lots of experimentation. But with time you polish those pages until they are high quality pages.
I think all the time you learn things, is just that sometimes is frustrating that you have problems and you have to do research first.
Sometimes, the content is a lot more important than the design itself.
But then again, when it’s a design blog, a certain amount of emphasis on the design is expected.
A learning process, of course !