How should a blog look?

August 2, 2005 9:49 AM

Tell me what design elements you like to see in a blog.

I main a blog that is primarily text, to which I post, on average, once to twice a day. I'm happy with the direction the content is taking, but design? Not so much. What elements make up a well designed blog? I'm talking spacing, colors, font(s), layout -- anything that contributes to a clean, welcoming look.

posted by shallowcenter to computers & internet (21 comments total)

Light or neutral colors are great for reading. A light grey background with dark text is usually the best.

I prefer to read sans-serif fonts, so go for something like:

* {font-family:'Lucida Grande', Verdana, sans-serif;}

As for layout, that's your preference. Do you want a sidebar? If so, do you want a list of recent posts in said sidebar? Maybe you want to create a class for <img /> so that 10px of padding and a dark solid border accompany every image.

Are you using blogging software, or are you writing your own, or (gasp) are you just adding to some HTML file on your server every time you post?

This site offers some cool Blogger templates; I'm sure you could adapt them to whatever you are using. I use the Kubrick style, and I love it.

Maybe you could post a link to your blog, just so we can see where it is headed? I'm sure we all won't think that it's a shameless plug if you did so.
posted by Third at 10:03 AM on August 2, 2005

Well, I like a sparse and clean look. Text on the left, a normal font that's not too small (both make it easier to read). Any color that isn't pastel or too dark (so that leaves medium shade I guess).
posted by LadyBonita at 10:10 AM on August 2, 2005

My blog is currently over at BlogSpot waiting for it's debut as a customized MT production... but in crafting my blog, I sat down and wrote list after list of what I wanted to say/do with my blog. I added all the gee-whiz things I wanted, then I redid the list several times, seeing how it would fit together best. It's a long process, but it worked for me ( * hopefully * ).

Anyway, by way of features... it _must_ have an "About Me" page — preferably with a picture. I know that blogs are giant "about me" pages, but having it succinctly put in one place for newbies to read and get up to speed is (in my opinion) essential. Also, I really like to have "latest comments" lists in the sidebar... it's the easiest way for a reader (and the author) to track conversations on the site.

Besides that, I want an easy-to-parse archive and NEXT and PREVIOUS links to browse posts chronologically.

Hope that helps.
posted by silusGROK at 10:31 AM on August 2, 2005

There's been research done on sans-serif vs. serif fonts, and it concluded that serif fonts are the easiest to read if they're printed on paper, while sans-serif fonts are read faster on screens.

If you're not feeling creative when it comes to color, check this Color Scheme Generator for colors that that match each other.

For me the number one element when it comes to design is usability. As much as a sucker I am for the pretty, if a site isn't easy to navigate and the text isn't easy to read, it better have some damn good content if it wants me to keep visiting it.
posted by cheerleaders_to_your_funeral at 10:39 AM on August 2, 2005

Easy to navigate (don't sacrifice ease of use just to make it pretty) and easy to print (if you write pieces worth printing and reading offline). If your purpose is mainly to write and be read, but clutter it with non-text. And if your pieces are worth reading for a long time, make it easy to find old entries.
posted by pracowity at 11:26 AM on August 2, 2005

I second the about page -- with so many blogs in the world, most being remarkably similar to each other, I have to have a handle on who the author is to stay interested.

I have never once, in my entire life, used a "Recent Posts" list in a sidebar. YMMV, but I often find them to be completely redundant. A brief listing of the titles of the next ten or so posts that aren't listed on the main page, when placed at the end of said page, is much more useful.

Definitely sans-serif fonts. Helvetica is king, but Lucida etc. are definitely acceptable as well. Black text on a white field is preferable -- the whole page doesn't have to be white, but I personally prefer the text area to be.

I also definitely prefer bold links to regular-weight; when some text is one color and the other text isn't, it can start looking messy very fast. Bold makes them more of a design element (and can help draw your attention to the way you're using links and plaintext, which always helps improve your writing).

And there should probably be at least one image or strong graphic element somewhere on the page -- most default blog templates do everything with styles, and it can be bland. Having one memorable visual, or at least a memorable visual element, gives you an identity. It could just be a good photo of yourself, or a drawing of a rock, anything -- just something that nobody else has got.
posted by logovisual at 11:51 AM on August 2, 2005

All I realy care about is that I can read it. If you're into small text, that's not the end of the world, I'll just increase it myself. But make sure you don't have some heinous color combo like red on black or grey on grey.
posted by o2b at 12:08 PM on August 2, 2005

Great comments, everyone, so thanks much. Third, I'm going to take you up on your offer -- and I swear I didn't come up with this question just so that I could shamelessly (or even shamefully) plug myself. The truth is, I'm putting a lot of time and effort into this, and I want it to be the best it can be.

All that said, I'm using TypePad; click here to see the site. And thanks again.
posted by shallowcenter at 12:13 PM on August 2, 2005

This is only *my* opinion, but I see so much text I am not sure what I am supposed to read.
posted by Monday at 12:24 PM on August 2, 2005

IMHO, too dense. Too much. Not going to be a leisurely read.
But, if what you want is dense, stat-filled, reference pages, not bad.
posted by NorthCoastCafe at 12:40 PM on August 2, 2005

I both agree and disagree with Monday. Visually there's a surfeit of text, but the colouring makes it obvious where the meat is. If I like a site I will explore anyway. So when there's a lot of info in 2 sidebars it is unlikely to impress itself upon me unless the main entries are exceptional. I like all the cruft off the front page - blogrolls/reading lists/archives - I much prefer (as a visitor - I don't have a weblog) links in the sidebar to this associated stuff. So if you remove some of that - kill one of the sidebars and maybe move the main text area a little to the left.
That said, I actually don't mind the way it is now. I like the colour scheme differentiation between blog entries and sidebar. I'd agree with logovisual that some image/logo say top left of the page would give it a memorable distinguishing feature. All IMHO of course.
posted by peacay at 12:51 PM on August 2, 2005

Interesting thoughts, Monday and NCC. I'm actually not gonig for dense and stat-filled; to the contrary, among those who blog about baseball, I'm a bit of an exception in that I'm not going for a stat-heavy site. If you, or anyone, can point me to some sites that you think are well designed, I'd be grateful. Thanks again.
posted by shallowcenter at 12:52 PM on August 2, 2005

I agree with Monday; I feel assaulted by a barrage of content. No offense...I mean, lots of content is excellent. But there's just too much of it at once, and it's difficult to know where to start.

I think maybe part of this is how heavy the left column is, due to all that small, bold text. Speaking of text, are you really set on having the headlines in full caps? It make the words more difficult to discern at a quick a glance. I do think the small caps on the first few words of the entries is nice.

When I'm not looking directly at the banner, it weighs the page down. This is because you've got both brackets and full caps going on. It tricks my eyes into seeing the whole linespace as a giant white rectangle. IMO, you should ditch the full caps, and just cap the first letter of each word. Or go all lower case, like it is in the page title—I think your page title looks cool, especially in a tabbed browser.

The "Pages Through" section could use some padding between the author's name and the review itself. Also, maybe you should let the left column expland fluidly with the browser window, so those author names don't have to dangle a word on a line by itself.

I'm grooving on the "So They Say" bit in the left column. Good place for a quote.

I'd like to suggest that you get rid of one of the side columns. It's hard to make a three-columned layout look clean or inviting. Some of the right sidebar (categories, archives, etc) could be condensed into a drop down menu with CSS, but obviously you can't do that with the reviews, and I doubt you'd want to lose your blogroll. So I think you're stuck with three columns. How does it look if you change the side columns to a lighter shade of gray? You only need a tiny bit of difference from pure white to set it off from the content (the solid lines on the sides will help) and the lighter your background colors are, the cleaner and more welcoming the page will look.

Oh, tiny nitpick: I don't like how the center column's top margin is a pixel or two below those of the side columns. Makes everything feel a little off balance.

You've got the content, though, and that's the most important part. You've mastered writing entries that are perfectly sized for easy reading, which is more than I can say. You've got interesting content on a side column, and that's welcoming to people because it gives them a way to feel out the blog quickly. I think all you need to do is spend some time fiddling around with colors and font properties until you find a combo you like and it will look elegant.
posted by jbrjake at 1:03 PM on August 2, 2005

1. Lose the lines. The dotted underlines and the verticals separating the sidebars from the center. Ugly and unnecessary.

2. Lose the calendar.

3. Lose the "recent posts." It's completely redundant. Up until recently, I had an "also recently" sidebar section showing the last few posts that have scrolled off the front page. I may get around to restoring that, but showing the same posts that you're already seeing? I don't get it.

4. Shorten the sidebar content so that you aren't showing so much under each heading. Also, on my own blog, I've tried to mute the sidebar by doing it all in gray-on-gray; you might want to consider something like that.

5. In the ongoing struggle between fixed vs floating columns, I've come down in favor of fixed.
posted by adamrice at 2:05 PM on August 2, 2005

It's too cluttered. Forget the left column (So They Say, Paging Through, Screen Shots, Pressing Play). If you have something to say about a movie or a book, make another entry in the main column.
posted by pracowity at 2:14 PM on August 2, 2005

I'm going to quickly mention that unless your color scheme is high contrast (like this page we're reading), please, please test it with some kind of colorblindness filter (like the one used on the Color Scheme Generator that cheerleaders_to_your_funeral mentioned.

There have been plenty of sites that are absolutely unreadable to me without changing the colors manually myself. Don't make your visitors do this, because they probably won't.

In addition, try and make sure your text doesn't overlap with intricate elements. caoine gets away with this, but it's definitely cutting it pretty close.
posted by odinsdream at 5:30 PM on August 2, 2005

It seems caoine has improved the readability a great deal. The background is no longer fixed (the words don't scroll on top of it), and it seems to have been made lighter.
posted by odinsdream at 7:33 PM on August 2, 2005

The most important thing to me is text size. I find many blogs have it set too small. Yours is too small for me to comfortably read.

I'm overwhelmed by text-heavy pages. They make it too hard to focus on what I'm reading. Yours is quite dense. Maybe it's the three columns, but even with the white middle/gray sides I'm finding it very hard to read down the middle. It doesn't help that the two side columns have bold text which draws the eye away from the unbolded.

You can easily get rid of the calendar, as has already been pointed out.
posted by Melinika at 9:09 PM on August 2, 2005

Thanks, all, for your thoughts. There are lots of great suggestions here.
posted by shallowcenter at 6:19 AM on August 3, 2005

I personally think that the left sidebar has way too much text to make it useful. Maybe move it to the right side and lose the calendar, Technorati search, and recent posts.

It might even work with three columns, but laid out differently. It is currently:

| 1 ||     2     || 3 |

Why not try:

|     2     || 1 || 3 |

Of course, that could become a little convoluted, and you might have to change the background of one of the narrow columns in order to differentiate the two, but it might be worth a shot if it isn't too hard to implement with Typepad.

A word about the size of the front page: you only have ten posts, but the page requries so much scrolling. I realize that you have a ton of links on the right, but maybe keeping the front page to seven posts and truncating the links sidebar a little bit might help.

Stylistically though, I like it. The colors work, and the fonts are nice. Not too sure about those lines between posts though.

I'll say this: your page has a much better design than 80% of sites out there already. Keep at it!
posted by Third at 8:30 AM on August 3, 2005

One final thought, have a look at the nonist - the single thing about that site that I love the most is the 'read more' ability under each post. I have no idea how hard that is to implement but it would be an excellent compromise to hide clutter but still retain the quick accessibility to the bulk of your content on the front page. It's one of the best things I've seen on a blog site this year in terms of functionality.
posted by peacay at 1:42 AM on August 4, 2005