May 25 '08
All About The New Design, And A Little Colophon
Ah, my entrance to the winner’s circle! Having finally roofied Wordpress and making it do things rather untoward to itself, the seemingly endless march towards redesign is complete — well, except for a new portfolio to replace the old Flash darling, which we’ll address some day soon. But, today is about the blog, and finally launching ourselves upon the blogging world once again.
This design is all about a return to simplicity. I preach it all the time, but practicing what you preach is often difficult. So I set about the arduous task of coming up with something I felt is original and a little different than the typical blog template charade, but most importantly simple enough that browsing is not a chore, but simply a transparent act.
A few weeks ago, I checked in on Dan Cedarholm’s blog and read this post, which is perhaps the single most precise and agreeable line of text I’ve read in years:
There’s a possibility that really great web design receives neither praise nor criticism. It just works. — Dan Cedarholm, Simplebits.
Truer words have never been spoken in our industry, and so this became my quest: to build a site where I could post articles, quick tidbits of interest (at least to me), and even some photo and work samples at some point, but to do it without any excess. To do it in such a way that it felt original and indicative of my personal style and aesthetic, but, most of all, in a way that’s simple and out of your consciousness as a reader or passive viewer. It should feel right, but not do anything in particular to make you feel that way.
After tinkering and sketching, the focus became clear… virtually no images except those that lend a sense of style, but instead a pixel-perfect attention to typography. The site uses a combination of simple and readable Arial for body type alongside the oft-underused (but almost equally as web-safe) Palatino for titles and other elements. There’s some clever use of spans and borders to give things a clean and structured look, but mostly it’s all about whitespace and line heights and proper kerning — or in as much as CSS is capable, which is quite a lot.
Of course, there are pieces here that will be tweaked and prodded over the next few weeks, but all in all this site finally feels right to me because, well, it just feels out of the way. Hopefully you feel the same.
Oh, and sorry about the roofie. That wasn’t meant for you.
2 comments
It’s a sad thing, because I like the visuals on this site, but the structure, copy, and other things are almost identical to http://astheria.com you even attempted his archives style…
Well, “Drake”… let’s see. First, Kyle and I have already corresponded months ago about the similarities in our designs. In fact, his design was brought to my attention by a colleague of mine weeks after my personal launch - which, incidentally, took place within a matter of days of what was apparently a redesign of Kyle’s site, so it would be virtually impossible for any kind of theft to have taken place.
Second, I haven’t looked, but I’m certain the back-end code of both sites is entirely different. There are obviously similarities in the overall information architecture, but there’s certainly nothing groundbreaking or revolutionary on either side - the home page is a list of articles in one column and quick posts, and the archives are a chronological list of posts by date. I have news for you… that’s how blogs work.
Third, I’m not sure in what ways the “copy and other things” are in any way comparable since we write about entirely different subjects and have entirely different designs and treatments.
And finally, I’m not sure what you hoped to achieve by making false accusations, but posting unfounded, accusatory statements on a stranger’s blog while using an un-linked name with absolutely no background, no work to present, and thus no relevant professional expertise to share is both cowardly and pathetic.