Thoughts on an Open Design

August 10th, 2009

Although it looks simple at first blush, there are quite a few subtleties in this blog design that I want to comment on. Hopefully you find the design fresh, clean, open, easy-to-read, and light. Before I take a deep dive into my own thoughts on design, I want to give credit where credit is due: a few designs that motivated my choosing and customization of this theme.

Smarterware

The recently launched blog by Gina Trapani, Smarterware, is probably the biggest influencer. The similarities here should be obvious. The simple title, excellent use of white space, and large reading area make clicking over to Smarterware a cinch. Gina’s conversational tone and pleasantness make her writing very pleasing.

Boing Boing

A site that I actually rarely read, Boing Boing has a similarly plain design with a strong emphasis on readability and plenty of white space.

Telematics Weekly

Telematics Weekly is an industry publication that I enjoy. What makes this design so inspiring is the strong organizational principles with seamless ad integration. I also like that the entire design contains no images–I guess that’s how much I love typography!

With the cap adequately tipped to those that came before me. I’ve got a few more thoughts I’d like to share about the specific design customizations I made on this site for you. Yes–you the reader.

Removing the Sidebar

I mentioned previously that I have no intentions of monetizing this blog. That directly impacts the design. What you don’t see is a sidebar chocked full of advertisements. Don’t get me wrong, advertisements certainly have their place on the web, but without the intention of posting ads, I opted to give you more readability by cutting out the sidebar.

Removing the “Social” Stuff

This is just a hunch, but other than Digg badges, I don’t think social media icons are heavily used on small time blogs like this one. I have confidence that if there’s a post you really love, that you’ll find a way to get it shared on your favorite social network du jour. By cutting out all the del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg, and StubleUpon badges, I’m hoping to reduce the load time and leave less clutter on your visual palate.

Removing the Search Bar and Tags

In the spirit of keeping things simple, I removed the search bar and all the tagging and categorization features. Sites like Lifehacker definitely have a need for tagging, but the volume of posts on this site should be light enough that categorization and organization shouldn’t be a big deal. Another hunch I have is that blog searches just don’t get used all that much. So I figured I’d dump the search feature.

Removing the Author

I’ll be the only one doing the writing around these parts, so this is a no-brainer. : )

Keeping the RSS Feed User Friendly

With an emphasis on usability, the RSS feed should be equally convenient. Without any JavaScript or fancy RSS icons, you can simply click the RSS link in the top right and subscribe using your favorite reader. The RSS feed will always be the full content (it won’t drive you to the full site unless you want to comment). As much as I’d like you to visit the actual site, what you care about is the content, and you will always get that in its entirety. ~~Update: I’m still having a few problems with the RSS feed. Once I get this worked out you’ll be able to get the entire feed. Bear with me!~~ Update: The RSS feed in its entirety is good to go. Sorry for the mix up. Enjoy!!

Making Use of White Space

Should be no surprise by this point that I love the color white as a design element. I believe white got a bad reputation in the mid-to-late nineties because it was considered the “absence of design.” Fast forward a decade and white is now the backbone of most easy-to-read sites.

Wish I could go on a long diatribe about my inspiration and motivation for choosing a 16px font size. The reason is simple: monitors have more pixels available to the user than ever before. While this makes for a great media viewing experience, reading is becoming a chore. It seems like the better the monitor, the bigger the pain it is to enjoy web content because the fonts get very small.

Did I Get it Right?

As the title implies, openness is an import design principle to me. The design tweaks I mention above are implemented for the express purpose of your reading pleasure. I’d love to know if my assumptions are correct. If I’ve over simplified and you use one of the “features” I’ve removed, please let me know. What do you think about white as a core design principle? Do you dig a simple design or are the social networking and tagging features important to you? Please let me know and thanks for reading!

2 Comments on “Thoughts on an Open Design”

1 Adam Pieniazek said on August 19th, 2009:
You’ve got a really great design here Kyle. Very clean and easy on the eyes. Love the focus on the content and generous white space.

Big fan of the big fonts. I’m on a 24 inch widescreen so it’s nice to not have to squint or zoom in. :-)

The only minor tweak I’d suggest is trying to reduce the line length just a bit. I found my eyes wanting to move down to the next line 2-3 words early. It’s a minor quibble though. Really love the design here!
2 KYLE said on August 20th, 2009:
@Adam PieniazekThanks for the feedback. For about the past four years I’ve limited my designs to a width of no more than 800px. I was thinking that since just about every monitor/laptop screen is widescreen, I could open things up a little bit and push the content to a width of 900px.

What I like about this design is that I can now drop in images that are a little larger. Definitely agree with you about the width of the lines drawing your eyes to the next line. I guess I could always make the font even bigger!!

Thanks for reading and thanks for the comment! : )