New Layout/Thoughts on Good Blog Aesthetics

If you've visited this blog before this week, you probably noticed that it suddenly looks different. Rest assured that it is still the same Jim/Blog as always (sometimes when blogs I enjoy change their layouts I'm temporarily unsure if I've visited the wrong site.)

Anyway, I've know since I began blogging that I needed a better layout. Up until this most recent change I had been using one of the basic layouts that blogger offers. It wasn't particularly professional looking, interesting, or even easy to read. Unfortunately, I also haven't had the time to change it. Until now.

As I considered what I wanted, I came up with this informal list of things I look for in a successful blog layout:

1. It shouldn't be overly generic looking. In my case, I wanted something that was unique and customizable enough to be distinctive.

2. It shouldn't look like a boring web magazine or tech support site.

3. It shouldn't have white text on a black background. I know many of my friends blogs have black backgrounds and white fonts — and that has kind of a cool, edgy look — but it's also really hard to read. Every time I read those blogs (especially in low lighting) my retinas feel burned.

4. It should still look professional. Again, in my case, just because I wanted to it be exciting doesn't mean I wanted it to look like a 14 year-old's myspace page.

As is probably apparent, I am still using a generic blogger template for this site. I briefly used a different template I found on a third party website (it was up for about a day), but Laura told me it looked like a blog about heavy metal, so I changed it. I disagreed, but it was nevertheless still someone else's template and I wanted something that wasn't masquerading as unique.

Instead, I've decided to try to keep the layout simple and slowly make it more distinctive over time. I made the banner at the top of the page, for example, the other night. (I'm still working on making the banner more legible). Also, I'm using a fairly ugly gray as the background. That should change as I find a good background color that is neither white nor black. Ultimately, however, I decided that I was just going to have to learn HTML to come up with exactly what I wanted. In the meantime, however, I've gone with this one.