Update: Wow, 72ave does a great job as well.
Yesterday I found this interesting and highly discussed blog post on Smashing Magazine about the traditional blog post. A couple of weeks earlier I read Dustin Curtis’s blog about his 30-day-flight with JetBlue and fell directly in love with the content (be sure to check out the American Airlines post) and appealing design.
Smashing Magazine raises the question if blog posts should have it’s own very identity depending on what the post is about. So when Dustin talks about ‘A Tour of my Brain‘ the design get it’s own unique flavour, like every other post. It has a lot in common of what you see in magazines like Wired or Bright. Yesterday I heard Russian media tycoon Derk Sauer saying that you can’t get the same ‘fulfilling experience’ while reading on the web as you sense it when reading a magazine. I think I don’t agree with him, especially when you see blog posts like Dustin, Jason and Gegory did. With the variety of options you have nowadays with HTML/CSS and cross-browser font possibilities it’s so much easier to create an unique and appealing ‘print-like’ experience. Altough it takes an awe full lot of extra work, I’m aware of that.
There are ’skeptic people’ in the comments at Smashing Magazine thinking this approach is something designers only do to please there own needs. On the other hand people think that an ‘average visitor’ wouldn’t appreciate the different approach for writing a blog like this, because it feels like their not on the web anymore. And off course a lot of usability questions pop up too (for instance: wide screens versus small screens).
Personally I find this new and ‘innovative’ approach to blog posts really appealing and I’m over thinking to use this sort of concept for my new blog which hopefully will be launched at the end of December this year. So what is your feeling about this?
It’s a cool idea, but It is a lot of extra work for a post. And another thing, I only read blogs in Google Reader, so don’t see the layout
Yes, I love this concept. But i t might be true that this is just masturbation for designers like us.
I’ll ask my grandmother to see what she thinks.
Cool! Let us know what she said…
She said:
Seems like there is a subtle pull that is taking us full-circle.
Back in the mid-late 90’s we didn’t have blogging tools, so those of us who posted content had to know html and several coding tricks (spacer images to indent paragraphs, etc.). No one “blogged” daily and only those who had something to say published because of the energy it took to post a page. For the most part, whatever approach we took was venturing into new ground, and only later did certain approaches become best practices.
My approach was to publish a crafted article about once a month and then keep a journal that was updated at least once a week – sometimes more frequently. (“blog” had yet to be coined then, and no blogging tools existed.) Each article was styled with its own formatting – after all, that’s the example we had from magazines. And my journal was a vertical and narrow column of bordered text with photos attached along side the text it illustrated. The journal (“blog”) was rather standard in format and its content was either time-sensitive or quick thoughts that deserved airing (but nothing more). Only the more thought-out articles were indexed for visitors to browse by title/topic. (It took time to organize and code such an index, so only valuable content got that much attention.)
I still like that approach – distinguishing between articles and what we’ve come to expect as traditional blog postings. And the value of those dictates how I invest my limited time: article first, periodic updates through blogging next, and nothing left for microblogging.
An article that is one-of-a-kind and not one-of-many deserves a one-of-a-kind display.
Now, of course I’m prejudiced, but I think she’s right on the money here.
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