Some Thoughts on Design

I did the redesign for this site last week and if you are a graphic/web designer of any type you know that it isn’t a masterpiece of a design from the designer’s perspective. However, from an Information Design perspective (what I try to focus on) I think it does an excellent job and after going through about 20 ‘make money’ blogs today, I would say that design-wise it is the best as well (with the exception of ProBlogger, but I hate the typography on that site). Where do I come off making such a bold statement? Let me try to explain.

It should come to no one’s surprise that I enjoy minimalist design very much. However, minimalist design should not equate to ugly design. This site for example I could look at for a very long time without turning away (I guess that’s what I get for creating it), while other sites in this niche make me cringe when viewing them. It seems that people like to pretty up their sites, but they do so and seem to make their sites worse off than the default templates that come with their blogging software. In the design community, the design of your site becomes your brand. In this community, the voice of your site is your brand.

The problem with implementing a minimalist design such as this is that nobody will remember the site based on its design because there are no standout features to the design. Plain layout with plain colors partnered with a plain logo (maybe in time I will work on the logo to improve the branding of the site). So why even bother going this route and avoid adding some splash to it?

Well the main focus of this site is to get people to read the content. The layout should make this task as easy as possible for the reader and I like to think that this design accomplishes that. However, I also had another goal for this site and that was to keep people on it longer by reading some of the entries that I felt were important for them. That is where the third column comes in with the “Featured Entries” section. That way, new readers don’t just read what is on the frontpage or in the “Recent Entries” column, but are enticed to explore the site and learn as much as possible. Best scenario is that they continue to come back to the site for more.

Avoiding Clutter

Admittedly once you start adding links to your site, there is a tempation to continue to add-on to the design. The problem though is that you begin to clutter the design and take focus away from the content. As someone who may be trying to make money with their blogs, you have to focus on where you want to take the reader. Eventually I wish to take my readers in either 4 different places:

1. To another page on the site
2. To an Adsense link
3. To an Adword link
4. To an affiliate program link

For those purposes this was the layout I came up with. One of the keys though is to stop thinking of your site as a blog and following the typical blog design (two columns). Instead, I find that many of our sites are informational websites that we should help the readers explore.

Are there areas where I see improvement in this design? Most definitely, but those will have to wait since there is nothing particularly bugging me at the moment. And those are some of my thoughts.