We live in a day and age where anyone can write anything and it can be read anywhere on the planet. No longer do we need a publishing deal, do we need to be a journalist or an author, do we need to be discovered…the advent of the internet has led to the age of the weblog, or blog, that allows any individual with thoughts to say and an internet connection to be heard. But with all the competition, what makes a good blog? The components and elements required to develop and design an effective and visually appealing blog are simplicity, good readability and content. In the terms of this class and the other students’ blogs, how does theirs just as important mine, stand up?
The three blogs I chose to evaluate were “Millzmommy” (http://brownskin-millzmommy.blogspot.com/2011/10/racism-within-race.html), ShaDonna Doughty (http://shadonnad.blogspot.com/2011/10/welcome-to-my-world.html), and “Dailey Thoughts” (http://daileythoughts1183.blogspot.com/). All three blogs have elements I enjoyed and have room in my opinion for improvement.
Simplicity is a big key towards making a visually appealing blog, as well as an effective one. Upon opening the first blog from Millzmommy, I am greeted with a nice layout with effective colors and background. There is not too much going on, so my eyes were drawn right to the text. Ben Hunt from Web Design from scratch states; “[n]ot all websites should be minimal, but that we should use as few features as are necessary to achieve what you need to achieve.” He goes on to say that if you leave things out, put them back in. Being minimalistic for the sake of being minimalistic is a mistake. Right away I notice on this blog, there is no pictures. I believe that pictures will set the tone for what I am going to read, and make the subject easier to prepare for and therefore read. I think this feature is stripped from the blog unnecessarily. Adding pictures here would definitely help. The other two blogs have no pictures at all, which are easy to add and increase the effectiveness and visual appeal drastically. Speaking for myself and my blog, I need a background picture. I always include a topic picture, but a background would be more effective than a blank background. However, I need to ensure to keep it simple, and not complicate the visual appeal of my blog and the readability.
So what is readability? E. Singh from Kronikmedia.com says; “Easy to read content…large font size, contrasting color against the background, sufficient line and paragraph spacing.” So speaking of the text itself, how easy is that to read? I know in my blog I put the white text on a black background to make it as easy as possible to read. Have you ever tried to read yellow font on a white background? Good luck. I think this is an area where ShaDonna’s blog really shines. She has black font on a yellow background, size 12 sizing and regular font. If anything, some double-spacing is my only suggestion here, along with some indents. No reader enjoys an extra-long paragraph and visually it is appealing and eye-catching to have indents in paragraphs. I need to do this more also, and I could probably stand to increase my font size as well. The Dailey Thoughts blog I think went backwards in this regard. His early submissions had a dark black font on white, but his newer submissions have more of a grey font. This makes it a lot harder to read. Perhaps if the size of the font was larger he could keep the color and remain effective, but I feel as it is now some effectiveness is lost with the different color font. Millzmommy goes a completely different direction and makes the font almost impossible to read. I know right away I don’t want to read it, just because the it’s a script that is small. I already know subconsciously I will have to invest extra effort to read this blog and it won’t be a casual read. Why make the reader work hard to read your message? There’s no readability in that, no matter the content.
Which leads me to my last and most important point in this paper: In order for a blog to be effective, the visual is important but the content must be of a substantial value. Interesting and succinct, funny or meaningful, whatever the reason if must be of substance to the reader. No one will read a blog that has no content. What is your message to your audience? In the blogs I chose to critique, there is some kind of theme running through all of them whether they are cohesive or even weakly executed. The company Sprtiz Web Solutions sells the expertise of making websites effective as a business. Regarding content, they say; “along with style, your site must have substance.” Millzmommy speaks about race on her blog from her perspective. That is great content, but there is only a single entry. ShaDonna writes about her experiences in her life, but again, there is just a single entry. DaileyThoughts writes about many topics without a single narrative, just the opinions and views of its author about a variety of topics. They tend to be media based with technology and are observations of the author. This is a nice theme to latch on to, as it brings in a specific audience and they know what to expect due to its multiple entries on the theme. My site has a united theme with many different topics. I try to make them humorous as to keep the content high and not just seem to be complaining the whole time. There is neither content nor audience in that. A point to take away from the blogs I am critiquing is to make sure I keep up with my entries as the audience won’t wait around for my new posts, no matter how good my content may be. It always needs more.
We live in a day and age where anyone can write anything and it can be read anywhere on the planet. In today’s world anyone can write a blog about anything they choose, but how can we make it effective and visually appealing? The components and elements required to develop and design an effective and visually appealing blog are simplicity, good readability and content. All three of the blogs I critiqued in my weekly posting and here make good use and poor use of those three components. I learned some lessons in reading theirs, and now I can apply those lessons to my blog as well.
References
Does Your Website Have What It Takes?
(http://www.spritzweb.com/good-website-characteristics.html)
Hunt, B. (2011) Web 2.0 Design – How to Design Web 2.0 Style
(http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/web-2-0-design-style-guide/)
Singh, K. (2011) 15 Elements of a Great Blog Design
(http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog/15-elements-of-great-blog-design/2133/)
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