In order to put an end to the design procrastination I mentioned a few days ago I’ve decided to take Upstart Blogger, and my other blogs, in a new aesthetic direction. The goal is to put an end to the hours that I spend designing and redesigning, browsing typography forums looking the perfect typeface for each of my blogs and generally wasting days, literally, starring into Photoshop.
The successful end product will be a WordPress theme powering all of my blogs that will be instantly recognisable as part of the Upstart Blogger family, differentiated by one obvious and easy to change characteristic.
A few hours ago I changed the design at ashleymorgan.com using what I hope will be that end product.
The layout and structure are identical to the current Upstart Blogger design. The header graphic is replaced with a simple serif, stacked in a swiss style. All of the text is black with links in bold. The advertisements for my own products are simple black text, in the same font as the header, making them suitable for use across every blog in the network, regardless of its background.
Making each blog look different is now simply a matter of changing the text at the top and the background shade. For instance, here is the same layout applied to bigarenarecords.com.
I’ll give the designs a few days to visually settle in and then make a decision. If all goes well my procrastination nightmare could be over.
With respect, you’ve been constantly banging on about the design of this and all your other blogs for over a year now. We’ve had underscores, yellow lines, big headers, a return to the underscores, blue lines, smaller headers, serifs, sans serifs, Helvetica and other similar fonts (I love Helvetica, but boy do you overuse it). Major ‘refreshes’ happened in May, September, November, January and even just a month or so ago. Just clicking on the Design tag highlights this.
Please, will you just give it a rest? It wouldn’t be so bad but with each redesign you go on and on about how ‘this is the one’, you’ve finally ‘cracked the unified look’ and each change is better than the last.
I have to break it to you: Generally, they are not. Your personal brand is so confused (are you Upstart Blogger? Inner Circle? AshleyZero? Brass Revolver? Jazz Muso?) and you’re not helping yourself by failing to find a distinctive style and sticking with it.
I’ve said it before – your underscores were one of the most design-inspired, inspirational and unique pinpoints on the entire web (the irony that you didn’t design them is not lost) but since they went (and reappeared, and went again) you’ve tinkered, tweaked and fannied about so much that, I’m afraid, you’ve come across as more concerned about your Emperors New Clothes than what’s actually written down here and I have, basically, given up caring.
So long. Hope you find that perfect header font but, I fear, you’re more interested in the hunt than the treasure.
ashley, that thing is freaking nuts! love it. LOVE IT.
I really like your designs and I can certainly understand your desire for ease of use and uniformity. I know that good designs bring more traffic than crappy ones. What really brings me to your site as a subscriber is your content. The cool designs are a bonus.
Pretty sure it will never be over! There will always be a new font you see, or new colour scheme and it’ll be back to the drawing board. Very nice designs though, very distinctive and clean.
Those are awesome designs! I really like the first one, really I like all of them because their so simple.
Keep it up!
Jams, sorry you feel the need to go. The whole point of my last few posts concerning the redesign is that I’m trying to pull everything into one cohesive network. Blogging about the design changes, and branding changes, is something that many people find interesting, whether or not they agree with the choices I make.
Design procrastination is something that I admittedly have to deal with, that is part of me, and, as an open blogger who likes to share things, my quest to overcome the constant urge to redesign is something that I feel compelled to write about.
It’s my hope that the positives of my openness, the way I choose to write about what I do as a blogger rather than what I think everyone else should do, outweigh the negatives.
And anyway, everyone knows you can’t overuse Helvetica!
John, I knew I could rely on you for an enthusiastic response! Thanks.
Steve, thanks, hopefully the new designs will allow you to flow more easily between my blogs, enjoying a wider spread of content.
Hannah, glad you like it, it’s Ambroise from Porchez Typefonderie.
Richard, maybe you’re right, but I do feel I’m very close to what I’ve been looking for. And I’m glad that you think they are distinctive and clean. That’s exactly the look I’m aiming for.
I love the new design. Any plans on releasing the structure as a free WordPress theme?
I like the layout quite a bit, but I find the yellow background for Big Arena really hurts my eyes. Not sure if it’s just me being a wuss, but it’s hard for me to look at it for very long. Other than that, it’s good. Best of luck to you!
This is for you Jams. Even he was still using the old design of his blog, you should evaluate his finished product. As for my assessment, it has a design that one person would be interested. I love the way he write the content and its quality. Trust me it is not bad at all. I really appreciate the job you’ve done in your designs.