When considering a blog design or redesign it is often useful to look at the classics. Those blog designs that have stood the test of time and have resisted the temptation to constantly redesign.
Each of the following blogs have huge audiences, are instantly recognizable and their authors are revered in their respective industries and generally online.
Zeldman. Described as the Godfather of the web and online at zeldman.com for as long as I can remember.
Signal Vs. Noise. Clean and simple with web 2.0 highlights from the 37 Signals blog that are emulated all over the web.
Coudal. Classic and near perfect typography that narrows the gap between blog design and print design.
The Upstart Blogger refresh hinted at yesterday will begin in earnest next week. Will the yellow links that cause such strong reactions, both positive and negative, survive? Only time will tell.
bringing back the underscores?
I love the first and third designs. There’s some soft and inviting about the first while the typography and the layout on the third are just really nice.
The minimalism on the second just seems kind of boring and lazy. But that’s testament to the designer if it’s been around a long time.
personally i love the zeldman site the sidebar menu does it for me ;) at this moment in time i’m going through a light on dark moment and this menu would work great in this type of environment.
hows it going with the thoughts on the ‘redesign or not to redesign’?
Curtis - You never know. But I doubt it. I have a nagging suspicion that adding an underscore to the front of the titles may cause some search engine issues. I’m probably wrong but you can never be too sure with Google.
Amber - I think 37signals are taking a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach. They have so much traffic they probably feel it’s safer to keep things just the way they are. Coudal is the most inspirational for me. I love the way they use the header space to display different images that reflect current projects. That’s something I’d like to incorporate if and when I refresh things here.
Roger - Light on dark is great but I can never get light text to look quite right on a dark background. I have to use drop shadows to thin out the text, but that only works on Safari which means only a tiny handful of people will ever get to see it working perfectly.
The redesign. It’s like a curse isn’t it? I’m toying with the idea of adding a header image to all of my sites, in a similar style so they are all tied in to each other stylistically. You can see what I’ve come up with so far at http://www.infinitecritique.com.