Scobleizer - Latest Comments in The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Julian L — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:18:16 -0000

If you have substance, the form can be less important.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Tibor Holoda — Sat, 16 May 2009 06:14:32 -0000

Plain design IS a nice design, indeed! Like your design change, simplicity is the key imo.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Tibor Holoda — Sat, 16 May 2009 06:14:32 -0000

Plain design IS a nice design, indeed! Like your design change, simplicity is the key imo.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Matt — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:16:18 -0000

This green feeling gives me peace and easy focus on your content. My impression is a positive one and this is actually a very good test for those who fear about losing visitors/readers and money.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Mike — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:33:11 -0000

Well I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.

http://www.enbargain.com

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

jim kiljer — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:04:06 -0000

last monday was it yes said the large dog as ai said last time we were running JAPAN RULES my hungry towel says get beck NOOOOOOOO STOOOOPPPPPPPPP jump you can eat you hands hand hand hand

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Diwant Vaidya — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:45:27 -0000

There is the answer that people can zoom for more readability (Firefox and IE7 have fancy zoom goodness now), but I think a permanent bump on font-size is a good idea. It will improve readability, but here is my real reason:

Guy Kawasaki 10-20-30. Yep, the PowerPoint rule, but on websites. 10-20-30 makes PowerPoints easier to read and less noisy. Make it easy for your people to find and digest your content. Bigger fonts reduce what you can put on a page and suddenly you have a box to work inside. Suddenly you have to decide to tell your story in half the words. Or even better, no words but a single picture. You get a boundary to work within. Such boundaries inspire the most creativity in people. I tell you that you can only use 33 lines to tell your user what's up, and you write a tighter story. I tell you that you have only 15 minutes to present a business and you have DEMO. I tell you you only have 140 characters to announce something and you have Twitter.

Bottom line, bigger fonts make for clearer boundaries on how much to present, which really makes you focus on what to present.

Long post, but I am absolutely passionate about the play between design and content.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

markharrison04 — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:24:36 -0000

I think this works for you because you have a pretty big reputation and I'm not convinced at all that it would work for the 'normal' guys like me. I happen to like the stripped back design and I always thought this was the way that web 2.0 would go but as I say, if you have a loyal readership then whatever you put out will probably not affect their desire to come and read your posts.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

marybaum — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:00:19 -0000

Here's an article I just sent all my clients and friends:

http://www.alistapart.com/a...

As a nearly complete convert to a variant of hard-core direct marketing known as 'Kennedy-style' or 'GKIC' (see http://dankennedy.com) that is only now, grudgingly, admitting that decent design does not, in fact, depress response rates when we keep our eyes on the ball, I walk a fine line almost every minute between design for its own sake and design to help make the sale. So I love it when I get ammo from reputable sources like alap.

Because I just can't do ugly.

Oh - as to Times Roman: It doesn't have to suck. Just set it biggish, in light weights, and kern it to a fare-thee-well. 'Course, it's hard to kern web type, but that's why you set it big, so you can tighten the letterspacing to the point that nobody notices. Use the light weight for body text at about 14px and h1 heads at about 24px or bigger; mix with h2 and h3 heads in Arial Bold or Trebuchet Bold. The h3 subheads should be the same size as the p text; the h2 subheads can be somewhat bigger, maybe 16-18 px.

On the subject of type running acrosse the browser window, I agree absolutely. Type gets hard to read at about 52 characters long; even a bare-bones, no-style design should still at least have a container that declares the main-content column won't make anyone read farther across than that.

And, finally, if we listened to every one of our esteemed male colleagues over 40 on the subject of readable type, we would never design anything except 12-point black type on white. Or 18-point black type on white.

Guys, I went presbyopic starting on my 40th birthday and today can't see the lines on my own hand. (The fingers are going fast.) I wear bifocals with two strengths of close - one for the computer and one for reading papers. When I drive I look over the top to see the road and the rest of the panorama in the distance (and look through them to see the speedometer and the rest of the in-car controls) and take them off to play tennis, at which point I can no longer read the numbers on the balls, to return strays to the next court. All of this is prelude to my most earnest entreaty: If you can't read the type, please, just put on your glasses - your wife spent hours picking them out and I'm sure they look great on you!

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

dr34mcod3r — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:08:17 -0000

I don't think the design is ugly. but really - your content is more important to me.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Joko Susilo — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:21:25 -0000

I think some people are care about design, but another no care.
For me, your theme now is really good looking.
Thanks for sharing.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

klandwehr — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:13:25 -0000

I like it, many Web sites have too much junk on them cluttering them up, wouldn't be my choice of colors, but to each his or her own.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Pamela Jacob — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:47:55 -0000

I think it all depends on your target audience - I am a very visual person so an attractive interface is important to me now if I am doing research just for information? If it is really plain it may appear to visitor that you are not really successful and cannot afford something more.

And if you are a designer - it better show some design...

You get my drift...

A lot of blog and website become so busy you don't know where to go - and bad design is far worse than simple plain...

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

cosmic53 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:37:16 -0000

Oh, by the way the best ugly design I have ever seen is c2.com, home of the Portland Pattern Repository's Wiki

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

KarenSwim — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:24:57 -0000

Well, I actually like this design. It is minimalist and that theme seems to be running through the threads of my life. I am sure that there are many people who are yearning for a return to simplicity. We've had the flash, the WOW factor and many realized it wasn't what it was cracked up to be. No matter what you design you choose there will be those that hate it, and those that love it. If my little vote counts, I vote for the basics.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Sufian — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:19:20 -0000

Nice new look. I'd have to agree with the font suggestions above though.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Susan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:21:46 -0000

It's amazing how simplicity can work better for themes at times. It all depends on what you want from your readers... :)

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Robert Scoble — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:58:26 -0000

The neat thing about design is you can choose a new theme with the click of a mouse. Today I turned on a different one that will get a different argument going.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Dan Lyke — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:08:04 -0000

Count me in the "like the new design" camp. Previously, I only checked in occasionally. With this layout I could see myself coming back more often; it speaks of a refocusing on content rather than distracting me away from the content.

I think there are a lot of people who equate "cool looking" with "design", and I'm with all those commenters who point out that simple and usable is a design, and think Google (and, yes, Craigslist, which I check regularly) succeed because of their designs, not in spite of them.

I rather suspect that those who complained about the font are either using "ClearType" (snicker) or have their system font set weirdly (perhaps that means the default), and in this day of 26"+ wide monitors who runs their web browser full screen any more? I definitely like having text layout which adapts to how I want to view it, rather than enforcing how I have to.

Hope whatever you end up with maintains the aspects of this that keep it usable.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Farid el Nasire — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:12:01 -0000

Change font to Arial and the content width to like 900px and I'll be happy ^_^

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

PXLated — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:37:49 -0000

The comments are pretty amusing, a bunch of tin-eyed geeks commenting on design. It's like watching a tone-deaf singer on American Idol :-)

Obviously design shouldn't distract from the content but there's been many studies showing that visitors form an opinion of you (company/brand) within a second or two based on the design, long before they read anything. It's why most notable brands spend money on design and it's not being wasted. In fact, it's one of the cheapest ways to polish and influence your brand image.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Rick Boretsky — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:42:04 -0000

While content is way more important than design, I don't think you should under-estimate the design. If this was the first time I would have navigated over to your blog, I probably owuld have discounted it pretty quickly given the lack of design and a sense of a lack of professionalism. yet, a minimalist approach is definitely the way to go, whatever direction you choose.

Rick.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Mike Elliott — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:34:47 -0000

I actually find the minimalist approach refreshing. Let's face it, if you produce informative content on a consistent basis and therefore have a loyal subscriber base they are coming back because of the content not the design. Since most followers subscribe via RSS they don't see the blog very often anyway. The design is for new comers I guess. Will they find you more credible because of a cutting edge design? Perhaps in the beginning. But my only reason for coming back to a blog is because it's become a dependable channel. Change is typically a good thing, stagnation a bad thing. If all blogs looked the same it would get old fast. Focus on the content, switch up the design from time to time, try new things and dare to be different are all simple factors that contribute to a blog's long term success.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

Peter Murray — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:45:20 -0000

Like Uomo_merda and others, I follow this blog on Google Reader. I don't follow Robert through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. because I trust that his most thoughtful and valuable content is published here.

I expect that the stats for viewers to the blog actually increases when Robert makes comments on the design because all of us using RSS visit the blog to see what he means.

Re: The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

pt — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:09:31 -0000

Yes, but you--the website designer--can "choose" how your site looks. Most people do not CHOOSE their default font: in fact, I'll assert that most folks don't even know they can.

Just set your default font to sans-serif; then folks' computers will choose their default sans-serif font (and if they've customized it, it will keep with their preferences).

Sans-serif has been proven (through usability testing) to be easier to read on screen than serif.