Had I waited 3 more months, a complete year of fighting the urge to redesign would have been fulfilled but apparently I failed to hold off that long.
With lack of time being the foremost reason for not redesigning, the decision was made to stay away from any changes so that I can keep one single look for the site as long as possible and maintain a sense of personal brand. This same principle explains why I’ve gone more than a year not adjusting my avatar to something new despite having more options to choose from.
When you visit my site, with time I want for you to already establish a vision of what it looks like even way before you’ve typed in the URL and to accomplish a task like that, the objective is not to deviate too much from what people are use to seeing. I can’t take credit for this thought. It was heavily inspired by Shawn Blanc.
Aesthetically, weblogs can become complicated very quickly so I attempt to always keep it as clean as possible and not be obligated to include links that I want you to click on. If you’re interested in what you see, you’ll come across them on your own and not because I fed them to you.
In the last couple of months, I like to think that my content has become more photography based and when the opportunity comes to share photographs, the objective is for them to take center stage and not be distracted by any other embellishment that I may have considered added spice to the design.
I kept with the dark tones for the overall feel of the site because visually it draws me in more to the content. I wouldn’t go on the record to say that it’s officially complete because there’s always enhancements that I sprinkle on surreptitiously when I feel inspired by other sites I come across.
Until then, this is it.
There are thousands of applications in the App Store. Chances are if you have an idea for an application there’s already something for it available. So to stand out you have to do something different, you can focus on having the most features, the lowest price, the best marketing, hell, sometimes you can just be the luckiest.
Our way to stand out is to try to make applications that have a unique and fun look and feel. Mark spends a lot of time thinking about how our applications should work and we spend a lot of time polishing every aspect of the UI so that our apps provide a unique and fun user experience.
Needless to say they’ve succeeded in meeting their ambition to distinguish their apps amongst others with similar functionality or else there wouldn’t be others stealing their uniqueness.
Who hasn’t entertained the thought of being their own boss one day? Whether it’s a one-man team or crew of creative geniuses, Andy Rutledge provides an exceptional caveat for those yearning to develop a healthy design agency:
No matter how much you enjoy design, no matter how good a designer/developer you are, no matter how much you want to own your own agency, do not attempt it unless you are wildly enthusiastic about business. If running a business is not your first or second love, do not waste your time; you will fail. Love the business or don’t go into business for yourself.
Once that’s been established, the attention goes to constructing an awesome passionate team. This is not to be confused with a clump of people who just happen to be linked because they work in the same studio each with their own agendas. It really lies on hiring the right people.
Shawn Blanc discusses the subtle design adjustments to his site and makes notice on the importance of maintaining that personal brand you’ve established with your readers without compromising the blog experience that may arise due to changes implemented:
When you read someone’s site you are imagining their voice. Not only is that voice influenced by the style of their writing, but also by the design of the site itself. Drastically changing the colors and fonts of a site can have serious impact on the reader’s pre-established and familiar voice of your site.
Very often we feel the constant need to change design elements around on our site and while the experimentation is done mostly in my part to challenge myself with new web techniques, I feel that the more I “refresh”, the less I give myself the opportunity to establish a mental image of my presence and writing through my blog to readers.
When you think of sites like Daring Fireball or Kottke, you not only know what to expect from their writing but you also recognize the stage on which the content will be presented. For example an avid reader to these blogs already has a mental snapshot of Gruber’s customary gray presence or Jason’s white background in their head even way before they’ve visited the site.
Any deviation from this accepted depiction that readers have from your blog is what Shawn strived to maintain and nailed and it’s something that I hope to accomplish as well. For this reason, I’ve vowed not to make any drastic changes to my site for the rest of the year. When you visit my site 6 months from now, I want you as the reader to already know what to expect my site to look like and not feel lost. I want you to recognize my colors, my look and hopefully my writing.
David Kaneda’s has launched a tumblelog focussed on Apple’s WebKit browser framework, and in particular its use in the mobile space. Some handy tricks and techniques already available along with a beautiful overall design to compliment them. (via matthewb)
Jorge Quinteros © 2007 – Today About Archives Subscribe Back to top ↩
