The death of the boring blog post?
Let’s face it: the classic blog post is boring.
Barring the text and images, each one generally has the exact same layout. We see little originality from one post to the next. Of course, consistency and branding are extremely important to consider when designing a website or blog, but what about individuality? Does a blog post about kittens deserve the same layout as one about CSS hacks?
Too Easy?
Because installing a WordPress theme is so easy, anyone can have a blog up and running in minutes. While this is great, and we now have a wealth of blogs on countless topics, perhaps it’s too easy? Just thinking about the endless hours of effort that a print designer puts into creating the custom layout of a magazine article makes one respect the finished product so much more.
A few individuals out there, though, are really breaking the mold of the blogosphere.
These guys aren’t using standard WordPress themes or cutting corners to make their lives easier. Rather, they are challenging themselves and producing some fantastic content.
Pushing yourself to create original layouts and designs customized to the content of each post is a fascinating and entertaining way to build a blog.
But why has this trend of melding blog post and magazine article, the “blogazine,” not caught on with the masses?
The <cringe>Trend</cringe> with a difference
Hearing the word “trend” makes us designers shudder because we picture overused glossy buttons, drop-shadows and reflections. But the blogazine trend could be unlike other trends for a few special reasons. Designing a creative layout for each new blog post, based on the content itself, requires skill, patience, dedication to the content and, most of all, effort on the part of the designer!
Let’s now look at three people who exhibit all four qualities:
The Pioneers
Jason Santa Maria
is one of the early innovators of this style of blogging and has been creating custom blog post designs since June 2008. With a background in print design, Jason had a vision to create a blog more in the style of a magazine, rather than obey the established rules of blog design.
While, yes, this is a redesign of sorts, I consider it much more a rethinking.
~ Jason Santa Maria
Jason’s blog posts are fascinating and cover a wide range of topics, including design, typography, books, photography and film. The differences in the designs are sometimes just subtle changes in background or typography, but each conveys an entirely distinct message that it couldn’t if it was uniform with the rest.
Sometimes the changes are radical, but every one still has an element of “Jason-ness.” The header and footer are usually consistent, but even without them, you can still tell a Jason Santa Maria post from a quick glace.
We’ve made so many advancements in how we publish content that we haven’t looked back to what it is we’re actually creating. Many of us see the clear separation between things like print design and web design, but I’ve really been questioning the reality of why things are this way.
~ Jason Santa Maria
We Web designers don’t want to be regarded as lazy. Do we?
We have some of the
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter.]
most creative and inspiring designers
in our profession, so why don’t we show our true potential in our blog articles?
Dustin Curtis
got a lot of publicity with his open letter to American Airlines, in which he suggests a dramatic redesign and rethinking of its online customer experience. The articles on Dustin’s blog are incredibly fascinating, and this user experience designer has clearly put serious thought into each one.
I got the chance to speak with Dustin about his work:
What prompted you to create a “blogazine” instead of a traditional blog?
I’m never satisfied with my work. Invariably, two weeks after finishing a design, I feel like I can do better. When I originally tried to design my blog, I kept finishing a design, hating it and starting over. This happened ten or twelve times until I finally gave up. Eventually, I realized that each post could stand on its own and be its own design that fit the content. Despite the holdbacks of HTML and CSS, it has worked much better than I had even anticipated.
Does having a blogazine really boost your creativity when it comes to creating a post?
The blogazine style does seem to boost creativity, and by a huge amount. I feel an intense amount of freedom when I’m not constrained by the box of a pre-formed design. I can open Photoshop and use it as a word processor with design functionality. The design really does complement — and become — the content, because they are built simultaneously, without regard for any of the other stuff on the website.
I feel an intense amount of freedom when I’m not constrained by the box of pre-formed design.
Where do you get your inspiration for your blog articles?
I get inspiration from everywhere. I’m fascinated by medicine and the human brain. So many of my articles center on interesting things that I’ve learned while studying neuroscience. Sometimes I’ll start with a single word, like “sleep,” and develop it into a whole article as I research the fringes of the field. There’s really no set source of inspiration.
Advantages?
Disadvantages?
The main advantage is one I didn’t anticipate. Doing a blogazine article requires a lot more work than a traditional blog post, and that has kept me on my toes; because such a large investment is required, I publish only what I feel are my best articles.
The biggest disadvantage is that CSS and HTML are terrible technologies that weren’t designed for page layout. They were designed for structured content presentation, like for a newspaper, where all the elements throughout the website are the same and are re-used. But I’m trying to make a magazine, where the content and presentation are inextricably mixed and unique. The way presentation CSS is supposed to be decoupled from the content HTML is totally counter to the mission I am trying to accomplish, and it makes coding the articles frustrating, messy and time-consuming.
This seems to keep the quality fairly high. I start four or five articles for every one I publish. If I had a normal blog, that wouldn’t be the case — the other four articles would be published too, even though they wouldn’t be as good as the ones I do end up publishing.
My solution to this problem has basically been to ignore convention and use inline styling for most of the presentation code and extract the website-wide presentation layer into a separate CSS document. This takes forever and is not ideal. To put it lightly, I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with CSS.
What if a print magazine
used the same template for every article?
It would be pretty boring, no?
Gregory Wood
is a website designer at Erskine Design and has created his website as an experiment in art direction. Not allowing himself to use the same old templates, Greg has created a fascinating website, with custom designs for each blog post.
Here’s what Greg had to say when I spoke with him:
What prompted you to create a blogazine instead of a traditional blog?
Well, I’ve had a blog for ages and have always been bad at keeping it regularly updated, until I custom-designed a few of the posts sometime last year. I generally hate writing about Web-related stuff (I find it all a little boring), and I love designing, so I wrote about what I wanted (music and zombies) and designed each post around the content, although still housed in my old blog layout. The reception to the posts was really nice, and I enjoyed creating them, so for my latest website I set out to cater to that same audience and keep myself happily occupied at the same time.
Does having a blogazine really boost your creativity when it comes to creating a post?
I wouldn’t say it boosts my creativity; the website is more of an outlet for it. Despite spending all week being creative at Erskine Design, it’s still quite liberating to design whatever you want, however you want, with no external influence.
Because it’s all nicely designed, readers are drawn in and end up reading more than one post.
Where do you get your inspiration for your blog articles?
Usually I think of my best ideas when cycling or sitting on a tram or bus. It’s been a big thing on the Web over the years, where you get your inspiration from, and I’ve never really understood it. I think that looking at other people’s work all the time for inspiration is massively constricting. I find staring out a window for a while usually helps.
Advantages?
Disadvantages?
The obvious advantage is that it looks better. But the content is infinitely more captivating as well. I’m not a great writer, and I probably write a lot of bullshit, but because it’s all nicely designed, readers are drawn in and end up reading more than one post. It’s also very fun to create and helps me grow as a designer.
I guess some would say the time factor is a disadvantage, but if you love doing something, spending a lot of time doing it is justified.
I can’t think of any disadvantages.
The Microblogging Revolution
Twitter, Posterous, Flickr, Facebook, the iPhone and countless other services make it incredibly easy for us to instantly post short musings, photos, video, thoughts and creations, which in turn has created a big gap between the micro post and the macro post.
Time for the macro post to shine
Longer blog posts with valuable content might not get the recognition they deserve, because the 140-character mindset turns people off of reading several pages of text. One way to combat this and make your content more appealing is by creatively altering the layout, using the blogazine technique.
Bridging the gap
We don’t know exactly where the world of blogging is headed in the next few years, but the increase in micro-blogging will definitely be a strong influence. Shorter attention spans call for drastic changes to the length of blog posts. Blogazines could cater to a generation accustomed to the longer articles of newspapers and magazines, becoming a bridge between the traditional article and the TwitPic.
Forces you to think more creatively
Slipping into the habit of typing up your thoughts and clicking “Post,” without thinking about the layout of each article, is easy. By taking a little extra time for the art of blogging, your creativity will increase with your efforts.
Something different and exciting for your readers
If .Net or Computer Arts printed every article with the same layout, every month, would you still subscribe? Your readers would more likely return for new articles if they anticipate something new and rewarding.
Reduces the number of short simple posts
Your blog posts will have much more weight if you take the time to create a full article, rather than knock of a rushed post.
Makes wordy posts more readable
If all you have is text, text, text, then people will be less likely to read it. Put a little effort into styling the content, and your post will become much more readable.
It takes serious effort
Hand-crafting each blog post won’t be easy, but the rewards will be well worth it.
You need CSS and HTML experience
Anyone can download a WordPress theme and merrily post an article. But building a custom layout requires some experience with CSS and HTML.
Inconsistency
The layout of your blog will change dramatically from post to post and, if not done right, may strike your readers as being awkwardly inconsistent. Just look at Jason Santa Maria’s work. Every post is radically different for a reason, but a consistent vein runs through the posts.
No print layout experience
Because this style borrows many elements from print design, anyone who has worked only in Web design may find it difficult to change their way of thinking. Rules of typography and white space, for example, may throw you off. But practice makes perfect, and an endless supply of inspiration can be found in creative magazines.
Obviously this style isn’t suitable for every website. It wouldn’t be practical for blogs that pump out three or four articles a day, but certain types of websites could benefit from it especially.
Portfolios
We have a habit of following trends very easily, especially in our portfolios. Instead of following the tired old practice of positioning screenshots of your work in a nice grid one after the other, why not use the blogazine technique and design a fresh page for each project according to the subject, client and color scheme?
Online Shops
Many online shops suffer from a certain blandness, following the pattern of: thumbnail grid, name, short description and then pagination.
This layout may be good for usability, but there is a middle ground between scannability and visual appeal.
The design changes do not have to be dramatic. In fact, drastically changing the layout would not be advisable for online stores.
But perhaps even subtle changes to design elements could give your online shop the distinction that makes it more noticeable?
CSS Galleries
A new CSS gallery seems to pop up every day, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between all of them. While some of the higher-profile examples like SiteInspire are fantastic for gaining inspiration, the constant influx of CSS galleries makes the inclusion of your own design in one of them somewhat less of an achievement.
It would be interesting to see a really high-class CSS gallery adopt the blogazine technique, with a custom page made for each worthy website, using large high-quality images instead of the typical screenshots.
The websites in a CSS gallery are not all about the same topic and do not have the same style or same content, so why should they receive the same treatment and same type of screenshot?
Merely for consistency?
Think about a painting that is worthy of being displayed in an art gallery. Should it be given the same treatment, cut to the same size, positioned the same way? Why do we treat gallery-worthy websites this way, then?
Quiet Blogs
Bloggers often lack the motivation to keep their blog running. Many of them feel they have to keep it fresh by updating it every day, and failing to meet their own expectations results in both frustration and a neglected blog.
Updating a blog daily isn’t ideal, and more often than not…
seven half-hearted articles a week does not equal one very polished, interesting article.
RSS readers are jam-packed with articles every day, and chances are, the articles that don’t get your full attention will get lost in the crowd. Keep your short musings and thoughts for Posterous and Twitter, and spend some real time hand-crafting well-thought-out articles. You’ll satisfy both yourself and your readers.
Look at Jason, Dustin and Greg. They do not blog that often: sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month. But the quality is always stellar.
You have endless possibilities to be more creative with your blog. Why stay tied down to one theme and one layout when you can experiment with your skills and push your creativity to its limit with a blogazine? With the Internet suffocating with blogs, people have developed incredibly short attention spans, and they probably won’t stop for your content if you have “just another blog.”
Why not throw away the blogging rule book and make your articles stand out from the crowd?
- Jason Santa Maria talks about his rethinking
- Jack Cheng’s blogazine
- Wordpress Art Direction Plugin
- ‘You’re killing Me Zappos’ by Metalabdesign
- Wordpress Post Styling Plugin
- The Life of Dustin Curtis
- Wordpress Designate Plugin
- Jason Santa Maria: The Influence of Print Design
- Shaun Inman’s Photostream
You can see that you created sth. really unique and creative if the envy-badgers come out of their holes, flaming at your comment section.
THUMBS UP!
WOW, this really has made me seriously think. @ Jognnie, DEFINITELY a thumbs up. But along with the creative thing…I mean what if you have the typical 2 column (main left column – right sidebar) layout…isn’t it just a tad hard to do something like that? And if you’re on wordpress…then wouldn’t it be even harder? Idk, just wondering. But I REALLLY like this post though :) I definitely plan to try to implement something like this soon.
I found this very inspirational. Thanks for the take on convention vs. innovation.
Because my creativity doesn’t extend far past drawing stick-people, these blogs are awe-inspiring. I like SM’s “tribute” post. Well done.
If I tried emulating such creativity, I’d publish twice, maybe thrice a year.
There’s got to be a middle ground; somewhere between template repetition adnausium and singular unique creativity. Damning stick figures, we’ve been trying to find it since 2004, on our randsco website.
However, my hat is off to this talented trio!
What a load of crap.
@max: Let’s see your site, douche.
lawl
Not only are you apparently behind the times, but you love to clearly show off why. Hope you can catch up to the rest of us soon enough! Or then again that archaic thinking of yours might have already done you in!
Wait, what? Is a different opinion considered as being behind?
I don’t agree with this choice of words, but do agree with the message.
I found this article so incredibly hard to read that I actually skipped to the end when I reached half way. It’s horrible to have to get used to a new formatting every three paragraphs and it totally missed the point. You’d think that formatting should complement the content, not distract from it.
Like people remark in other comments (below), this is only useful if you publish for people with an interest in alternative web design, not for people who have other interests. And to be honest, I’d say that even the regular SM reader isn’t sointerested in this ‘alternative web design’ that it is worth your trouble to design an article like this, and not worth our trouble to wrestle through the paragraphs.
I suggest not doing this ever again, or providing an option to read the same content in the regular formatting depending on the reader’s preferences.
By the way, I am under the impression that the three designers you mention get the idea of ‘blogazines’ a lot better than you do, as their layouts are a lot easier on the eyes and actually complement the content. In this manner I am all for individually styled blog posts; please don’t style individual paragraphs of the same blog post though!
Totally agree with Ohcyt above
> I suggest not doing this ever again, or providing an option to read the same content in the regular formatting depending on the reader’s preferences.
Disable css…
I agree with Ohcyt completely!! What ever happened to content is king? This was just distracting, and all about design… In essence, you made me think too much… It should be a balance of not just design, but content aswell! And I stopped reading here….
–>What if a print magazine used the same template for every article?
It would be pretty boring, no?–
This statement is true, yes, but it’s print… I’m pretty sure everyone knows print and web are two different things. I say stick to what works, but still find your creativity within what works!
I say this is a very nice post.
“…but still find your creativity within what works!”
@ Jarvis88: very well said.
This was an extremely interesting article. I honestly had never considered using print layout in a web setting as my mind had set the two apart. Perhaps from the culture of web design or simply my lack of print experience. This has given me many ideas about the direction of the blog I intend to create.
Great work.
I completely agree, and I think this is one of the points of the articles. Print design is very different to web design. You don’t have the limitations of browser ‘quirks’, font availability, screen resolution, etc and so you find a freedom is opened up to you.
That being said, print design doesn’t necessarily work well in a web environment, but I feel there are enough examples of excellent layout techniques around that it is worthy of being tried, if nothing more as a challenge to your normal day to day posts. Love it or hate it, I think the Apple website uses a strong print layout design to showcase their products, and it works really well! Will that work for blogging? I don’t see why not.
@Ohcyt mentioned that SM readers are generally here for the content, and that the ‘alternate design’ is not what they are so interested in. I would like to disagree, I think SM is about making us aware, as a community, about whats out there, what the trends are, inspire us to bigger and better things, and give us the tools and teaching to be able to achieve that. So I think this sort of post is exactly why I check in regularly to see what’s going on.
Everyone should take on the challenge. Don’t let the mediocre design, browser ‘quirks’ and client preconceptions dictate what we are each capable of achieving, if only we tried something different once in a while. Push the boundaries, try something new, and deliver that knock-out blow to the competition that makes you stand out from the rest, just like SM does.
Keep up the great work all!
Hideous. The point of blogging is to design for your reader, not for your own crazy designing pleasure. If a normal (non designer) were to read this, they would puke.
Nope. Not a designer. Loved it. Could not stop reading.
We aren’t talking about scientific papers here, but something that’s supposed to be interesting and keep your attention.
Perhaps the simple minded (such as yourself) can’t get behind it. That’s ok. Carry on with your stock wordpress template.
Well, the same happens with the print industry: newspapers, and especially magazines, are designed for their readers. But this doesn’t mean that its content has to be displayed in a dull way. There are lots of magazines, books, and even newspapers designed in such a creative way that doesn’t affect the readability of its content. In fact, it provides a much better experience to the reader and gives a new life to its content.
I think the idea is great for designers that like to experiment, but it tends to be “too much” for web designers used to think in structure and consistency.
Whereas the “normal” reader will love this. If there is one thing we know from the terrible old gif-mania, myspace and the hideous stuff that tends to happen to everything when you let people with no design experience a lot of freedom designing stuff, then that is:
The regular reader and internet surfer likes overly customized stuff, and doesn’t give half as much a crap on consistency like a designer does. So yes, this is a great idea, and it is certainly appealing to people.
There is only one big question to ask: is it worth the work? A print magazine can afford spending time on the design of one article, because every single copy is going to be sold to the reader. Not putting up this effort would not justify selling it.
If you’re blog has a big audience, if you are trend-setting or mind-setting in your industry, this effort might pay off. But a blog with ~200 readers won’t generally take benefit from putting so much work into customized presentation, as the writing itself might already take more time than you’d like to invest and cost you a lot of dedication.
So maybe the world is still waiting for a solid CMS that makes use of the great user interface technologies in a smart way, to help people achieve more customized designs? ‘Cause a print magazine wouldn’t probably be so interesting and well designed if the designers had to code it, and wouldn’t be able to drag stuff around and put it together as they like?
I understand the point, but also have a question: don’t you think that the reason for having only 200 readers could exactly be the fact that there’s not enough work on it. If you leverage your work by middle standards, you will never get more them… middle numbers. And this works not only for blog design!
I totally agree with you on the fact that it might not be worth it to invest a lot of time and energy in designing a blog if you are not a major trendsetter or ambitious leading designer, as the writing itself maybe consumes a lot of resources already. And then you get to the question what is better: publish the content without the custom design or do not publish it at all?
Meh, if you plan well, only the first post would take so much time to design this way. Since you do want some consistency, what you’d do is build a library of reusable styles, and so each subsequent post would benefit from the previous posts’ CSS classes, and the process would get faster and faster.
Having said that, sure, if you’re doing custom illustrations, that takes time.
I tend to agree with you, I started reading the post got to the half of it and felt my stomach screaming.
More than that, on such large posts white text on black background is bad for the eyes.
He is very talented, I agree, but a blog post is a blog post. You read the post to get information not to be distracted by all kinds of different artworks playing with the writing.
God this is the first time i read such a long blog post. why ? because not only the content was interesting, but the styling for each paragraph is awesome i couldn’t stop reading till finish !!
Can’t wait to make one of my own ..
thanks SM for publishing such a GREAT article ! one of the best i read at SM !
@Alex
> If a normal (non designer) were to read this, they would puke.
Dizziness, lol
I found this post to be very interesting. It seems to me this would be a new and engaging way to deliver content to users.
WOW I’d love to know how long it took to do the CSS for this…while this is a very awesome layout…it’s not practical for people with…jobs. I barely have time to publish my once daily blog posts that I spend at least an hour everyday. How am I supposed to spend 4-5 hours mocking up and coding something like this AND get work done?
I think this looks great, but I am with Amber. Even if I knew how to code at this level, the time wouldn’t be there. Nevertheless, in certain situations as you mention, this approach would work fantastic.
Read the article again, this technique is clearly not for daily bloggers.
…Simply delicious !
This is just amazing……. I don’t even know how we can try to stand out from the rest doing all the same kind of blogs and websites.
Write better.
This is a great topic and I will definitely give this a second look next time I write a blog post.
Besides making your eyes jump horizontally, which is more an annoyance than a break from usability, the biggest web typography crime this article committed was making non-links look like links. Dustin Curtis has done the same thing too. It’s annoying at best and infuriating at worst.
If some text is special, make it bold or italic. If you do either of those, then heck, switch up the color (but not to blue!). Enough sites eschew underlines for their hyperlinks in favor of differently-color text of the same weight (or bold I suppose). The flow of the article suffered for me because I was hovering over text that looked link-like and being disappointed so much.
Neat idea and almost well-done. I agree that it’s impractical — content is king, and people read blog content in their RSS readers. This works for JSM and other designers because their audience is designers. On a non-design-blog site, the ROI would be awful for custom-designed articles and there would be a huge risk of diluting their brand and destroying their site’s usability. Like all design gimmicks, use this sparingly.
I am simply astounded by how often the word BORING shows up. If you find yourself bored all the time, here’s a clue: grow up and stop expecting the world to entertain you.
Sayyyyy, maybe YOU are the boring one?!?
Great post…love the thinking. Reminds me of a book i have on my coffee table called The Art of Looking Sideways.
This is a terrible idea. No branding, no consistency. This promotes nothing but confusion.
Provocative post–inspiring many comments! Some interesting ideas and layout options, but in this post, there was too much. I agree @LA, it was distracting and made the piece seem like many pieces stitched together badly.
I like innovation and change. Still, I wonder if the blog post is boring. Newspaper articles looked the same for decades. Are we now in need of change every two years?
Also, I’d like to scroll right on a piece like this one–instead of down–maybe a new scroll wheel on my mouse would help? Scroll ?
ok, amazing post…!!!
well done sm !
Mmmm….tasty. This has me pondering and salivating all at the same time…
I did not enjoy reading this post and never finished it.
Why? The layout was terrible, it was all over the place, I couldn’t even do a quick skim through. I have a large 23″ wide screen and the fonts in this post were just way too large and the text was all over the place; not to mention how some images were larger than the screen – could never see some of the images “whole” – in one screen, I had to keep scrolling up and down to view some of the images.
Dude you´re tripping , I see it fine on a 17″ monitor.
Word. While I think there are interesting points, this article was just simply impossible to read. :(
I read this on a 13 inch Macbook while laying on the sofa AND I’m not wearing my contacts which makes it obvious that this post was awesomely readable. Sure go ahead and hate all you want, but don’t say images are too big and text was unreadable when it’s obviously and utterly false. To add insult to injury my Safari tab is not even maximized and I can see ALL the images and read ALL the text super easily even without glasses.
A huge part of the problem doing something like this is that you are ALL right.
Not only are you all using different devices, like everyone else who accesses the internet from whatever part of the world, your browser is set up the way you want want (or the way the techie who sets up your browser for you wants). Because of this, your clearly defined fonts, say, or text sizes, or background colours or whatever, is set to your chosen default, when the web design imposes their idea it can create conflicts, and cause divergences.
So although Paddy Donnelly has put together a nice article to present an interesting idea, he has come up against the essential problem encountered with all web design: you can be wildly creative and break the mold every time, but if you do that you are going to sacrifice accessibility.
Because if you want everyone who comes to your page to actually be able to access your content, you will have to spend hours testing it out on every browser and screen size available– from the tiniest cel phone to the widest of the widescreens.
My screen is 1680pixels wide, and it is lovely to look at this blog post. It’s nice to see all of my screen real estate put to use. But.
Paddy’s not bothered to make his wondrous beastie flexible at all. He has not elected to use either an elastic or flexible layout. I know this by employing the absolutely most basic test– shrinking my browser window to an 800 pixels width — whereupon the layout breaks badly. 800 pixel wide used to be standard screen size, and is probably still most common world wide.
This tells me that Mr. Donnelly’s only satisfied audience are those with the same screen size as his. Anyone employing an 800 pixel wide screen could conceivably be driven mad trying to read a post of this length. With an 800 pixel screen width the reader is forced to pop back and forth across the screen like a ping pong ball.
I despair of all the incredibly talented designers who create websites and blogs without any care for accessibility. It is not impossible, but It is hard to do, but you first need to master the tools and the theory. And then you have to do twice as much work and a lot of testing.
Which of course explains why shortcuts like themes are employed. For myself, I’m perfectly happy redesigning someone else’s template (or “theme”) to function the way I need it to function, until I’ve the time to learn how to make my own. But I really see no benefit to doing the design and then the endless hours of testing in order to make the layout unique every time.
But then, I’m old fashioned, because I want people to actually read my blog.
SUPER DUPER COOL!
Very inspiring idea!
I’d like to try my own blogazine
soon after I finish my CSS and HTML lesson.
Great read. A lot of debate possible on both sides… Websites don’t have the tactile existence to a user that a mag has. The brand, per say stands to get lost if you scroll down to far and don’t design with that in mind.
The CSS thing could be a pain. Wordpress could adapt to this with a stylesheet field right under the heading.
Otherwise, as another designer who started in editorial newsprint… I love to see this and needed a push in that direction.
Great article, congrats
this is the worlds best post.
ABSOLUTELY! I couldn’t agree more!
I would like to know, if he has a customfield for a new css-file for every post. Do anyone know about how this is done, technologically-wise?
I appreciate the vision but RSS was created for a reason.
It really depends…
Well – that certainly came out of the blue, and I certainly agree that ‘top 10 lists’ or similar posts are perhaps a little easy. I’ve been guilty of writing such posts myself.
The individuality of posts like Jason Santa Maria’s are very interesting and often inspiring.
Let’s not forget that the content is king; if the writing is of poor quality, then I won’t be reading, just looking.
I agree with harris…
Wow, so many comments in such a short time! Anyway Paddy, awesome work. Love the out-of-the-box approach.
The content of the article was sound, the execution was terrible. I have not seen so many information hierarchy rules broken on one page in my life. Poor form SM
Interesting thing – to use blogazine approach, we already have a bunch of tools like, say iWeb (simple, but you can combine easyiness of layout manipulation with power of custom themes and less HTML/CSS nightmares, especially, if you are not professional designer), or others – there are variants for different platforms.
You can even made a good post about using blogazine approach for unprofessional designers by using such kind of software :-)
Awesome post . Very informative. Thanks for sharing this nice post. :)
Awesome! This was the best post I’ve read on here, and I’m a huge fan of the site. The article kept my attention the WHOLE way through, where everything else I read online I skim and scan down. Way to get your point across!
This is brilliant stuff, and although I’m sort of scared about the extra work I feel this is where blogs will go in the future. There’ll surely be plenty that stick with the current format, and they’ll still succeed for sure, but it does seem sort of silly in hindsight that blogs, one of the most dynamic forms of media on the most dynamic platform in the world (the internet) have totally identical page layouts.
I won’t be making the switch just yet, I’m not incredibly capable with CSS and XHTML, and should probably research print design, but this’ll really help push towards my dream of being less frequent with my writing, but packing a bigger punch with each post.
So what you are advocating is a return to the efforts we used to make with personal sites 10 years ago.
Bingo. Kelake hit the nail on the head. I suppose the next SM post will be attempting to bring back the blink tag and news tickers?
You guys need to read the post again. Look for the part where Paddy recommends that every blogger should be doing this. I couldn’t find it.
For design-conscience bloggers that feel restricted by the lack of variety though, this is gold! Awesome post SM, this has got me salivating as well.
My take on this would probably be to start with custom stylings for the different categories on my site, and once I’m satisfied it’s working out move to an individual styling for each post.
Also, a good idea could be to provide an alternative CSS style (which would be your standard blog layout) with a link: “Click here to see this post in our standard formatting” or something similar, at the top of the post. Those users with no tolerance for anything different than Times New Roman at 12 points with blue hyperlinks will be satisfied, and those users who appreciate effort and quality can get their kicks too.
Outstanding. There’s nothing else to say.
By incorporating design to visually convey information and ideas, you increase the possibility that your reader will understand what you’re trying to say. It’s also an exercise in improving your own understanding of a topic.
Very, very informative article. I wrote an article on the Design Informer a couple of weeks ago about Unique Blog posts, and you can check it out on the blog. Sorry, but I can’t post links here.
You can see other great sites besides Jason’s, Dustin’, and Gregory.
I myself am planning to use this style for my redesign of my personal blog.
Jason Santa Maria makes us want to be better designers.
Keep doing that man!
this article rocks!
great job!
thanks for sharing
It strikes me that this trend takes us back to the golden oldies when every page was hand-coded html (before css). Many pages then were designed individually. Certainly not as well as today, but there was a lot more variation internally on a site.
All this dynamically generated stuff has led to a monotony in style. I say hail the blogazine.
One of the best posts I’ve read in a loooooong time long long long long time.
I’m done.
Long
I loved the layout of this blog post – no better way to get your point across than to DO IT YOURSELF.
Good job SM!
Best article I’ve read on SM in awhile
Definitely interesting. Like some people said above me, this isn’t for the “daily blogger” or those that have jobs. I think readers will have a love hate relationship with these. Readers are used to the “norm”, and when a designer decides to “push the envelope”, some readers will love it, others will hate it. In addition, there will always be people who don’t necessarily take a side… they’ll just appreciate it for what it’s worth. Just look at Picasso! His crazy thinking with the cubism movement definitely shook things up in the art world. People either loved it, or hated it! And then there those that appreciate his work simply because they understand the purpose of it.
I think I fall in line with the “appreciative” crowd. I’m not all that impressed with this, only because as a CSS lover myself, the amount of time involved just doesn’t seem worth it to “wow” your readers. However, I think it’s a step in the right direction when attempting to shorten the gap between web design and print design. I just don’t dig pages that require and immense amount of scrolling (ie, one page portfolio blogs… yuck!).
Interest ideas. The first thing that popped into my head as I was reading your article (not really a blog in my mind) is how long did it take you to do this? Adding graphics, layout, typography and copy makes the process of putting this together a full-time job. This is what you guys get paid to do…so cool. For the average blogger in a business this is not going to happen.
I would also add that I read tons of blogs that I find super valuable and interesting and they don’t use this blogazine format. It really comes down to the content and the readers who add insightful comments in my opinion.
Quite controversial post…
I read it with delight, wow what a pleasure I had in scolling and discovering the next part of the article… Actually the layout, as a demonstration, got to be very convincing. If only I were a designer and not a coder, I’d be starting up.
Of course it can be impractical. Yet, the idea is just great. I’m confident many designers will achieve a personal equilibrium between the quest of innovation and their tight schedule.
That is just the best blog post i ever seen. Very impressive! It brakes a lot of pre-concepts!
So inspiring! I LOVED this post! It’s amazing and has forever changed the way that I will look at blog design. THANK YOU for taking the time to put together this truly amazing piece of art!
i totally agree. when i currently red a article about the 10 donts of web site making…. i just wrote down … isnt it boring doing the same blog style like you do and other 100 million people do, with the same theme just with other colors and background picture.
when i started as web designer it was allways the same thing going on in 1999. left the navigation, on top a picture and right down the content. now after 10 years the same thing is coming up. now it calls blogging you have a more advanced cms behind and the side changed. today you have a picture on top, navigation left and the content area under the top picture.
wow. blogging often informative but it theached one bad behavior. to have no sense for design and beeing kept in this cheap cage of wordpress.
It amazes me how hard some people are on smashing magazine writers. Do you not think perhaps Paddy Donnelly was just trying to present the idea by executing it?
Good read, thank you.
sorry i ment.
today you have a picture on top, navigation right and the content area under the top picture.
someone just reflect it and thougth. wow thats totally new.
people will allways be different and want to show something unique. either in fashion or web design, even in blog design. thank god something will change
Which leads to the question: How the hell did you customize the lay out of this blog post?!
Wowzers. The best Smashing Magazine post ever.
This is a magnificent post.
This has inspired me to go off and do better things now.
I thank you.
Very interesting how different are the reactions about this post. I’m pretty sure it’s also a fight between veteran designers and younger ones. You should definitely add a required entry in that poll that says “please enter your age”.
Well, a big point of “similar” layouts or themes is giving readers a uniformed standard to read blogs in order to avoid confusion. Make it your own, of course, but don’t go as far as to make a reader re-learn how to read or navigate your blog.
People get use to the “way things are”, don’t confuse them.
Case in point for myself.. this post. I read maybe a quarter of the way through it then scrolled to the bottom to leave this comment.
Aweesome technique , will use implement soon .
Waaay inspirational! Thank you for that! n_n
This post is just amazing and very informative. I loved how it is described to be unique from other blogs. I would give this a try but definitely need enough time for this after 9-6 job :)…. Also showing portfolio according to client or project type is excellent idea. Should implement this and see how it works.
In last bookmarked this for reading it again and getting to know more while implementing.
Also I noticed that on homepage of smashingmagazine.com for this this post excerpt, the comments are shown as “0 comments”
Excellent post and some challenging ideas presented here which have me thinking and reassessing how my blog posts are presented.
I get the sense that within all of this heavy design and visual eye candy lies the heart of a deconstructionist (dare I say Situationist). The disjointed but flowing forms used individually (or just two) would allow for the content to come out but the mélange here is fairly hard to follow on my laptop screen, I shudder to think what it looks like on an iPhone.
When I view this on a 24″ or a 16×9 panel it looks fantastic. As someone previously mentioned, the post would look fantastic in print and would be manageable to the eye – I wonder if using a two page at a time ‘magazine’ presentation rather than the vertical format would be beneficial here.
My own posts tend toward the DIY simplicity of print the versions of Fanzines such as Maximum Rock n Roll or (even more so) The Big TakeOver. Stylized elements which threaten to intrude into the text but rarely overlap it, creating a gritty backdrop that does not overpower the content.
Again, thanks for the ideas, provoking presentation and dialog.
Amazing yet controversial post. Now I’m torn between usability and creativity. I’d like to have both though.
I agree with you. Creativity, it is nice. Usuability and readability, not so good.
I myself like to be able to jump to a blog post and skim through it easily before I decide to read it word for word. This technique is not good for readablity, in my opinion.
LOVE this! You guys ’smashed’ it out of the park. What a great read!
Great Job Patty.
It’s disgusting that half these negative comments are from “designe-um- ers?” I’m sure the other half brainwashed web standards whores,and finally the last lot just learning an IE Hack and should be writing their latest critique on rottentomatoes.com or trying to impress that girl on facebook who thinks your an idiot, and the macbook is not getting you laid either.
Rules really?
The only rules should be something serves it’s purpose and bit of common sense when it comes to coding and design. With out further ado way to think inside the box, inside the box, inside the box that innovative people have thrown out and you crawled in.
You should delete any design software you may have because imitators are not needed any more
then a bad case of VD.
And do you think the common user really gives a damn about our “rules” have some sense and realize most people live by “it just works” and some users like something refreshing and I can go into that more
but you might have a stroke.
It’s simple If they like what they are reading they will continue if not they will scroll and leave some thoughtless comment because everyone wants to be right.
I do like this post and I do Like the direction it can lead more blogs in and it will weed out the weak in the long run by setting up a higher standard and more authentic experience.
…Or we can can stick to same thing because nobody wants to *Gasp* ….
I hope you enjoyed all the bad typos and more I am trying to enjoy my smoke.
I don’t think it really has to do with what or who is wrong or right. ‘Til a true case study is done to see how something like this works for various readers and markets (IMHO) I think the general blog post “standard” should be followed.
I personaly think it looks awesome, but don’t think it really leaves the focus where it should be. Which is on the content. As for design blogs like this, I think this could work well eventually. Allthough (IMHO), blogs should always focus on the textual content.
Thank you for the wonderful post I was beginning to thing that the world of blogging was going to suffer from the all the nettuts/themeforest look alikes. this is taking the idea of blogging back a few years with remeniscence of css zen garden (web), and even further back with David Carson (print). Now that css technology is starting to catch up I think we as web designers need to step our game up. Experiment break a few rules, make a few mistakes, create happy accidents. This is not print we are not risking printing budgets… Do it… What’s the worst thing that could happen?
Well done, great article.
you’re ROCK
Very interesting and well executed post. What definitely calls more my attention is the controversy generated around it….for me it looks like a London 2012 syndrome :P … Anyway it seems to be the natural cause of this end of a decade and the evolution of information and how we present it, the search for individuality in a globalist era, etc.. … will work/like for some and not for others… thanks SM
well, this is quite a fresh change in blogging. In think it has given a shake in our way of blogging. Sometimes we don’t realise how boring we are getting until something like this shows up. In my point of view there are some points that can be applied, specifically the new look for each post. This could be done with a little balance…all in all, most of bloggers out there don’t know much about html and css stuff.
Very innovating . Congrats !
I would really like to see an article that explain how to do that with a Wordpress blog for example. How can you achieve to have every articles to look so different?
I don’t know about Wordpress, but this would be pretty simple with Textpattern. One would just override the standard article form on a per-article basis.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea to design for web in the print style. I have been wanting to do this with my own stuff, but I just never seem to have the time. I am a print designer turned web, meaning I always want to incorporate those elements, but never seem to be able to time-wise.
I am still just using some theme I found on Wordpress. My goal though, is to take the proper time and redesign my website so that is functioning properly. After that I hope to design in the blogazine style, but not to the point where it’s unreadable. This way I’ll be able to show my creativity in a stronger light and can improve my css skills as well.
Even if the idea is nice, by the time I reached to the bottom of the article I had a headache! It is too long, even if it is good content and design et al. Jumping from black to white background makes a horrible impact on peoples’ minds.
now this seems to b a trend setter/breaker :D .. quite an interesting article .. n the layout: iLikes ;)
I stumbled onto Dustin Curtis a few months ago and was impressed. The quality of the articles is what I like most, and I will actually go to his site from my rss feed to see it. Thanks for all the info, I’ll have to check out the other sites that are doing this.
@That Guy John
I am on the fence about that reading through various magazines as others half brought up they range in style perhaps some may have issues with the text changed color it must be a link…WTF not a link… Color is also used for emphasis but to a point I agree with you, certain guidelines for links and such should be consistent but bending the rules per project should be a given other wise you are no longer designing but replicating and I think this article raises that point.
Case studies IMO are never accurate unless you poll every single reader old or brand new and don’t forget about the 90% who won’t bother taking part regardless.
This is FANTASTIC :) :)
Thank you very much Smashing!!
This is a great concept. Well written, and thankyou for putting it out there. I think the example sites he talks about (Jason, Greg) are slightly better executed than this post. But this post illustrates the point well.
Clearly this is not practical for a daily blog, but surely we have enough average daily blogs to keep us happy between a few good ones who take this on board and give us something weekly.
Lets hope this sparks a new movement with our online creatives! Lets differentiate ourselves from the template masses. Make the most of your ability to be different.
Great article. I’m happy to see someone not spouting rubbish. The web is for whatever you want it to be about. If a blog reads like a magazine reason follows that it will have a similar style of following. Many of the objectors are undoubtedly SEM/SEO drones spitting out formula results and not considering real results which are making meaningful, trusted, and lasting relationships with your audience. Use whatever tools are at your disposal to achieve that and you are going to be successful at what you do. I’m tired of crap with no appeal. Brand association… c’mon! If you can’t remember the company whose site you are visiting by the time you’ve scrolled to the point you can’t see the header, you’ve already failed by being another useless and poorly planned presence on the web. Kudos Smashing magazine. You’ve earned my respect over the past year. Great content, great team of writers and contributors. You’re helping to make the web a better place.
Incredible article! I loved it! I want to start a blog (but for now, my liberties fail me so I might just keep on postponing until the right time comes knocking on my doorstep) and this article pretty much answers the question “how do you make your blog a cut above the rest?”
Innovation nowadays is pretty much the driving force behind every successful project. If you fail to become innovative, then your project might just as well fall into oblivion.
The emergence of this “blogazine” thing however concerns me. What if there would be a time when people would actually prefer digital over print content? Would that spell the doom of the billion-dollar print magazine industry?
Wonderful post!
I’ve read Smashing a long time now and have never commented before. I was sort of astounded to see the number of posts against it. Its not as many who like it but still, its rather surprising. It led me to finally post my support of an article.
I’ve worked in webdesign for a while now and its upsetting and frustrating when the client undervalues the intelligence of his users. It seems the common law of business is to assume everyone is an idiot and incapable of basic motor functions. I try my best to sneak in changes and try to push things in a new direction, but all too often they will ask me to make something more conservative. Its especially terrible in the corporate environment. I had to get out of there fast!
Nothing worse than getting about 4-5 links of the same layout and asking for a mimic with different colors. Why hire a designer at that point? Why BE a designer at that point? What are you designing?
Well this is long winded enough. I just wanted to say thanks for a wonderful and inspirational post. I loved it and am definitely going to use this as inspiration.
For everyone having issues incorporating this into wordpress.. its time to learn some coding. You have to make your designs FUNCTION. If you control the function, then you can control the form, and thats the key to breaking out of the box. Wordpress is fully capable of allowing this sort of thing.
Interesting read.
^^ Amen
Wow, I enjoyed this post thanks Paddy.
I definitely think that this method of blogging has merit – and although many disagree with it, they can at least incorporate some of the techniques above on a small level, because you can have a consistent template for your site and tweak your posts to vary a little bit from each other.
I am also in the process of deciding what design direction I want to take my blog and am definitely considering drawing inspiration from the article.
Nice work!
The idea is very entertaining, and the idea for this exact post is great :)
Oh, but why don’t we just post layouts’ pictures (better png, I guess) and let the code rest in peace? It certainly is a coding challenge every time and I think it’s only appropriate for well-branded bloggers-by-profession whose blogging takes about half of working time. I’d rather spend extra time for polishing the content, I even agree to design a new layout every time, but coding it just isn’t worth it.
Well maybe that’s my point of view since I’m a designer only, not a developer.
Impressive work, but I felt kind of strange about this idea … like a developer who has just comprehended the idea of rewriting his framework for every single page on the web site….
As much as I love the layout of this post, it dosen’t allow the reader to easily ’scan’ the post for information… it wins because it’s different, but fails on function. Designing like this is really just for the sake of design.
Never wanted so much to read on as with this article. Small chunks of information in an ever changing presentation – I think it’s the first time I really had a ‘wonderful user experience’. Exciting!
fantastic – thank you for sharing.
@Leon Poole
Scanning a post? thats what title headings & excerpts are for…if your not going to read the whole thing don’t bother…
Scanning makes sense in basic information sites, buy my shit sites things of that nature. Blogs are for reading not scanning so I disagree.
Scanning a post is like skipping chapters in a book.
On another note on layout why not set up a custom css “wrapper of sorts”
we have a template system for a reason and we don’t have to adhere to the
generic Wordpress way thats why we have templatepath? can’t think of the name right now…Just a thought.
Sometimes I prefer to keep my css Section out of includes when necessary to
do things of this sort granted for very large sites not practical but then again with some foresight very easy to do yet not conventional. Another option would be compress the living hell out of a extrastyles.css and gzip it.
Wow. That’s great. Thanks a lot!
Although the article mentions that anyone can install WordPress, I’d like to point out that the designers above aren’t all using WordPress (JSM uses Expression Engine) so whatever point you’re trying to make is irrelevant. Unless that point is not all of us are design and tech savvy to pull it off, which many of us already know.
The point is completely relevant… He’s not trying to tell you that you can or can’t do this with wordpress, expression engine, drupal or whatever… He’s trying to say that having a blog is now a thing of clicking a link in your cheapo hosting that will auto install everything for you in 5 minutes.
Basically, the point which you failed to comprehend is that now the field is not limited to people with the capacity and desire to either make or buy a design and code to get their site online. Now your mom, my aunt, and everyones’ chihuahua can have a blog in 10 minutes, which makes having one a lot less glamorous and the competition fierce, but filled with filler websites and content.
Inspiration comes in many forms. Thanks for this piece!
I think variety is good in posts, but lets not forget that people read blogs for the information. There’s a fine line between being too creative that it over powers the information. I disliked the layout of this post because it required me to constantly scroll to read a small block of text, then scroll again, than the background changed which left me wondering is this the end of that post and another post has all of a sudden appeared. The sites featured do what this article is about really well. This post however misses the mark when putting it into practise.
wow it’s an incredible power post example…very compliments and sorry for my bad english too…:D
This is great for people who browse from their mobile devices. Not.
Revolutionary!
Content comes first.
Yep, Content always comes first. This article was innovative and correct in many aspects, but probably appealing mostly to a small clique of designers perceiving themselves as edgy and progressive.
Smashing Magazine has, apart from this article, always had the same layout for all articles, and since Smashing Magazine is mindbogglingly fantabolous, why should that be a bad thing?
I don’t think it’s edgy and advanced at all. It’s a webdesign equivalent of a throwback to times of photoshop filters and faux japanese techno flyers.
Fascinating and inspiring. Thank you!
not to mention that smashingmagazine is earning enough from this blog that they can invest so much of time, but think about the days when you were just get started… i will assume this that BIG fishes are trying to eat up the small once… and i still see OLD time posts in SM these days too…
Personally, I found this a very interesting article, and I definately like the idea of giving an article the lay-out is deserves, but I understand both sides of the argument.
This is a style that, when executed properly, will draw you in to the content. It could do so to the point where an article could be complete nonsense, but I’d read it because of the lay-out. Call it exploring if you will. It’s definately refreshing, and it gave me ideas for my own site I’m working on. I have a personal background as a desktop-publisher, so I’ll always have a soft spot for print-style design.
However, this style of designing is very situational. While some print-techniques can be executed in most blogs (whitespace, large quotes, …) to make everything more interesting, using it to this extent is something you must be careful with, because at some point you have to make a decision: do you wanna be informative, or do you want to create some art? You can mix the two up a bit, but if you really want to tell something, people like Lee Theobald, who don’t see as good as others, won’t read your articles, or at the very least they won’t enjoy it as much as they could.
By all means, I’d love to see people use this style, but there’s a time and place for everything. I do hope people think before they start going all out on design.
My only tiny complaint about this article is the same thing Brad Czerniak said earlier: especially at the part starting at “The Microblogging Revolution”, some of the colored text looked like a link, and I tried clicking them a couple of time. This is something that should be avoided at all costs.
I do hope this was somewhat constructive, looking forward to more interesting articles.
Jonas
Amazing stuff!!!
SM you broke the rules and took this post to a new level.
It looks more like a pdf than a blog post!
That made my day :) Awesome !!!
Its important to do new things, and this is just wouw :))) i was stunned by the layout, i will read the content later :DD
I was before JSM to adopt this technique :))
But i must say, it takes so much effort that i have just switched from my custom engine to wordpress clear theme. Before that i tried to make full page posts from scratch since early 2008 at least!! :))
I go to smashingmagazine.com and read an article. Man, that was really great. I’d like to comment and ask the author a question. I scroll down…410 comments. Ugh. Screw this.
that’s fantastic!
I love the new perspective on that topic!
The article title is controversial – I assume it’s supposed to be.
Consistently good blogs earn RSS subscriptions; RSS readers transform meticuluous layouts such as this into a wall of text. (The reason I opened this URL is because I wanted to read the comments)
However, I think the magazine-style layout of this article is brilliant and I would like to see it used more frequently – for non-RSS content.
oh. my. god. this is the most beautifully inspiring blog posts i have seen. influential- makes me want to roll up my sleeves and work.
one issue- designers have the means to do this moreso than a content focused blogger. but i love the concept this is definitely best suited for designers or multi-author blogs.
I don’t know about you guys but I enjoy when rules are broken.
The content was readable and enjoyable to read so what is the fuss?
Do I think everyone should do it? No way, but it works for these blogs.
So in all, this was a very cool blog post.
HOLY COW!!! What a great post this is. Probably the coolest post on Smashingmagazine yet, and I’ve been following this blog for years now. :3
This is terrible. Dificult to read, no brand, no information architecture, i can’t read it !! 30 seconds and i left this blog. A blog post it’s made with a reading purpose… i have a big monitor with a big resolution… what about the legibility in a 800×600 monitor? or 1024? I understand that it’s funny, but it’s inconsistent… (sorry for my english..)
mind blowing!
I do not find myself too often feeling a need to comment on an article, yet this post caught me totally off guard. I honoustly think this is a very innovative, renewing way to present one’s thoughts, and I like to nominate this post for ‘post of the year’ — might there be such a thing on Smashing Magazine.
a great suprise when I clicked through and a great post. I’d love to see more of this on smashing magazine.
Interesting and very beautiful, but too time consuming I think. Not only must one write a good blogpost, one has to make different templates for each blogpost as well.
woww this post was amazing :) I would like to have time to customize my own posts too.
SM: You got it!
the page design looks good…
I would also nominate Danny Garcia in this category. Although he hasn’t been so productive yet, I really like his first steps of theming his blog.
http://danny-garcia.com/articles/
hummm… is someone understand the big problem which is unsolvable for this kind of website presentation?
i see all of comments tell that its good and nothing else… for me i think about the lambda user.
How a simply user of web react when he open the next page or other….
under the technical style which is simpatic i think that you loose all user and loose a lot of reader.
You can use this kind of style but for me its only for some event and not for all article and pages.
as you wish i made my opinion
wow, amazing article !!!
tl:dr
Couldn’t agree more, and have been struggling with how to tackle this point myself for a while…. because i am a writer… and although i have experience at designing as an art director… I am not a web designer, and have limited knowledge of using online programmes. I would like to learn more, so that i can do my writing justice through good design. I will certainly look up some of the reading materials suggested here, and check out the plug ins.
BUT question for everyone: Is it right that we all feel we must be both writers and designers now? Surely collaboration between us still gives the best looking and reading material?
Top article, great job, thanks for sharing. I’d never heard of blogazines before – and surprised this hasn’t become popular – it’d be a good thing if it did.
Great post and I agree with all the points raised. I do have one concern regarding the ‘blogazine’ style post — I find that it’s difficult to differeniate between blogs/sites as each post has its own theme. I have been on both Jason’s and Dustin’s site and have wanted to go back to a particular post and forgotten which blog it was on so maybe that’s something to take into consideration? Or maybe that’s just me…
ps….. any clues on HOW TO RATE this article?? i can’t see any stars to click etc. I’d click 5stars if I could see them! thanks.
Bloody love it, reading an article this way was a pleasure, thank you!
Wow! That really made me rethink my old designing concepts.
Thank you!
This article was difficult to read. Not because of the content, but because of the haphazard art direction.
My 2 cents…
This was one of the best posts I’ve read at Smashing Magazine and I believe it is perfect for some very specific scenarios… However, if we publish 7 posts a week, every single one with a different scheme it would completely break out the general site layout…
This is interesting for once in a time posts (like this one), but working in a daily basis it would be very tiring, for both publishers and readers!
Just compare magazines to newspapers… Magazines (weekly, monthly) have the freedom to make some changes and to create more “strange” articles. However, newspapers cannot do this, they must keep the same design and scheme every single day in order to gather a large reader base!
Keep up the good work and give us more posts like this! (but not all of them, please!)
What is a “blogazine”, a blog that got popular and turned into a magazine? Web developer style blogs are allowed to be minimal in design and quite similar in appearance as they are just sharing information are they not? Obviously design subject blogs need to be a bit more aesthetically pleasing though! I am a web developer based in Leicester, UK and my blog, I would say is minimal and not over designed because it does not need to be..I am a developer afterall, not a web designer!
Some interesting designers were featured, but in general this article is missing the point:
a) Magazines DO use the same layout every month to present content, with only a small section that is custom designed (usually a main feature). The same with newspapers. And they’re not boring most of the time. Its just not efficient to redesign the layout every single time you publish something (as most of your interviewees confirm).
That same rule applies for blogs and magazines online. Sure, the layout of this article is nice, because it breaks the mould of SM, but if this becomes the standard it’ll become tired and boring all the same. Remember, people primarily read blogs, magazines, and newspapers because of their content.
And lastly, you forgot the vast amount of people who subscribe to blogs and read everything through RSS readers, which strip out all design and just present you with content.
amazing… blow my mind..
One of the best post that i have seen in smashingmagazine..
Outstanding post. – Thank you for inspiration!
This is a good read. I was always wondering, how does one separate one’s blog from the crowd, and differentiating a blog from a website? With endless new themes being churned out day in and day out, blogazine- themed layouts are more and more common, but still for some blogs, I believe that the common, and simple theme works best.
Mmmh, never noticed that blogs have design, because I just read them through RSS… What is this post about?
Daryl Koopersmith’s great/very promising new’Elastic Theme Framework and WYSIWYG Child Theme Generator for WordPress’ (http://code.google.com/p/elastictheme/) may be just the tool for designers who want to pursue the magazine blog post layout. As demo-ed at the SF and NY WordCamps, Daryl’s theme allows for drag drop layout creation of new template pages, with CSS created on the fly for background colors, etc.
I’d link to a video of the demo, but I haven’t found one yet. It’s definitely worth a download to your dev server to play with…
Thanks dandam! You’ve really hit the nail on the head—one of the long term goals for Elastic is to make magazine layouts more accessible. We’re definitely a while from getting there, but someday!
For anyone that’s interested, you can find more info (including that demo) at http://elastictheme.org/
Good post , it’s very good work on the futur of the blog’s trend , it inspired me to create a blogzine about the media . Thx
I certainly hope this doesn’t become too big a trend. Even with CSS disabled, I had a tough time working through this post (never mind skimming it to see if it’s worth reading). It felt like the author was trying really hard to slow down my reading.
I say, nice for coffee table blogs, for wowing the CSS n00bs, or for the attention-impaired — but counterproductive for anyone who’s serious about readability.
I have to ask what is worth more…a *creative* layout or something worth saying? If you can do both then great, but I don’t think many have the potential and/or time to articulate both.
I think you should spend more time worrying about shipping our book instead of writing long long posts. Are you sitting down having fun and getting money on your Paypal account in Germany while our book is being stolen by pirates in Somalia or went fishing on Singapore? Totally dissapointing., wondering how you are making a lot of money with your site being that irresponsible and disastrous. First and last buy on Smashing Magazine – newbies – BEWARE!!!
I think you’ve just made a good point. Despite that I like the design of the article above I’m really frustrated about Smashing Book. It was supposed to be in my hands in September and now you say, Smashing Magazine, you will start sending it on 5th of Dec. Really annoying.
I’m just wondering what will be you excuse on 3rd of December. Terrorists? Bad gnomes?
Quite brilliant, thanks!
Un mot: Merci*
The 90s called. They want their misguided ideas about the internet back.
BTW, this isn’t “creativity”, quite the opposite. It’s the utter lack of it. It’s boring. It’s reactionary. It reeks of fear. It does for design what Rupert Murdoch does for newspapers.
Looks pretty though. Like a nice wallpaper.
This comment reeks of a lack of vision.
I’m currently designing a blog and this has helped loads, thanks!!!
I’ve been doing this on my websites for more than a year now, it’s important to point out that for those that don’t blog, this too can be applied to simple websites by changing the layout in every section, there’s that website with the whale (hmm I guess their name is not too memorable) that does that. It’s so much fun to do this, and very useful because it lets you adapt to the specific content of your section and add any cross selling elements/content and still look nice. Also you can have your home page look more like a magazine/book cover!
This technique proves that there is still plenty of room for innovation on the internet. It’s a matter of taking the time to think and the guts to execute.
Good points made by all. I was going to post my response here but instead it ended up as a blog:
My argument: Every situation is probably different in the design vs content battle.
http://themecouponcodes.com/design-vs-content-where-is-the-line/
It’s as if you used the same key, instruments, tempo and structure for every song you wrote. Just put some different lyrics in it and time-stamp it so you know the difference! Haha.
While this post was awesome (and beautiful), I did not enjoy reading. The multitude of content sporadically placed about (and superfluous amounts of spacing) made it very hard for me to skim this post, which is very important if you want to get people to read your posts in the first place. If I can’t find a few pieces of information I’m looking for by skimming, I’m not going to waste my time on the entire post.
This is cool for designers but for a general audience not really. For example, I found this article really interesting to read but when I got through the first example I just scrolled down to the comments because in a vertical scrolling website it is just way too fragmented. I want all the content right there and easy to read. This here flows and looks nice but readability is lacking in my opinion.
The audience you appeal to on the web is VASTLY different than the audience reading a magazine. On the web, people expect their content to be delivered to them quick and in small bite sized pieces. If it isn’t they won’t spend the time bothering with it just like I did with this article, skipped right through it because it was so long. There needs to be a point where you draw the line between design and general readability.
When reading a magazine, you have more freedom because you are looking at it in your hands, a physical object. You can clearly see the flow of the entire page and all the content laid out. You can also get away with smaller type thus giving more space to create effective design.
This is my problem with this. I would love to see more design elements incorporated into blog posts so they weren’t so cookie cutter but this here to me is overkill.
I really like the look of this and I think in some instances this particular practice could be really appealing but I wouldn’t recommend it as a common practice.
Great Stuff… for the first time i read the entire article….. amazing technique but to design a article like to would be time consuming.. I think
I would like to know how long this took from concept to publishing.
This is the best article I’ve ever read on your blog. And the design, along with the content, held my ADD attention.
I have to warning SM that on the front page this post has 0 comments
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. Does the “non-boring blog post” mean breaking functionality? :-)
I like this idea as much as every designer likes logo books, but please don’t apply it to SM. This concept works great for a personal site where the designer’s ego is more important than all of its visitors. Usability-wise it sucks. I do like the variation on print magazine, but imo, this concept doesn’t translate well on web. If I had the time I’d definitely try it on my personal site though. Thanks for the great article.
Good read Thanks.
I really love the idea of having a different design that does justice for your new blog post but I think we need to streamline it a bit more and designers like jason santa maria are already on the right track.
Web and print are two different mediums, you can change the magazines look and feel completely and ppl still easily be able to read it where as in print it gives your client a bit of frustration if not done correct.
A magazine is on piece of paper not more than a size of letter or A4, a blog post on the other hand is a page on screen in pixels scrolling from top to down and displayed on huge wide lcd or monitor.
If I remember correctly jason also talked about this in an article stating that we should embrace design patterns rather than trying to bridge print and web and I think this is the reason why his blog post designs are different and yet better than anyone else.
Correction: you can change the magazines look and feel completely and ppl still easily be able to read it where as in
printweb it gives your client a bit of frustration if not done correct.very, very inspiring … thank you
I think I get your point. But from a purely visual perspective, the example you’ve presented looks more like the work of an amateur turned loose with some design software rather than a display of inspiration.
Kind of reminds me of all the excesses of the 70’s. That was back when one of the big things for the ‘artsy’ crowd was to make a movie. The discussion usually ran something like this:
“Hey man! What say we get all our friends together and make this movie. It won’t have a script or anything. We’ll just shoot a bunch of scenes of each other goofin’ around and doing stuff. That way everybody can decide for themselves what it all means. We’ll call it an un-movie or something! It’ll be totally not like any other movie. Like saying ‘Power to the People’ and ‘Off The Man’ – except it’ll be on film. Maybe we can even make copies and get it into a festival…”
I loved this. It was not only informative, but also visually captivating. As a reader, I didn’t want to just quickly glance over it and find the highlights (as I do with most posts), but actually follow along as if it were a story unfolding. Excellent work!
Thanks for posting this article … I was starting to think that blog design could only be boring, standardized design really enjoyed your examples. Sadly I think that for all but a few, blogs will continue to be canned, uninspiring products (and that includes the writing as well as the visuals!).
I read this on my iPhone and found it completely readable and engaging. I don’t understand the hate or the feeling that this messes with readability or even branding. What’s in a blog post (text and images) is content. What’s outside that should be consistent across the blog, yes, but I think it’s a benefit if the visual style of the posts are unique.
Great topic, great post! I was so suprised when I clicked through from my feed reader and discovered that you actually implemented the blogazine format in this entry. Granted, the idea isn’t suited to all blogs (or even most blogs), but it’s refreshing to see a custom designed post from time to time. :)
You get the idea that everyone who attacked this post runs a boring blog!
Seriously in awe. I’ve tried blogging a couple of times, but never got into it for very long… I’m designer at heart but have to code by profession. I got bored with it. If/when I start another blog, I definitely will start trying this more. It might actually keep my interest.
I think this would be a great thing to start doing once/twice a month for those blogs who spit out articles once+ per day. It’d be a nice little easter egg to find an article in my feeds that’s been beautified a bit more. And, I might actually look forward to reading them more, too!
Thanks for taking the time to writ- I mean ‘design’ this article!
I found this post inspirational and informative. Thanks for the links to resources. Regarding the layout’s design and readability, I didn’t have trouble following the article and it kept my interest longer than most blog posts are capable of. Thinking of it like a graphic novel/comic strip… where you don’t know what’s coming next and just enjoying what’s happening at each point on the page… is where the grounding was for me.
// Thanks again
I think this post is the best I have ever read on smashingmagazine.com
Thanks a lot for sharing this priceless information.
Okay, this is my second comment on this post. Let’s talk facts and figures. Internet speed world wide differs from country to country as we know. This alignment and post design is very impressive, but
1. 300+ http requests
2. 3.44 MB – 29 background images, avatars, etc.
3. About 4 seconds to load with hi speed internet
4. 3414 DOM elements on the page
Well, this is very complex method for writing blog posts. Impressive but complex.
If you have 10 000 requests for the page in one second (I believe when you post it fresh and shiny you do).
So the mathematics speaks:
300 x 10 000 = 3 000 000+ http requests for a second
3.44 x 10 000 = 34 400 MB ~ 33.5 GB traffic
This approach for blogging will increase bandwidth costs. More expensive servers will be needed.
Nevertheless hugely impressive way for presenting information.
What an article. This is one of the best article I have read so far in this blog. Very innovative and interesting.
I love the idea, I really do. But the time that goes into to this, is way too much, if you post on a regular basis. I could see myself doing this for a couple of times a year perhaps for special posts maybe.
Seems like there is a subtle pull that is taking us full-circle.
Back in the mid-late 90’s we didn’t have blogging tools, so those of us who posted content had to know html and several coding tricks (spacer images to indent paragraphs, etc.). No one “blogged” daily and only those who had something to say published because of the energy it took to post a page. For the most part, whatever approach we took was venturing into new ground, and only later did certain approaches become best practices.
My approach was to publish a crafted article about once a month and then keep a journal that was updated at least once a week — sometimes more frequently. (”blog” had yet to be coined then, and no blogging tools existed.) Each article was styled with its own formatting — after all, that’s the example we had from magazines. And my journal was a vertical and narrow column of bordered text with photos attached along side the text it illustrated. The journal (”blog”) was rather standard in format and its content was either time-sensitive or quick thoughts that deserved airing (but nothing more). Only the more thought-out articles were indexed for visitors to browse by title/topic. (It took time to organize and code such an index, so only valuable content got that much attention.)
I still like that approach — distinguishing between articles and what we’ve come to expect as traditional blog postings. And the value of those dictates how I invest my limited time: article first, periodic updates through blogging next, and nothing left for microblogging.
An article that is one-of-a-kind and not one-of-many deserves a one-of-a-kind display.
really really nice. but i think smahing have to much posts to realize this.
Although I think this idea is brilliant, I actually think it’s a bit over the top. This article seemed “overdesigned” to me. If you look at a magazine, they interweave the graphics and interest in a seamless way. I found this article actually very difficult to read, and felt it didn’t have much flow.
I applaud the idea and innovation however, as I am also bored with the typical blog post.
I think this is perfect for unique, high-quality content. What conveys the quality of content better than taking the time to create a unique design with it as well?
Brilliant!
I really don’t know what to say, by far the best article I have read in 2009!!!
Thank a ton man.
I think this magazine style is quite a mess. Between the seemingly random sized text and weird positioning, I found it hard for my eye to follow the text.
Depends on what you mean by blog (e.g. is it Wordpress et al) or does it includes all CMSs?
Or everything in between.
I think these will appeal to ‘web designer’ types and people who think black is retro/cool or a statement.
It’s not.
Black is the ultimate me-to color!
I appreciate clean user interfaces, e.g. http://www.chrisbrogan.com.
Simply and easy to use.
Most of these are anything but.
Ivan,
Beijing, China
http://www.ivanwalsh.com
Ivan Walsh, Web Writer
Gotta say, this was one hard blog post to read ha!
I think it’s a great idea, though, if you look at this post you can see that – probably – a lot of people have a hard time finding the thin line between chaos and just a really nice and readable post/blog. If you can only create a chaotic blogazine than just stay with the old-fashioned way of blogging.
Really great post and i’ll see how this works out for me.
PS. This comment is referring to the nice attempt but kind off chaotic attempt above..
oh god, thats “great” post style… :)
i have the one : http://bit.ly/8Pcwc7
i change the list post style with other style css, just really simple example.
remember, just change the style of important point. do not change all layout (include background image, etc) that can use huge bandwidth.
wah sepurane rek nek boso inggrisku elek.
While I hate the term “blogazine,” I am thoroughly inspired by the article. Thanks, SM team!
Interesting read. I might considering getting a “Blogazine” myself. Thanks for this beautiful article!
What’s funny is that as I read this for the second time, the CSS is completely broken. 14:09 GMT + 1, Monday 23/11/2009.
While I think this is a worthy pursuit for a designer with his own website/blog (as the examples given would suggest), the message seems a little more world-conquering than what is realistic.
Like others in this thread, I agree there’s a wide gap between zillions of boring WP blogs and the show pieces of top designers. But telling the world to build show pieces is silly. A more realistic target is the middle ground, and there’s still lots and lots of opportunity there.
What’s middle ground? A site that focuses on content first but is enhanced by design for a true pleasant reading experience (not a shake up like this article). What’s a good example? A List Apart magazine continues to be the epitome of fine web publishing and design. That should be a lot more attainable by a lot more people, and pleasing a lot more site visitors in return. And what do you know, Santa Maria is behind that design too.
I think someone lost the CSS for this post, it came up nice with a black background before, now the layout is totally messed up.
Great & interesting post with lots of unique ideas. I think the main reason a lot of designers/developers have a blog is to increase there SEO and bring more folks in to look at their work. A lot of the reasons for leaving the magazine blog style up to the magazines is simply because those types of posts, amazing and all, take a lot more time to create. Trying to design for a blog, write content, network, market, and design for your actual clients can be quite a lot to juggle. I think this phenomenon/trend will really weed out a lot of bloggers who are simply just regurgitating posts and information just to get folks to look at their work and not actually blog because they do in fact have something of value to share. The bar is raising, once again.
This is possibly my favorite Smashing magazine article ever, I have read Dustin Curtis’ blog and was amazed at the diversity of each post layout, unfortunately my downfall is finding the time to work on new and exiting blog layouts whilst trying to work on new and exiting designs for clients… Must .. try …harder!!!!
First, I like the idea. The three sites you showcase are great, and very inspiring. That said…
This post read a lot better once the CSS loaded, but the major problems are that it’s (a) unnecessarily condescending, (b)unimpressive writing (which is what people read blogs for, right?), and (c)not at all usable.
c) I didn’t read all 500 comments, but I did read enough to see someone ridicule the idea that usability is important…”who uses an article?” But this is a website, and when there are multiple 150-200px gaps between blocks of text, it’s a ridiculous chore to read, and stops being cohesive. Magazines don’t do that. Neither do good “blogazines” (BT-dub: is there any chance we could rename this before it catches on with “the masses”?).
b) “We [members of the web design profession] have some of the most creative and inspiring designers in our profession…” This sentence basically says the same as, “The United States has some of the highest mountains in the country!” There are more like this. Not good.
Also, there is a good reason this <smirk class=”sarcasm”>trend</smirk> hasn’t “caught on with the masses”: its hard, time consuming, and requires a high level of skill, experience and taste. The masses don’t have what it takes. And that’s okay, because they can serve their content (what’s actually important) in visually appealing ways, and keep it interesting with basic text design principles (like headings).
I agree with a lot of the principles you mention, but your comparisons to print design are illogical and not really helpful. No, most magazines don’t use the same layout for every article, because that would be ridiculous! But a blog isn’t like a magazine…you don’t usually sit and click through 50+ pages on the same blog over a few hours, or even a couple of days. You probably take 3-6 minutes, not even daily.
Second, magazines do use the same templates for sections of each issue. Think of Newsweek: the single page commentary articles are all in the same layout, several on consecutive pages, every month. The same is true for the international stories and letters.
a) If by “exact same layout” you mean that they have a single column of text with a sidebar or two, then sure, you’re right. And designers have been working hard for years to get there. It’s a good thing.
Three things really matter on a blog: that the content is good, that you can read it, and that you can find what you’re looking for. Most people don’t know their heads from a shower curtain when it comes to UX and readability, and they shouldn’t have to worry about it. They have to worry about the content, which is hard enough. They don’t need people chastising them for using what works – which is also, coincidentally, what we told them to use.
And what’s wrong with a blog post about kittens?
pos51.org
Totally agree with the points that Charles makes.
That said, I do think there’s a place in the world for sites like Dustin Curtis’s. It think it would be useful to distinguish between blogs and blogazines (and personally, I’m not bothered by the term “blogazine”).
Blogs are not magazines. Blogs are composed of regular entries usually ordered in reverse-chronological order. The content expands over time, the content is not delivered all at once, the content is often interrelated, and the content itself tends to be different from magazines. Magazines in contrast are delivered sequentially, the content is delivered all at once, and the content itself if very often dramatically different from blogs.
Blogazines, in my opinion, are situations in which each blogazine post is intended to act as its own magazine. The content itself is different from blog posts in that they are intended to be consumed completely differently (as a self-contained unit). This is why Dustin Curtis’s site is so successful: each article is almost entirely independent of each other and is intended to be consumed as its own magazine, in essence. The blogazine post becomes an integrated experience in which the design and text together form the entirety of the content, which is greater than the information contained in the text alone.
Contrast this with blog posts, in which the design is intended to facilitate the easy creation, distribution, consumption, and discussion of the information contained in the text.
Personally, I think that’s one of the reasons that the design of this actual blog entry fails where sites like Curtis’s succeed. This is actually a blog post, and trying to shoehorn it into a blogazine post format obscures the relevant information instead of enhancing it.
As Paddy says, blogazines are not for everybody. I would go a step further and say that MOST blog content is not appropriate for the blogazine format. Blogazines are even more challenging due to the high quality of design capabilities needed to deliver quality blogazines (again, even Smashing Magazine had a hard time pulling off design for a blogazine format).
Personally, I look forward to seeing more excellent blogazines out there, but I’m terrified of legions of bloggers attempting to wear the hat of blogazine editor. So don’t go crazy, people: Most blogs shouldn’t be blogazines, and there’s nothing wrong with running an excellent blog!
I you lost me after the first few paragraphs as the content was aligned off my phone screen.
Intriguing topic nevertheless, need to give it a moment to brew in. :)
I find it rather ironic that I read this post using a style-less RSS reader and saw the design only when I came in to share it
Impressive post, thank’s for it !
amazing! so much closer to print design than normal blog posts. Love the way it’s getting out of what we’re all used to. And that could a reason why so much people dont agree with this post.
Don’t forget the vast majority of bloggers are writers not designers.
I’d hate to think that some people would stop writing just because they can’t afford unique art direction for everything they write.
I don’t particulary think the statement is right.
It totally depends. I think the blog post is not yet dead. As why books aren’t. It’s depending on the audience and subject. You can have a blog on quick facts where visuals matter less, the readers may not be caring. But on another blog can be the a primary goal to communicate through visuals.
Sometimes you want things clean. I do agree that many/every blogs shouldn’t look the same. But there’s more then just the looks.
As I stated, it’s depending on the audience and the subject.
Fantastic post, like the idea of making the page feel more like print. Brought the content to life, love it!
Content is king. Always will be. There are some great ideas bounced around in this blog, and the general points made are valid, but the visual design of it is really not something to emulate. I’m more concerned with being a better writer.
I’m sold. I haven’t read an article like this in a long time. Normally I just skim, but this I read.
All in favour of this, but why is it being presented as though it’s some new kind of thing? Go back and look at some old Fray issues from the mid 90’s onward… http://bit.ly/5jYDjT …isn’t this pretty much what the article describes but from well over 10 years ago? Isn’t this the way we used to do things before the term ‘blog’ cropped up…? Or did I miss something?
T.
Brings me back to the David Carson (raygun magazine) debate in the 90’s about readability vs communication.
Communication can happen on many levels, not only through the written word.
Maybe people who have a hard time here aren’t visually literate enough, maybe they’ll never see that visual design and layout can also communicate on different levels. Maybe the content is beyond them.
Main thing to remember is appropriateness… and that some people can only think literally.
Bring it on…. template design is for data.
Great post but ‘death’ would be exaggerated. I’ve seen A LOT of blogs using the generic-boring template and are much ‘alive’ and ‘kicking.’ This one falls into the ‘you-can-never-please-everyone’ category which is always true to every blog that every blog has it’s own audience. Not everyone will like it.
I personally like it and would like to try it in the near future but probably not over-emphasizing on design. I believe a stand-out blog would require a great deal of balance of template design, typography and content. Having a stand-out template would glue in readers for more of the art side. A good content would keep them coming back for more epiphanies.
It looks great but a magazine has pages.
Would the paradigm of a magazine be far easier to implement if you had a style sheet for each page?
Or in Flash with animated turn-pages.
Inline styles are horrible to work with when automating stuff with scripting.
Okay so!
On the one hand, I found this article hard to read. It’s nicely designed, the content is kind of appealing, but it zig-zags a ton and that’s just poor reading. Magazines kind of DO use a similar format for articles – columns. When they want to make a statement, they throw in a block quote. Other than that, I haven’t read a magazine with this much “chaos” before…
On the other hand, I think this is a wicked awesome idea for Maybe. 0.001% of the articles you post on your website. It’s kind of like reading a sales page. After a bit I just scrolled to the bottom for the comments…
I think that this really only works with a specific formula:
1) You’re a designer (or have the money to hire a good one)
2) You have a LOT to say (not gunna work for a 500-word article too well…)
3) You don’t post a lot (60 articles with different styles? Ooooh….)
4) Your content isn’t formulaic (a “how-to” or a review or a list)
5) You don’t have a harsh posting schedule (once/twice a month)
So I found the concept cool, and I’d probably give it a shot just for kicks, but…not every post. Also, this isn’t for the “average joe” who can write really, really well but doesn’t design at all.
And I hate the word “blogazine.” No offense.
Amazing vision, article content and appropriate layout ;-)
Thanks for sharing… we appreciate it so much.
I think this needs serious thinking…..but dont think it will suit all…!!!
http://cyberscrawler.blogspot.com/2009/11/death-of-boring-blog-post-not-really.html
Few of my thoughts are here..Please read
That’s very impressive. This kind of post involves webdesign skills, which is not what everyone can revendicate.
Spot on. I look forward to designing and building my own, as you call it, “Blogazine” for my site reworks. Thanks for the further inspiration and for having the balls to write about this and critique the standard practice.
I think this is just not a good idea. The “boring posts” are like that for some reasons. First of all, consistency. This post is just a mess. My eyes just can’t stop over the text, is simply not-legible. I prefer clean, plain texts, easy to read. This is beautiful, but a blog is something where stetic follow function, and I don’t think this does it very well.
Well done! This design in particular probably looks great on a big monitor.
Unfortunately, because the font is relatively small and the copy is not in a continuous line down the page, it’s necessary to zoom in and then go scroll-hunting to find the next paragraph. That means it sucks to read on an iPhone.
Blogazines, unlike magazines, need to consider that their readers will be viewing content through different devices. If they want their message to get across, multiple designs are probably mandatory.
This is awesome and totally inspiring for me as a web designer on my own projects. But this is also one of my biggest annoyances in the industry. I just read an article 4 weeks ago about the greatness of WordPress and creating consistent themes for clients to have a quality presentation with an easy CMS interface. Now we are suggesting making a switch and building everything from the ground up, post after post. Like everything else, this new found phenomena is a trend, like everything else it has a distinct niche and won’t be a generality in the blogosphere. I love the concept, I also deal with real world customers and real world budgets.
I agree that while this is a visually exciting blog post, it seems to be designed to be difficult to scan through and therefore frustrates me. Now that blogs exist with standard layouts I get frustrated with the ever changing layouts of magazines. However, the more successful magazines get it correct and keep the same few layouts throughout so it’s easy to find what you want to read and skip the stuff you don’t.
I think doing different for difference’s sake can also seem overdone. This article got many things right, but I had a very vague feeling of “you’re trying a bit too hard.”
That said, I really enjoyed it, respected the various visual transitions (a mini showcase of how a magazine approach could work; just a bit too much of it!), and ultimately I found the article very inspiring. Made me want to start taking a magazine-ish approach as well.
I love this post – but what I’d like to see next is a practical implementation.
HOW to do this in WordPress? Custom templates set for certain posts? Different stylesheets?
How would I do this practically?
I worked as a newspaper designer and used to love nothing more than taking time and really going to town on a page.
As for the web, to do the same all I need is a few weeks for someone to teach me how to code and design to that level, and then several more hours of spare time to design each blog post.
The reason people use the same blog layout is that:
a) most people blog in their spare time and so have to create posts quickly, in between other things.
b) most people are not trained designers, with an arsenal of tools at their disposal.
It is a matter of ease of use and practicality. Get into the real world.
Love this post.
Thank you very much.
This is my first comment at smashing, even tho ive been reading for over a year.
This was a really great article, lots of inspiration.
Once again, thanks, keep it up
I don’t comment here anymore, nor read the comments anymore, nor really read smashing magazine very much (anymore), because you won’t let commentators have links.
So I can’t visit anyone else’s website.
And that sucks.
I think this is a case were both are right because circumstances dictate the layout. I’m using a stock WordPress template I tweaked because I like the speed the system offers me.
Most of the time it is ideal for the sporadic posts I put up as it allows me to get something up as soon as possible. Having said that, every now and then I do feel like doing an “article” rather than just a quick post and I certainly will consider a bespoke page (contained within my Word Press as a special template, thus preserving the content management.
I’ve been looking at a more magazine contents page layout for my homepage, but I really can’t be bothered!
Just to share a link, on Interview magazine, an example of a layout-intrusive “post customization”. That works… http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/winona-ryder/
Twitpic image archive is here : http://twitpic.com/ssvcz
Design is a good thing. Design can sell (this case), design can disturb, design can enhance a meaning. Not only to designers. People are moved by what they see/read/listen. Not only by the meaning, but by its form along with the meaning and function.
Separating the two is a nice thing for some purposes. Engineers purposes. Bolds and italics and square images inside griddy textual content (not even boring grids but just overseen ones) are not always sufficient.
Of course, we’ve got newspapers, and books which form did’nt change much from XVIth century. But we also have comics, albums, magazine which form did change. Happily. Both for readers and designers. Sorry for that bad English and for adding one more comment on this post. 548 + 1, and counting. The debate is old and won’t end today.
thanks,
great article , very great,
best regards,
martin (from latam)
46% said they would consider a blogazine post. I’m guessing that they considered it and didn’t go through with it. I think the idea is great; but I can predict a future post titled “The Death of the Blogazine” because people will use generic designs which don’t complement the content, which in my opinion is the whole point here. Instead of redesigning the blog post, we’ll be realigning them and only a few dozen will stand out.
Also, I think there are a lot of people behind design-related blogs who are in fact not related to design at all, they just consider it “cool” to have a design blog. I do hope that if (not when) the blogazine catches on to the general public, those people will be discouraged to start blogs because of the coolness-factor alone.
Wow. . .
While magazine layouts are a great metaphor for starting a conversation about what a blog should look like, that’s simply all they are. Magazine style layouts like this where designed for magazines not screens Designers of blogs need to have a firmly established hierarchy which they follow. I would make the argument that readability and ease of navigation actually are more important then content, b/c these are the the things that make content approachable. And, this is the reason why I could only read have the post before getting visually frustrated scrolling down to the comment section – which ironically is much more enjoyable to read. Both in terms of layout and content. Keep trying : )
Why can’t Jane& Joe Anybody have SCORM, wysisyg websites, so non pros can contribute more toward arriving at synergy. Thus, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its’ parts. As for this article, it changed every little while becaouse it was a compilation of an assortment, not intended to be a unified whole. Stay AGILE!
A website is NOT a magazine. We’ve considered the internet to be a brochure, an interactive experience and video would take over the internet as well. The internet is a kind of its own. Now let’s not make the mistake to think the internet is a magazine.
The way I read (or rather scan) and use the internet is defining the medium. Structure is part of the web. I sure would hate to see a lot of website like they’re a magazine. It’s the task of a blog to provide the informations fast, quick and in an easy way. Nice looking pages are fun for designers like us (and yes I like Jason’s website) but that’s it.
The only boring thing about this post was wading through all the left brained coder comments about not being able to read it. Obviously the post was over done to make the point. I found it to be a compelling read, all the way to the end.
Right brainers rule!
Weird, I always thought designers are closer to architects and engineers than painters and elderly ladies in ceramics classes “expressing themselves.” I guess I didn’t pay attention in my MDes class.
I read the whole article on my iPhone, which made it very difficult to read, having to scroll and pinch all over the place. The thing that fascinates me is that I did read the whole article! Something clearly captivated me.
This is interesting, but my money’s on this approach ultimately doomed to a tiny niche of design geeks. It seems ignorant of pretty much all of the research on web usability, as well as the open-systems nature of the web. It also appears to lack any sense of the history of the web.
I think the first time I heard the “boring ol’ web design should look more like print” rant was in 1997 or so. In 2000, Jakob Nielsen declared the “End of Web Design”, by which he meant the end of design-for-its-own-sake wankery. There’s are reasons the web looks like it does, and those who don’t understand them aren’t likely to make any real change.
Blah. Redundant.
RSS/rssCloud/twitter = the solution to my problems because of such drivel.
This is amazing and inspiring. Thanks!
You’ve given me lots to think about…
This is by far the most interesting and thought provoking blog post I’ve read in ages. Thank you for this, and for making me take a hard look at how I design layouts for web pages.
Absolutely inspiring. I just got out all of my paper notebooks to look for ideas/starting-points. I will definitely at the very least be trying this idea out soon. :)
I know my comment is just a drop in the pond here, but as a technology person who learns a LOT from blogs, I have to say that I think about the format of the blog as little as possible. The only thing that really effects me is when someone has a liquid layout and I have to scan two feet of text horizontally per line.
Other than that, for me, content is king. The stuff I read is technical – it’s not trying to win me over or argue a position; it just presents facts. Sure, I like a nice graphic here and there, but basically, I just read the content, process it, see how I can use it, and move on.
That’s not to dismiss beautiful design; certainly, without a doubt, there is benefit there. But, from a practical standpoint, I don’t think it maters.
thanks for this post – youve introduced me to something I love – definitely a fan of blogazines :)
keep inspiring! Personally though smashingmag stay as you are. This was a nice change/surprise but not something wanted regularly xo
Excellent post. Funny how the best posts fire up the most comments, right?
Its all in considering your target audience. Readers of the WSJ wouldnt want this. Readers of a design or art blog would.
I loved it. Wish I had more time to do these types of posts.
I thank you very much, webmaster, for this great blog. I really appreciate your posts.
I thought this article was amazing and so were the links to other graphic designers and their blogs. Very cool. It’s unfortunate how some people are SO 1995 still and keep their minds in a freakin BOX. It’s 2010 people!?! Go buy a calendar.
this is rare
Totally agree. The web could be so much more interesting and engaging this way!
Inspirational. Gonna start the new design for my blog.
Thanks very much! This article has been very inspiring for our “longest coming soon website” of the world “experiment” ;-)
Good article! I am all for customizing the layout for an article and you certainly put a lot of work in that article and layout design. I would humbly add that the article is also easily the most difficult-to-read article I have read for some time: there is a fine line between a nice layout design that adds to the enjoyment of reading an article — and feeling like I am being yelled at (loud colors and gargantuan headlines) and tossed here and there (by arrows that snake around the page). Though I am in total agreement with you for customizing a layout for an article, I believe you just showed us how not to do it.
Interesting and thought provoking. I like the visual designs in this post, they really are amazing. Thanks for a new perspective on blogging.
I have one question, clearly an eye-catching blog article is memorable and engaging to read, and very good as part of an authority building strategy for an individual, – but will it ultimately bring in more sales/profts for those operating in the B2B commercial world?
Quantifying “It’s worth it” would be useful :) worth it for the “soul” or worth it for the “wallet”?
This post was definitely eye opening – For all the talk we have about creative thinking or thinking by design we don’t really act upon it. I’d love to start implementing some of the ideas read here – However, I have no idea where to start…
This isn’t particularly new thinking, rather it’s a notion that was outmoded by the advent of blogs.
I’m not a web designer, far from it, but my first old school sites back in the Microsoft Publisher days were essentially newsletters. In fact, the entire ‘ugly web’ used sensibilities garnered from the ‘real world’.
Then blogs showed up with their sans serif, multi-columned swagger and soon became the only kind of website worth visiting for many. Rules were established that made fresh content easily accessible, and eventually these rules became gospel. No surprise things are cycling back now.
A ‘weblog’ is like a moleskine journal – the pages are all the same, but what fills them gives them meaning. It’s a space for getting your thoughts down, however you like, preferably frequently. As such, a template backdrop is more than adequate.
The ‘blogazine’ is an entirely different beast. Arguably, SM and other ‘interest’ blogs fall under this category. Online magazines have also existed for a while, again employing layout similar to print.
What an interesting article. Thank you for sharing. A few months ago my wordpress blog became corrupted and despite numerous attempts or my lack of technical knowledge – it died. Cannot say I was not all that upset. Despite looking at hundreds of themes, none of them really appealed to me and they really all began to look alike. I did make some modifications to it that gave it a bit more visual appeal – but still kinda blah – maybe it’s me? So I have been toying around with the idea of learning how to design my own themes – but this opens up a whole new avenue. Not sure where to start but at least it gets the creative juices going and that is always a good thing :)
There influence really paid off, I just started my blogazine! So glad :) I did take the poll that I would most likely do it :) it’s http://www.pulchry.com/pulchryzine Its called pulchryzine. Talk abou CSS, you’ll really get into it, as EA Sports always says :). It sure isn’t for frequent blogging.
Aman L. Anderson
Nice :) I’m creating my own, too!
WHAT A GREAT STUFF IN HERE
This sucks and I’ll tell you why:
First of, you navigate a browser window differently than a magazine spread. It’s like you are looking at a sheet of paper through a looking glass. For the sake of easing the reading flow, it makes sense to keep the copy in a more or less tight column that can be conveniently scrolled up and down. You force the reader’s eyes to jump not only from line to line, but from left, to right, then – where? Oh ok, down and left again. I don’t need to explain why this is – well, shitty.
One of the advantages of designing for screens is that you have an infinite amount of vertical space. You do not need to jump from one column to the next. Imposing limitations of print (mind you, design for print makes beautiful use of these limitations) on web design is a fucking moronic idea, excuse me, I am not going to mince words.
Secondly, using too many different text sizes and typefaces is neither a smart nor elegant use of type, even in print design you would not get away with it (my old typography professor would have killed me if I came up with something like that after my first year, when we learned the basics). It makes reading a chore. You want to communicate information via text? Make the text readable, or you failed.
I can see why hobbyists are into it. Fair enough, enjoy. But as a design professional I have to say that I have yet to see an example that actually offered a pleasant reading experience.
Don’t drink the Kool Aid, kids. It’s bad, bad practice.
Oh blah. That’s what you’re advocating.
Great read! inspired by this article I built my very own blogazine, thanks SM!
http://uekermann.com
In case you have any comments or suggestions, hit my thread in the SM Forum
http://forum.smashingmagazine.com/look-at-my-design-f48/new-blogazine-inspired-by-sm-article-t4991.html
Thanks for this food for thought! Being bored myself with the default repetitiveness of blog posts and having noticed some of the above mentioned creative sites, it hits THE spot for me.
How do you expect to convince people that the blog post is dead with a site that looks like road kill. This page is ugly, confusing, and hard to read.
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