A quick redesign
I know that quite a few people get updates from my blog via email and RSS, so for their benefit (and because I always do this when I apply a new theme) I thought I’d share a quick update.
Yesterday, I followed a link from Hacker News to brutalistwebsites.com. I played about with the idea of applying a similar kind of theme to my blog but, in the end, found the (free) Casper theme by Lacy Morrow. It’s based on the default theme found on the Ghost publishing platform, and I think it’s great.
Every theme has its own affordances and constraints. With this one I had to reduce the number of items in my main menu, and add some links to social profiles. I started by adding all of the places I pay attention to online but, after stepping back and taking a second look, stripped back the icons to just Twitter, email, LinkedIn, and RSS.
I’ve had mixed feedback so far. More creative types have said it “destroys their soul” (harsh!) whereas others have praised how clean it looks. I’d love your feedback!
This is a good time to remind you that I’ve got a now-similar-looking blog for alternative thoughts and reactions at discours.es. It’s got an RSS feed. 🙂
Clearly I am not a creative type, because I love it. As someone who struggles to process large amounts of visual information, I HATE (and I can’t express how strongly I do mean HATE) the current trend for huge images and tiny text, which really doesn’t scale very well. I find it incredibly stressful and difficult to navigate, and more often than not end up just not reading their blog, particularly if there’s no RSS feed. This layout is perfect for me. Thank you!
Excellent! Thanks for the feedback, Gemma 🙂