Blogzine layouts

The Death Of The Blog Post showcases attempts by designers-turned-bloggers to enliven their site by providing each post with a heavily customised design instead of forcing all their content into a one-style-fits-all template. The article itself is immensely difficult to read, but that’s mostly because it ended up being far too busy and cluttered; some of the screenshots of posts from the various bloggers interviewed look marvellous, much like the magazine articles they’re so clearly aping. I can see that the use of a custom design for each post could enhance a site’s readability and impact, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing to update the template round here.

First, because the blogzine approach to design is unsuited to a (more-or-less) daily linklog.¹

Second, because I lack the patience (not to mention the skills and eye for design) to put together a couple of dozen different layouts.

Third, because if ever I did put all that effort in to designing individual posts, creating custom graphics, establishing precisely the right typographic stylings to get my message across and what have you, I’d cry every time I saw in my logs that someone had accessed one of my site’s feeds and got all my content with none of the styling.

Having gone to such lengths to create a stylish site, I might just be tempted to stop offering full-content feeds, just to force visitors to come and see the site as I meant it to be seen, dammit!

[Via Michael Sippey]

1. In fairness, the post’s author and the various design-minded bloggers linked to all agree on this point. ^