Blog Talk: Blog critiques

The fun part about having a blog is that it is like having your own house -- without the bills (for the most part). You can design it. Say what you want. Invite you you want. Party when you want. And kick the disgruntled drunk out when they've had one too many. Everyone has their own taste when it comes to design. I know that not everyone likes my blog design, but their reasons haven't persuaded me to change it yet (e.g., it looks weird on their one rare browser or my column ratios aren't their preferred).

Book bloggers like to contact each other for opinions about their design and layout. It works out because 1. we know how to constructively critique  2. we visit a lot of blogs and know what we like and don't like pretty quickly. I'd say that 90% of our critique comments line up with each other. The difference is in personal preferences -- usually the little stuff that doesn't matter so much when it comes to aesthetics and layout.

In no particular order, here are the issues that I (we) find most often:

• Poor color combinations - Dark font on light background, or light font on dark background work best. As long as the contrast is great enough, the scheme doesn't matter too much. But studies show that eyes focus better when dark writing is used on a light background.
• Small font
• Cursive or unaligned fonts -       Handwriting      or    Unaligned fonts can look jumbled in paragraph form. 
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• Too many animations - These slow sites down, are not mobile friendly, and are annoying. This includes constant pop ups, too many auto scrolls, bouncing words, etc.
• Cluttered
• Not mobile friendly
• Too narrow of a main reader column - This is the column that your posts appear in (not the sidebars). Some of this comes down to personal preference and blog type. If you have your blog laid out like a newspaper, narrow reading columns contributes to the aesthetic affect. If you have a "normal" blog layout you want the main column to be the biggest. A 200 px width main column and two 400 px width side columns takes the focus away from your informative post and puts it on the extras. Personally, I find it annoying when I can only read five words at a time before I have to drop down to the next line -- especially when there's plenty of room on the page. It increases the time to get through the post.
• Poor general maintenance - Old follow links or blog rolls, ended giveaways in sidebars, defunct gadgets. Some notice these issues quicker than others. Blogs should always keep these up-to-date (because what's the point if you don't?) but blogs that are trying to attract new people to work with (publishers, review organizations, authors, etc.) should especially keep up on these. People don't want to work with a site that looks abandoned regardless of the date of posts.
• Spelling errors - Errors happen. If they're to the point of distraction then there are too many.

The things that are often commented on regarding preference differences include:

• Column width - Repeat. I have this again because some people are really specific about their preferences. Many professional reference sites say that 600 px with is the best. Others say 800 px. Again, it depends on what you're going for. The majority of the blogs that I read are around the 600 px. I'd say the rule of thumb is to limit the scrolling as much as possible; going too narrow or too wide causes readers to scroll back and forth to get a whole story. I think too wide is more annoying than too narrow.
• Too large of a header - Some headers take up a whole page's worth of scrolling before you reach the menu bar or pertinent information. I don't think this is too big of a deal, but it has been mentioned by others.
• Paragraph justification - I would put this one in my "big issues" section but this one varies quite a bit with preference too. Most would agree that an entire post written with center justification is a no. Opinion varies between left and full justification, line spacing, and break lines. These are more nit picky things that bothers some people. Personally, I don't care. As long as I can read it without distraction then it's okay.
• Disorganization within posts - This one is really subjective because we all have our reasons for developing a post a certain way. Sometimes I like alternating locations of pictures when there's a lot of text -- and people don't like it. Sometimes I like having all pictures justified center in line breaks -- and people don't like it. Sometimes I title subheadings in long posts, other times I don't -- and people don't like it. This lack of consistency might be considered disorganization by some. I don't think these are huge issues. I'm not a professional news site so I'm not too worried about how my design feelings for the day come across in my formatting tactics.

What issues do you find with blog designs and layouts? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and I'm open to suggestions on mine as well!