Tumblr is no longer just the home of reblogged pictures, quotes, music, videos, and journal entries of friends you follow; it’s also gaining favor with the more discerning content creators in the design and technology circles, turning it into a truly professional publishing platform. This phenomenon is thanks to its relatively easy customization while keeping its interface decidedly simple.
My question is, if Tumblr’s audience is becoming more mature, should it shift from its dead-simple appeal and grow up too? David Yeiser prefers its current approach:
What’s neat about Tumblr is it’s not only a great publishing platform but a great tool for content consumption. [...] as self-publishing has changed to shorter forms and varied media the traditional feed reader has become obsolete. I shouldn’t have to click a title of a post to read a quote. [...] I think the way Tumblr aggregates and displays blog posts is the future of feed readers. Though I’m not aware of any standalone readers that take this approach.
Personally, I disagree. I follow a lot of people (and non-people) on Tumblr, producing remarkably varied content genres (e.g. XKCD Explained, 53 Weeks of UX, Sweet Home Style) with no way of filtering which ones I’d like to view at a time. Infinite scrolling in the dashboard can only take you so far in browsing ease.
Unwieldy content consumption is a familiar problem experienced on Twitter and Facebook, and by people who want more options, more control. Except there are now methods of dealing them on those sites. It’s even a big business for third party companies. On Tumblr, that remains to be seen.
Dashboard filtering options would be a welcome addition to the site. The reason is that “following” is a one-size-fits-all option when the truth is we need many.
And there lies the rub with a hosted platform, as well as platform that caters to simplicity first and foremost. Notice that as the concept of feed reading, trackbacking, and commenting are abstracted, if not replaced with Tumblr’s own conventions of dashboard reading, reblogging, liking, answering, one is forced to adhere to a closed set of standards inside its community. For a community that’s got such a wealth of content, consuming and sharing and communicating through that content but with limiting, non-standard methods is a turn off. If I link to a Tumblr post from a non-Tumblr site, will the owner of that tumblelog even know that I did?
Again, all of this wouldn’t be so bad if there were more options available, even as premium features. Right now, there aren’t.
What should Tumblr do? Should it go the WordPress.org and Identi.ca route and provide an open, self-hosted platform? Should it take some notes from the old-but-still-strong LiveJournal? (In some ways their user bases are the same.) Should it push its API more aggressively? Should we just wait and see what they’re up to, or accept that it’s really just a different culture from what we’re accustomed to?
As someone who’s enjoyed a lot of great content on Tumblr and is tempted to migrate her personal blog over there, there are a glaring number of things holding me back.
Several design initiatives are taking advantage of the “global village” via the Web, and here’s a look at some of them. Perspectives that are completely different from your own—thousands of miles different—are just one way for you to grow as a designer, so take down some notes and get your passport stamped:
How would you illustrate your city?
CitID invites designers to honor their respective cities creating logos for them. Submission is by email and it’s a great way to get acquainted with design sensibilities from every corner of the world.
How would you create a charity site in 24 hours?
FullCodePress pits Australia, New Zealand, and the US against one another in a 24-hour race to build websites for charitable organizations. Last year’s teams designed for RainbowYouth (New Zealand) and NSW Disability Discrimination Legal Centre (Australia), with NZ coming out on top.
This year: Team USA members are already locked in, with no less than Jason Santa Maria at the helm, but applications for the Aussie and NZ teams are still open until May 5th. The showdown happens from June 19 to 20.
How would you build on an existing design?
The Exhibition Season of this year’s Layer Tennis is done, but if you missed all the live action this compilation video provides a great wrap-up. There were some interesting new matches this time, covering typography, motion graphics, photography, video editing, and the return of the 10-city tournament.
How does this color make you feel?
To wrap up this little excursion we’ve been on, here’s a golden resource for all the global designers out there: David McCandless and AlwaysWithHonor.com designed an infographic on What Colors Mean Across 10 Cultures.
Devlounge has posted an interview with Mubashar Iqbal, creator of the increasingly popular color-oriented website Cymbolism. It’s an initiative to gather data on how people associate words with color.
If you’ll spend a fair amount of time at Cymbolism, you’ll find out that despite all preconceived notions tied to the different colors of the rainbow, people still think differently. For example, red is the dominant color associated with the word “powerful”, but only by a little more than 50%. The word “bold” shows a similar trend, with the color black in second place.
Now when you take a look at “new”, there are at least four major colors showing relative popularity: red, green, yellow, and white.
Based on the results, if you’re going to design one of those typical Web 2.0 badges that say “NEW!”, which color are you going to go with? It’s harder to choose now, isn’t it? I’m not implying that the site is useless in helping you decide colors. In fact, it teaches a very important lesson in color sensitivity. As the latest article in Cymbolism’s blog points out:
It can be a poor choice to assume that you know what another culture means by a specific color, so asking questions is a good idea. You can also do some research if you’re planning a trip to another country so you know a bit about their culture before you leave. You can avoid offending people that way, get a better understanding of culture and how color affects us, and have a more enjoyable trip.
Because the web is like one big country anybody can visit, web designers should be aware of yet another factor that affects the experience of their virtual audiences. And another issue you’ll have to deal with as a web designer, as opposed to a print designer.
What are other color-related factors can affect how a website is perceived? Aside from the psychological, how about the physical? Here are some questions you might want to answer before rolling out that website for public consumption:
- What does the website look like from the eyes of someone who is colorblind? Note: there are different types of color blindness.
- What does the website look like from an uncalibrated monitor? A monitor that is different from your own? (e.g. LCD, CRT, plasma, projection) A monitor running a different operating system?
- What does the website look like in low light? In bright light? In low contrast? In grayscale? In black and white (i.e., does the design of the website rely on color alone)?
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