November 28, 2003 | View Comments (28) | Category: Whitespace
Summary: Why as a designer I can never be satisfied with my own site.
The beautiful thing about having your own personal playground is that you can change whatever you want. The horrible thing is that the changes you do make only seem to satisfy you for about 2 hours. I had a design here that I liked where the only thing you saw was content. Then I wanted to add a little more stuff to the site so the 2 column layout was the next natural progression. Even though this design is clean, I am not satisfied with it. There are so many things that could improve, yet it seems that I am at a loss to how to improve them. Slight problem.
My current geek fascination has to do with typography. I am more and more interested in how the presentation of words affects the readers' feelings as much as the words themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that Verdana is a great font for the web. However, it is almost too good. It offers a robotic perfection that to gather any emotion from its design you really have to be a creative writer. I sometimes go back and read my older entries and even though I know what I am talking about, they lack a certain feel that I wish for them to convey. The greatest problem though is that Verdana just looks so damn sexy and if you want a clean design, Verdana can always give it to you.
Georgia on the other hand is the font I long to use. I like the curves that it possesses. I like the feeling that it evokes from me while I read my own words. But when I try to implement it on this site I am never satisfied with the design. It's as if my designs are not worthy of this font. I admit that my design style garners more towards the Verdana camp, but this is my playground and right now I don't want to be Verdana. I want to be Georgia.
Occassionaly I will receive compliments to the designs of this site and the Vault (Thanks Grandma!), which are always surprising since they are so simple. Granted it wasn't so simple to come up with the designs, but the designs themselves are simple. If I am doing a design for someone and I do not finish it quickly, I will get bored with it. I always want to tweak and change it, because who likes to look at the same thing every day. You may visit this site once a day, but I visit it almost every 10 minutes it seems.
I try to stick with the beliefs that "content is king" and other such wonderful sayings that we tell beginning designers. However, when you get more experienced sometimes you forget the basics. You want to make your design more than a design. It can become an artwork. It can become a passion. Then all you need is for someone to tell you that it is just a website and reality graciously slaps you in the back of the head. They are right though, it is just a website and people come here to read the words, not to harp on the lack of your design skills. It's a great design if people do not notice it. If they see the words on the screen and realize that they blend in harmony with a larger picture then you have achieved a good design. I wish I could design something like that. Maybe for you it already happens, but for me it doesn't and therefore there will be some tweaks and more than likely major changes. I didn't write this to tell you that, because it is my playground and I can change it whenever. I was more trying to justify the constant changes to myself.
As of this writing the only things I have changed are some removal of borders and indentions on paragraphs that follow another paragraph. I did the indents because I started to think why should we treat websites differently than the novels we read when it comes to reading style. An indent on a paragraph can help keep the flow of your content going. It helps the reader get into a rhythm. Maybe I am talking and nobody is listening, but sometimes I like to harp on the little things and this is something I needed to change.
Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.
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Hi Paul, I must say that for me your design is quite pleasing. Simple and straight to the point. And your right, "Content is King". That's why I come to your blog. You talk about your experiences in web design openly and ask thought provoking questions, which to me, not many people do. I must admit, I don't bother reading peoples thoughts on design if their own websites design is bad. That's to say that I think your site accomplishes it's goal.
I understand what mean about fonts though. I didn't like Georgia when it was you main font. It was too difficult for my eyes. It's a constant battle. Just so you know, designers are NEVER satisfied with their own designs. We believe theres always a better way to do it or something more we could add/take-away. That's what makes a designer a good designer. :)
Joshua
Well thanks guys. From a typography outlook, CSS offers a lot of options that I think many people are unaware of simply because they are hidden away. I myself feel I only have a grasp of about 15% of the whole CSS spec.
Seeing how I am my own harshest critic, I really don't see the design of this site becoming anything complex...ever. I always come here and ask myself if that element is really necessary? Time to go remove the right border now...it annoys me and Andy reminded me that IE doesn't like it either.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Paul, I know exactly what you mean about liking designs for about 2 hours! I agonise and over-analyse everything. I go through about a new design a week, trying to come up with something better - it annoys me. Especially what you were saying about "if do not finish it quickly, I will get bored with it" - I'm with you!
Georgia is a beautiful screen typeface, elegant letterforms and I love the basline shifts with the numerals. Something to be thankful to Microsoft for?
Jonathan Hicks (http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/)
If you want to indent paragraphs, I'd suggest closing up the line spaces. Indentation with line spaces is redundant. Typographically speaking, I don't think both together looks good. It should be one or the other.
Trouble with Georgia is that it isn't as widely distributed as many designers seem to believe. In theory, as a PC user, I should have had it already, but in fact I had to go to some effort to get it. No-one I know who I have asked has the font on their computers. But I agree, it is a good web serif. So is Book Antiqua (the rip-off of Palatino), which is probably more widely distribuited than Georgia yet is hardly used. I use it first in my print stylesheet, even though I use Verdana first on screen.
.... (http://biroco.com/journal.htm)
Well I have taken the margins away from the paragraphs and I can see how there was some redundancy. Thanks for the suggestion.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I have to agree, as a designer creating a site for yourself is one of the hardest things to do. I've been meaning to put together my personal site for a looong time, but I've been through about 8 designs so far, and I get sick of them before I've quite made it to launch.
Oh yeah, and I noticed you playing with the fonts here the other day. A few hours of Georgia in amongst the normalcy that is Verdana. I thought I'd accidently changed the setting in my browser somehow.
Max
Have I already told you that I like your design?
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to be morphing more and more back to the pseudo layout (it's just a feeling I have).
Personally, I prefer having margins doing the division of p-blocks. The text-indention doesn't work that well for my eyes.
Keep on tweaking and redesigning!!
Minz Meyer (http://www.minzweb.de)
Well I definitely will not be going back to that design. For now I might keep it like this, for another two hours :)
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I uderstand exactly where you are coming from Paul. Content may be king but the visual aesthetic is an important element of any kind of design. In today's world, rightly or wrongly the worth of a thing is often judged by how it looks. And as much as we can emphasise the importance of content to our clients (even having to write it sometimes), the bottom line is that clients hire us, as designers, to make their sites look pretty (then we have to try to make sure they pay attention to the other stuff like structure and content etc). That having been said the process of justification (as is the purpose of your post) is the only way to make sure that we don't ourselves put visual design above the other important elements.
However I personally don't know about indentation for reading on the web. I thinks it makes it harder to read and less scannable. I don't think that the rules of readability in print (including using serif faces) directly translate to the web. And because it is actually harder to read on screen, more space and places for the eyes to rest is I think a good thing. But that's just my opinion. As you said it's your site and more power to you for having a well organised, good looking site with good content.
dez (http://www.dezwozhere.com/blog/)
Readability on the web with indentation or line space is an interesting issue, but a greater contributory factor to readability is leading (line-height). If the lines are too close together then indentation and no line-space between pars can emphasise that it's set too densely, whereas it might not be noticed if you had line spaces for par breaks. If you indent and close up pars you often have to let out the lines a bit more through extra leading, to allow the text to breathe.
.... (http://biroco.com/design/)
Hmmm, the longer this conversation goes on the more frustrated I begin to grow looking at the site. I like the indents for now, but I did need to add a little more leading to the lines. On a subconscious level the indents will make me more aware of when a paragraph will end and the next one will being, which in turn will cause me to write better transitions to the next paragraph.
Simply because this is a personal site, does not give me the excuse to not follow the rules of grammar. Sure most people wouldn't care, but more and more the quality of content on sites causes their popularity. It has to be believed that grammar should be part of the content.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I don't think indenting a paragraph is a part of grammar. It's a monospace print-friendly typographical convention, like doublespacing after a period. Having space between paragraphs is more important than an indentation.
I'm finding this quite hard to read, because you have neither indent nor paragraph spacing here now. (at least, in IE6)
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Sweet design, Paul! However, I think I prefer the line spacing over the text indent. To me, your entries look like a continuous, imposing blob of text, despite the indenting. For some reason, indenting looks good on paper, but not so good on the web. But that's just my personal taste. Maybe I'm just not accustomed to it on the web beccause it's used so rarely.
Hey, you should try the making the first letter of each entry 3em like some newspaper sites and print publications do. I'd be interested to see how that would look.
Louis (http://www.clotman.com)
Once again IE comes in and ruins my day. Back to the drawing board. Good suggestion Louis, have to give a try maybe.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Kind of off-topic, but I was catching up on your blogs via rss, and i noticed that you go to USF! Tres Cool, since there is little to none information about who you really are on the website. What year are you or are you an adult going back to school? I go to UF and am a junior :)
Btw, thanks for being so open about your design process, i find it incredibly useful. I also really know what it's like to constantly change things on your own site, but like you said its kind of fun to have that freedom too.
Taylor (http://gtmcknight.com)
I am working on an about page, but trying to figure out how much to "show" you guys.
As for the design, it looks like I am back to step 1 again. Is it possible to stop feeling like a designer when your designs just don't work?
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Might I suggest adding a max-width around 98% to #outerFrame? 64.5em it a looot wider than my normal browser window, and Firebird does not give me a horizontal scrollbar for some reason, so I have to zap the stylesheets entirely to read the site :(
Sune Kirkeby (http://ibofobi.dk/)
For right now I just resorted to 741px width, so this should work fine in resolutions 800x600 and above.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
It helped, but shouldn't max-width play nice with width? So that the browser prefers whatever you assign width, but never stretches beyond max-width if it is smaller; that is what Firebird does as far as I can tell.
Sune Kirkeby (http://ibofobi.dk/)
The main issue with max-width and why many designers do not even bother with it is because IE does not support it. If over 60% of my audience does not support the feature, then when I use it they will get a screen full of words. If everyone used Firebird, the world would definitely be a better place.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
"If everyone used Firebird, the world would definitely be a better place."
No it wouldn't. If everyone used *safari* the world would be a better place...
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Of course, that presupposes that everyone has a Mac.
I wish I were able to try out Safari for awhile other than using this ( http://www.danvine.com/capture/ ).
Cheah Chu Yeow (http://blog.codefront.net/)
Yes, Cheah, that was the point. If everyone had safari (which requires that everyone has a mac), the world would be a better place.
I'm not serious, but it's a more accurate statement than the one about firebird.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I knew you'd say that :D
Seriously, I don't like monopoly of any sort, whether it's Microsoft or Apple. It may be utopian in a sense but I want both competition and interoperability to exist.
And I'd get myself a Mac just for Mac OS X if only Macs didn't cost that much!
Cheah Chu Yeow (http://blog.codefront.net/)
You can get a 500mhz G3 white ibook on ebay for about $500. Not fast enough for dev work (maybe if you max out the memory) but good for testing, surfing the web, and other assorted laptop things. And very lightweight with great wifi reception.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
It runs Jaguar fine (could use more memory though, it only has 192 megs), I haven't upgraded to Panther yet so I can't say for sure, but I've heard of people running them on even older and slower imacs, so I'm sure it'll be fine.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
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#1
Nice use of contextual selectors and the often-overlooked text-indent property in your stylesheet!
As far as typography is concerned, The Morning News ( http://themorningnews.org/ ) has always impressed me with its clean, straightforward body copy and bold headlines.
JP (http://www.freetheslaves.net)