I was again randomly browsing the vast blogosphere to find some interesting blogs (there are many good usability blogs around and of course blogs about nearly anything and then some more), to compare writing styles and to find some bad usability to point fingers at. Lo and behold! Among the first couple of specimens was yet another example of nice but distracting blog background to add to previous examples. Sunset and trees look really nice and moody, but the scenery really grabs your attention from the text even when you try hard to concentrate to read the posts. And reading isn't helped with the fact that the white text on dark background is not really ideal for reading from screen (though it is good for presentations) and in some places there is not really enough contrast between text and bacground for easy reading in the first place. Try not to overlap photo-realistic background and text, and make sure there is enough contrast between text and background to not make reading too difficult and tiresome.
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I finding your article very informative and I believe you're right. I am. . .was looking for great looking templates to match how I feel about what I have/and in the process of writing. So, I may just do as you've stated here is to keep the blog simple so that your posts/articles stand out and not the template.
ReplyDeleteI am still in the process of re-doing my blog, and this will take a while, have 5 blogs.
This is one of the reason why I despised MySpace. Who could read anything when there was soo much going on? Glad that the MySpace trend has passed. I spend most of my hours on the internet providing link building services and social media marketing. Sites like the ones you described just give people headaches..
ReplyDeleteBTW, found you on BlogExplosion.
http://www.alvamartell.com
I believe that if you write on anything but a plain background colour and perhaps the occasional well designed gradient you are pretty insane.
ReplyDeleteAlso found you on blogexplosion. (Y)