The things I’m learning from having an ugly design

April 27, 2009 By

A couple of weeks ago I went into WordPress.com, clicked on “Themes” and selected the one that looked the most plain that I could find. Why did I do that? Because I wanted to get everyone back down to the most basic theme I could. I wanted to get rid of the branding. The friendfeed widget. The advertising. The cool looking fonts. And get it back down to just the fundamentals.

I did that for a few reasons.

1. I wanted to see if it would have a major impact on traffic. It did not.

2. I wanted to see who would complain and who would praise it. Some complained that it was too unprofessional. Others complained it’s hard to read on high resolution monitors (the text goes all the way across the browser). Still others missed my “brand.” But something else happened. Other people said they really liked this new theme. In pressing in more I think they liked that it was different than, say, TechCrunch or Mashable and that it had an anti-advertising stance on it. Also, some people said it was more readable because I got rid of the advertising and the friendfeed widget.

So, what I’m wondering is why have a nice design at all? Why not just go with a plain theme? Especially if it helps you focus on my content more?

Just some ideas as I continue working to rebuild my blog. Regarding that, we’re moving my blog over this week to a Rackspace hosted server (hopefully, we had some problems figuring out some problems due to some custom stuff that Automattic did for my WordPress.com-based blog that you’re reading here). I’ll stay on WordPress, but will be on a standard install which will let me use all sorts of plugins and try some fun things out. As soon as that gets moved over we’ll start iterating on the design and “pave the paths” here.

Thanks for putting up with the dust and dirt as we rebuild the blog.

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  • http://paradigmpop.com/ Diwant Vaidya

    There is the answer that people can zoom for more readability (Firefox and IE7 have fancy zoom goodness now), but I think a permanent bump on font-size is a good idea. It will improve readability, but here is my real reason:

    Guy Kawasaki 10-20-30. Yep, the PowerPoint rule, but on websites. 10-20-30 makes PowerPoints easier to read and less noisy. Make it easy for your people to find and digest your content. Bigger fonts reduce what you can put on a page and suddenly you have a box to work inside. Suddenly you have to decide to tell your story in half the words. Or even better, no words but a single picture. You get a boundary to work within. Such boundaries inspire the most creativity in people. I tell you that you can only use 33 lines to tell your user what’s up, and you write a tighter story. I tell you that you have only 15 minutes to present a business and you have DEMO. I tell you you only have 140 characters to announce something and you have Twitter.

    Bottom line, bigger fonts make for clearer boundaries on how much to present, which really makes you focus on what to present.

    Long post, but I am absolutely passionate about the play between design and content.

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  • jim kiljer

    last monday was it yes said the large dog as ai said last time we were running JAPAN RULES my hungry towel says get beck NOOOOOOOO STOOOOPPPPPPPPP jump you can eat you hands hand hand hand

  • jim kiljer

    last monday was it yes said the large dog as ai said last time we were running JAPAN RULES my hungry towel says get beck NOOOOOOOO STOOOOPPPPPPPPP jump you can eat you hands hand hand hand

  • jim kiljer

    last monday was it yes said the large dog as ai said last time we were running JAPAN RULES my hungry towel says get beck NOOOOOOOO STOOOOPPPPPPPPP jump you can eat you hands hand hand hand

  • Mike

    Well I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.

    http://www.enbargain.com

  • Mike

    Well I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.

    http://www.enbargain.com

  • http://www.a1securitycameras.com/ Matt

    This green feeling gives me peace and easy focus on your content. My impression is a positive one and this is actually a very good test for those who fear about losing visitors/readers and money.

  • http://www.a1securitycameras.com Matt

    This green feeling gives me peace and easy focus on your content. My impression is a positive one and this is actually a very good test for those who fear about losing visitors/readers and money.

  • http://twitter.com/tiborholoda Tibor Holoda

    Plain design IS a nice design, indeed! Like your design change, simplicity is the key imo.

  • http://twitter.com/tiborholoda Tibor Holoda

    Plain design IS a nice design, indeed! Like your design change, simplicity is the key imo.

  • http://twitter.com/tiborholoda Tibor Holoda

    Plain design IS a nice design, indeed! Like your design change, simplicity is the key imo.

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  • http://www.truevectormedia.com Julian Lockhart

    If you have substance, the form can be less important.

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  • Tom

    Apostolos also commented on this font being unreadable. What exactly is the problem with it as a default when compared to san-serif fonts? I don’t see Times New Roman as any harder or easier to read than Arial.

  • http://www.ashour.ca Mohammad Ashour

    Well it’s just that fonts with serifs (those little lines that appear on the ends of letters) make the text slightly blurry on a screen, so you have to concentrate harder to read them, whereas fonts without serifs (san-serif), such as Verdana and Arial don’t have that problem.

  • http://thejeshgn.com Thejesh GN

    +1, Readable n bigger font is all I need.

  • Dave

    The font was “choosen” by you – it’s the default set up in your browser!

  • http://www.krazier.com zebb

    Agreed that Google.com design doesn’t distract the user from it’s purpose, however from a design standpoint it’s visually not appealing (to me anyway).

    As far as ilist.com vs. craigslist.com, craigslist has 7 main columns and some of those columns are split up into additional columns, plus there is a white background between a majority of the links which in return causes a set of grey grid lines between each item which causes un-necessary noise on the page. Most people also don’t need to see a 100 different locations either, so why include them? Again it’s un-necessary clutter and noies.

    Where as on ilist.com you can quickly and easily search for something (which is what the world does these days) or you can easily browse listings similar to craigslist. Ilist ONLY has 4 columns which are far easier to read, have better line-height, uses slightly larger font(I think), and doesn’t show hordes of other locations that will never be looked at.

    I agree on only reading this site for content, I agree he should keep all his other noise machines off his blog and leave them where they are at.

  • Robert

    Genius! Looks much better now I’ve changed it to Gill Sans. This is accessible in Firefox via Tools>Options then the (third) Contents tab. Looks much better already,

    Robert

  • http://www.philipt.com pt

    Yes, but you–the website designer–can “choose” how your site looks. Most people do not CHOOSE their default font: in fact, I’ll assert that most folks don’t even know they can.

    Just set your default font to sans-serif; then folks’ computers will choose their default sans-serif font (and if they’ve customized it, it will keep with their preferences).

    Sans-serif has been proven (through usability testing) to be easier to read on screen than serif.

  • http://paradigmpop.com Diwant Vaidya

    There is the answer that people can zoom for more readability (Firefox and IE7 have fancy zoom goodness now), but I think a permanent bump on font-size is a good idea. It will improve readability, but here is my real reason:

    Guy Kawasaki 10-20-30. Yep, the PowerPoint rule, but on websites. 10-20-30 makes PowerPoints easier to read and less noisy. Make it easy for your people to find and digest your content. Bigger fonts reduce what you can put on a page and suddenly you have a box to work inside. Suddenly you have to decide to tell your story in half the words. Or even better, no words but a single picture. You get a boundary to work within. Such boundaries inspire the most creativity in people. I tell you that you can only use 33 lines to tell your user what’s up, and you write a tighter story. I tell you that you have only 15 minutes to present a business and you have DEMO. I tell you you only have 140 characters to announce something and you have Twitter.

    Bottom line, bigger fonts make for clearer boundaries on how much to present, which really makes you focus on what to present.

    Long post, but I am absolutely passionate about the play between design and content.

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