“Nothing demonstrates the state of the Web in general and the state of its services, in particular the ones that follow the Web 2.0 ideology, as clearly as the style and look of ordinary users’ home pages.” – Olia Lialina in A Vernacular Web 2 (Reader p. 228).
I must be the most indecisive person ever. I’ve spent one whole day trying to figure out which theme would best suit my blog.
Design is important. I don’t regularly read blogs, but I read enough to know that a blog’s design does determine whether or not one will stay and read on.
I finally settled on this current theme. I guess because it’s clean and clear (Ha! Like the skin care product okay no not really). But to be honest it wasn’t actually my first choice. I first chose another theme with columns and I thought that was pretty cool because it sorta reminded me of reading a comic book. Well, sort of. I mean it was pretty different. Here’s a screenshot:
But then after two posts, I realized the colour was a tad too dull. It just didn’t seem to fit with my niche. I mean comics are rich in colour! Also, the colour of the font was too light and the size too small for my liking. Which might (or might not) turn you off!
The reason I’m making a fuss over this I suppose is because I think a blog’s theme can convey different messages to an audience. It’s kinda like how we “read” people by looking at their clothes and hairstyles. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. But as my finger started to cramp from clicking on the themes’ “refresh” button too many times, I kept wondering, “What sort of impression do I want my blog to give my readers?” (If I’m lucky to have any).
I finally decided to go with a more casual yet ‘professional looking’ theme. I figured since I’m just an amateur blogger, a design that’s easy on the eyes would help a lot in establishing my blog as one that is reliable. I believe the theme that I’ve chosen conveys the right balance of professionalism and maturity while still being appropriate for my niche. Like I said earlier, it’s all about projecting the right impression. This is of course critical to keep a first-time visitor coming back and in the long run perhaps they’ll become loyal followers. Additionally, a clean look was important for me because I wanted to make it easy for my visitors to navigate through my blog, as I understand a blog’s aesthetics must also serve function.
Anyway, it’s not like I have that much creative freedom in personalizing my homepage using WordPress. Okay I guess I do to an extent, it’s just I don’t know how. And I don’t think I’m alone here. Most users would find editing the page’s CSS pretty complicated too. But more importantly, the fact that we are given themes to choose from is to remind users that we are amateurs, and not professional web designers. This echoes Olia Lialina’s argument about how the options of themes provided by services “subtly serves to show the user his proper place” (Reader p. 229). Although she is talking specifically about iGoogle’s themes here, the same idea can be applied to WordPress.
I’m not complaining though. I’m pretty content with the design of my blog. I mean, I have no interest in personalizing my page with glitter and animated graphics anyway. I’m not dissing glitter, dancing cats, and starry wallpapers which are part of amateur aesthetics in web design because as Olia Lialina says, they are “a reminder of fun times when the users made a travesty out of the worldwide digital network” (Reader p. 231). I suppose that’s a reason some people still choose to have glitter and stuff on their pages, at the risk of being labeled ‘amateur’. I’m not a professional web designer myself, but I just don’t think they’d suit the tone of my blog. Not this blog anyway. I mean, superheroes and glitter??? That’s just wrong. And as I said, they don’t really appeal to the masses, the majority of whom are more inclined to the clean look associated with Web 2.0, so I don’t wanna risk alienating anybody.
Anyway it wouldn’t make much of a difference if I did have ultimate control over the design of my blog page. I’m personally more ‘anti-design’ because I think that’s what makes a page look cool, and as Alan Lui said, “cool is also fundamentally antidesign” (Reader p. 256). I agree with that and I think what he’s getting at is how the minimal design of a page has now come to be associated with modernity. The perfect analogy would be, “If you wanna be cool, then you can’t have garden gnomes on your lawn.”
However, I should add that I specifically chose a theme with a header, because even though I was after that professional look, I didn’t want my blog to look too corporate so the purpose of the header is to add a bit of colour to my blog. There are so many widgets to choose from, but I only added the ones that I found most necessary to maintain my blog’s neat look.
I’m a pretty simple girl anyway. I have a “minimalist impulse”. Less is always more.
[...] pretty minimal too. Which is the style that I’m going with. I mentioned this in my previous post. It’s clean and allows for easier viewing by visitors. Another thing I’d like to [...]
[...] only complain if you wanted more freedom in customizing your page but as I said in an earlier post, I like simple designs so no complaints from me. Oh and before I forget, it does a great job [...]