U-G-L-Y, your blog ain’t got no alibi… (it’s ugly)!

Unless you enjoy being dissed by a bunch of cheerleaders, you may want to consider the usability and design of your blog.  I’m no graphic designer (despite my small stint as a digital design major in my college days), but I do know how to spell ugly when I see one.  Here are a couple of great blogs I follow, and the design takeaways from both.

Twooting.com (Podcast Blog)

If you’re looking for a podcast that is entertaining and resourceful, these are your guys.  While I am a huge fan of their podcast, I need to pop pain medicine before visiting their website.  Twooting.com has a lot of rich information, but you need five pairs of eyes to find and read through all their topics.

Pros – Utilize Best Takeaways

• Branding – To achieve audience reach, you must develop a brand that is catchy and relevant to the topic of your blog.
• Color Scheme – Keep it simple.  Using too many colors will distract your readers and make your overall design very messy.
• Resources – Make sure to highlight the important resources your blog has to offer, and embed the rest.  Readers who are very interested will eventually find the less important resources as they dig into your site, and it will be like finding icing on the cake.

Cons – Learn From Others

• Organization – Categorization is key.  If you have great resources to offer but scattered on your site, your readers won’t be able to find them.  They won’t stick around to figure out your maze.
• Tabs – Utilize tabs (web pages) to organize the content on your site.  I love that Twooting.com offers a calendar and list of podcast episodes, but they are located on a very crowded home page.
• Simplicity – Don’t let John Maeda down (author of The Laws of Simplicity).  Put yourself in the readers’ shoes and think about the easiness of your site usability.  I personally like having one navigational column to make the content easy on the eye.

Adam Metz (Social Media Blog)

It is rare for me to classify anyone as a social media expert, because the industry is too new to understand all there is to know.  However, Adam would be my one exception.  The MetzMash blog not only discusses new trends, but introduces new ways of thinking about and measuring social media.

Pros – Utilize Best Takeaways

• Simplicity – Honestly, I can’t put more emphasis on the important of simplicity.  You can be creative and keep things simple, just like Adam’s website.
• Links – Having links to other blog content, such as past articles, can help your readers navigate more easily and increase your site traffic.  You can place them at the bottom of blog posts or in the navigational column.

Cons – Learn From Others

• Blog Real Estate – Don’t be afraid of being plain.  Personally, having a little white space won’t kill your site.  If anything, it will allow your readers to scan your site more easily.
• Image Size – I like how MetzMash utilized one picture of Adam, and how each page reveals a different expression.  It would have been nice for the image to be 75% of what the current size is now.  This would allow more space for content and less space for tiny facial features (not that they are bad).

Ultimately, you want to pimp your blog before these cheerleaders pay a visit.

On another note, this is a really good movie. Proof that Joaquin & Reese have talent, really.

Who doesn’t love Johnny Cash?
More importantly, who doesn’t love QuickTime?

The movie, ‘Walk the Line’ has an official website to promote their DVDs. As you enter the site, QuickTime is immediately integrated into the homepage using various clips from the movie. I enjoy this particular feature because it is visually appealing–and websites that promote media such as movies, televison shows, and concerts are best delivered with smooth, uninterrupted, and flashy streaming media rather than extremely detailed text. If I could change one feature, I would not use an unlimited loop for the background video– it’s efficient to catch the user’s initial attention, but it becomes distracting after one or two loops.

Quicktime was probably the most attractive video format for ’Walk the Line’ because it allows seemless execution of streaming media on their website while integrating flash. Most websites with a sole purpose to promote film (movie premiere, television shows, major networks) use QuickTime because it takes little time to buffer and the streaming time is seemless to the end user. It allows websites to deliver their message in creative form–while incorporating a simple and inclusive message to the audience.

I’m a fan of QuickTime. It’s no wonder why many in the digital media, music, and film industry prefer it too.