Already, it’s 2008.
Our first post of the year is not about us*, it’s about our friends over at WP Candy, and their fabulously minimalist redesign.
This blog, for a start has gone from nothing to something in a matter of months, and to keep up the pace, a redesign always helps.
It is brave decision to go for such a minimal look and feel – with large white space everywhere you look. However, the white has been well balanced by the bold Helvetica logotype in the top left that draws the eye.
The logo size is of key importance here. As you may have noticed, last year we transitioned to a new design across the whole GoSquared site, and one of the main reasons for this was to promote our name, our brand. I’m very glad to see WP Candy making their name loud and clear to everyone who sees the site, I am sure this will help them to be recognized in the future. Also, a standard rule of user navigation is to ALWAYS link your name and/or logo in the top left to your home page: another thumbs up for WP Candy.
Fonts
The choice of Georgia as a title font has worked very well, although would not have been my first choice considering the difference between that and their logo’s font. However, it seems that the more traditional styling of Georgia gives the minimalist theme some needed delicate character to stand out from the average mundane “web 2.0” boldness of so many blogs.
The use of Helvetica as the body font is wise, as it corresponds with the logo perfectly. If Georgia had been used for the body, the theme would have lost a lot of its slick feel to overcomplicated, less readable text.
Subtle Niceness
On the homepage, hover your cursor over the footer of every post entry. A simple method used to great effect: making a common set of links more subtle so as to not draw your eye until they are needed. When the user hovers over the rectangular space reserved for these links, they are darkened, making them more readable all at once. This same effect has been used at the bottom of the page to make it easier to read individual footer areas such as “Recent Commenters” and “Popular Articles” without drawing away your eyes to other sections of the page.
I am also impressed by the very restricted use of images on the site (OK we admit it- we like using images to add a little gloss or grad here and there). At the time of writing, on the homepage, there were only 19 images, most of them the tiny 10px x 10px icons for post entries.
Possible Improvements
It’s a great redesign by WP Candy, but as with every design, ever, there are always ways to improve.
One area I have noticed to be slightly less useful now is the sidebar on the right. It is lovely to have a minimal page, but for most screens, it would be helpful to have at least the “Categories” title above the fold.
Promotion of your RSS feeds is becoming ever more vital for success, so it is always a good idea to make the link to your feed as clear as possible. Perhaps moving the “Syndication” title higher up the page, or simply reducing the paragraph spacing in the sidebar would help. It is good to see another link to the RSS feed at the top as well: an example of sensible (instead of logical) placing. The placing of “RSS” in the navigation bar is not logical since most of the links at the top are to different sections of the site, not actions that may remove you from the site, however, there is a higher probability that people will click through to the feed in this position.
* As Seth Godin writes: “The truism of the web: people talking about you is far more effective than talking about yourself.”
