GoodWordEditing.com - Latest Comments in Great Content Needs Great Design

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

Karin — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:52:45 -0000

I've got three blogs, al for different reasons, all with other 'call-for-actions'.
Our FAQ blog on Wood You Like Natural Wooden Flooring (our business in Kent UK) informs our customers about all things related to wooden flooring and 'calls' for them to ask their specific questions (problems with/on/about flooring they encounter).
My Kiss2 blog is about kepping business simple and 'calls' for conversations about these issues, sharing of experiences with other business people.
My new blog (pondering) is personal, 'calls' for reading, smiling, recognising same experiences. Is brand new (created this week) and I'll wait and see what will happen to it.

Have a good week next week,everyone; last week had been a topper! (for me ;-))

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

Marcus — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:31:14 -0000

Karin, you are more than welcome for the link. (And we should both thank Liz Strauss for connecting us . . . I'll add that link in minute. I forgot!) Your short question earned the link by engaging me as a reader.

I'm totally jealous that you have a mentor. I want one! Though probably the more appropriate response is to see who I can be a mentor to.

Helping reader's find their way around is so important. You can see that my page is still a work in progress in that regard.

And you raise another question for blog design specifically. What is it we want our readers to do? Where are we driving them? For me, right now, my call to action is for comments.

I'd be curious what other bloggers are hoping their readers will do...

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

Marcus — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:26:01 -0000

Andre! That's great! If the site is still active, I'd love to take a look at it.

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

Karin — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 07:05:55 -0000

Hi Marcus

Thanks for the link and you've turned my 'wondering about' into a interesting post.

As 'amateur' webdesigner I had a great 'mentor' in webdesign and content. This great guy (I called him the real web-wizard) always insisted on one thing with everything you do on your website: importance of functionality and consistency in the lay-out of every page, making sure your visitor knows to find his/her way around the site (and when you have a real shop also his/her away eventually to that real place). Learned a lot from him.

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

andre — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:15:12 -0000

I think a key design principle is to design with a particular audience in mind. We redesigned our corporate website 3 years ago and one of the things we wanted to achieve was a website friendly to prospective customers...we wanted to make it easy for them to find the information they need to make a buying decision.

We even won an ADDY award for our website..more a credit to the website design firm than us but it was still nice.

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

Marcus — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:26:17 -0000

L.L., I didn't realize you spoke "design." I'm pretty much an amateur designer--though I did judge literary magazines for Columbia Scholastic Press Association one year.

A Musing Mom, the biggest design stick of all comes from some of the social networking sites. (MySpace anyone?)

And being a hack designer, I wouldn't know what to say in a longer series. Except this:
Less is more.
Form follows function.
Don't widget for the sake of widgets.
Don't try to eat the entire buffet of options.

Hey, that was a fun little list!

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

A Musing Mom — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:09:07 -0000

Glad to hear you say this! I'm immediately turned off by web pages (sites or blogs) with too much going on. We have the power at our fingertips to add all sort of lists and widgets and ads. And many people do so to the extreme.

I've worked in marketing and advertising creating business materials and learned a few design principles along the way. But in some ways the internet seems like it's own entity in this regard (so I claim no great design where my own blog is concerned).

Your post begs for a part 2 (and even 3). How about suggestions as to what makes for good design?

LL-you practice what you preach - and excellently. I love the visuals (photos) that accompany your posts.

Re: Great Content Needs Great Design

L.L. Barkat — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 14:28:10 -0000

Well, now. You are speaking my language (yes, former designers never lose their sense of vision!)

A message without a good visual medium is like a great singer without a microphone. We ain't hearin' anything from ya! (And reading lips is rather tiring.)