Zach Kollegger Design Review
Zach Kollegger (that’s two L’s and two G’s if you need to remember) is a blogger who minds his time with Apple products and design. This is the first of the design reviews I’m offering for free, and this first one shows that it’s not too good to be true! Just send me the link to your site, a little bit about yourself and you’re set. The only apprehension should come from having a crappy site, because an objective review will outline that.
The Design
The first impression of loading this site was the lack of polish. Polish is something that can either be some padding in places, or even just some time spent tweaking colours. Maybe it’s just me and three column designs. For a personal blog it’s hard to pull off the amount of content really needed to aptly facilitate that kind of real estate. My first tip would definitely be to move to a two column design.
In order, I would order the five sidebar sections like this:
- RSS subscription box
- About/welcome section
- Top commentators
- Categories
- Flickr
The third and fourth could switch, but the rest I would have in that order. On a personal note, I like a contrasting RSS box, especially on a design with a contrasting background.
Simple Tweaks for Polish
Staying in the sidebar section for a moment, some simple things could really do that some good. Putting some padding under the headings and having consistent link styles from on column to another is key. The middle column’s links are nice fat blocks, but when you go to the right column the top/bottom padding is gone.
I always like the Flickr widgets on personal blogs, especially on those who are interested in photography. If it’s possible to make the thumbnails a little bigger, I would definitely do that, and then space them out to fill the whole width of the column. This way you can keep a grid like feel created by the columnar structure and give a nice big preview of your shots.
From my own experience, I just don’t like Verdana too much when it’s used the whole way through a site. Lucida Grande is a nice font, albeit a Mac only experience, but I would definitely go Helvetica/Arial. It might not work, but check it out, and if it fits, go for it. (Very nice stylesheet by the way)
Accent Colour
It’s obvious when you enter the site that your accent colour is pink, with your main colour being the dark grey. This is only because you have a whole bunch of links in your top post, though! Decide what your accent colour will be, which would either be none (like white) or something like the pink. Even a nice, deep yellow would work wonders with the dark background.
If you do choose to go with an accent, use it in a more prominent way. Maybe in the navigation links, header styles, etc…
Using the accent colour in the right way can really make the whole design.
Final Points
Finally, as a nit-picking kind of guy, there are some things that I would personally have done, but could still be left as is and be fine:
- I’m not too hot on the style of the logo font, but maybe it’s the lack of the presence of a symbol of some sort.
- The greenish tint of the header background doesn’t really work for me. I’d probably just desaturate it.
- The little grass at the bottom is out of place to me.
- I’d use full posts on the front page. Maybe 4 or 5 would fit nicely. It’s a personal site, so having the full post is one more step to getting people to that RSS button.
Overall, I would change a bunch of things, but that’s just me. I see those things with any design, my own or not. There is definitely a good base that you can work from here. In reality it’s just a series of little things coming together to form a big picture.
Leave a comment
Zach K
February 21st, 2008 at 7:50 AM
Thanks for the review! Once you’ve pointed some of these out they seem so obvious.
I’ll start making the changes.
Just one thing: Do you think my background would look better all in white?
Thanks again, this was really helpful.
You might want to change the copyright year at the bottom of your site. It still says 2007.
MrCorey
February 21st, 2008 at 12:04 PM
You can achieve that, BTW, by using a php call “echo date(Y)”, which will print the current year without ever having to edit again. Why are the form entries for name and email about 10 pixels wide in IE6?
Connor Wilson
February 21st, 2008 at 4:46 PM
The year and message you arbitrarily put down hold no real meaning. If someone stole your content, the best you could do is to just extort or blackmail
I have no license or anything, and neither do most people.
Zach, I’m not sure the background would be better in all white. I think the dark grey can work, it’s just matter of the header colour throwing it off a little right now.
And Corey, I think the better question is why are you using IE6?
Razor
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:12 PM
Nice review connor. You really are thorough
Cant wait to see what you got instore for Micade
Connor Wilson
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 PM
I’m writing it right now!
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