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Write Pretty Content for a Simple Design

Posted on February 27th in Design — 4 Comments so far. Got something to say?

With the absence of my formerly dark pattern background, I’ve reverted the same design to something wonderfully simple. With this now whitespace driven design, I’ve come to terms with how I’ll keep the design looking great: great looking content.

There’s no doubt the content is the focus of this design. There aren’t many obstacles for your eye to hurdle before reaching the top post. So now through elements in posts, I’m going to go the extra mile to making my posts not only more enjoyable to read, but all the while keeping the design interesting.

Content for the Web

We’ve all seen the posts that have been written a million times about how to use images, lists and shorter paragraphs to make your website read like a website, not a book. I’m not going to rewrite that (I’m sure I have in the past). Those basic ideas will help you when trying to write a pretty post.

It’s not just about having things in lists with strong and emphasized text, but more of how they tie into your design. For example, my blockquotes are a faded orange colour that comes right out of my logo.

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

- Vince Lombardi

When you’re picking colours from a premade pallet, it’s quite hard to go wrong. Just tweak it until you have a colour that satisfies both you and your design.

Padding on Elements

One of the key points to having a seamless design is the padding of all the elements in the content area. This means your paragraphs, lists, blockquotes, images, you name it. Everything needs to be padded and put in a position where no one will even care to notice to time you spent shifting them pixel by pixel into place.

Seamless flow is what you should aim for. It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when you have to go in and tweak your CSS because you have a different combination of elements. Don’t forget to preview your posts before posting!

In the End, it’s the Eye

For me, a nice big font, nicely spaced with some extra images and a quote where appropriate does the job. If you’re one to include tons of images and extra flash, then be my guest (your guest, rather). Also, most of the time I find when floating images and quotes in a paragraph that it’s best done off to the right. Again, it’s a personal call.

When applying these methods to a simple design you can really enhance the feel of your site, and when working with a more complex and graphical site, it can only get better.