I was looking to give pkblog a design overhaul today and spent a good amount of time looking through other people’s blogs for inspiration. But when it came down to deciding on a design, I couldn’t entirely let go of the original “classic” template (the default on WordPress 1.5) that I had used for the past two years. So I found a bare-bone WordPress template and went to work with my limited CSS skills.

My main concern for the blog design was its readability. The previous design scaled the content to 100% of the browser screen. This may not be a problem if you’re using a 800-pixel-wide screen, but most people today use 1024 pixels and up, making my entries seem like an endless verbage train. I decided to center-align the blog, which seems to be the standard these days, and limited the main content width to 675 pixels. Decreasing the width has made me to see how long and tedious my entries can be sometimes — no wonder readership is rare!

I also decided that it was time to change the font. For the entry body, I opted for Verdana, a safe choice although sometimes difficult to read in bulk. With Verdana, I know I’ll have to cut down my word count if I wish to keep readers from straining their eyes. For the entry title, I switched to Georgia because I like the way Georgia looks when it’s big – a nice contrast from the utilitarian sans-serif typography of Verdana. And for a barely noticeable aesthetic upgrade, I made the blog header into an image so that the title – in a font called Milo – would have a smoother and more elegant look. As for the colors, I couldn’t ditch the blue and green – they’re almost like old friends at this point.

You may have noticed already, but a few months ago, I started making small buttons on the right side of the blog that link to my other pages (under “more pk”). I thought these buttons added a nice graphical touch to the site since my policy from day one has been to post text-only entries (there is a pk photo album for images). I hope I don’t go overboard with all these new buttons, but I’m looking forward to making a few more since they’re sort of like mini book covers.

Thinking about today’s exercise, I feel that, generally, an entire design overhaul (a makeover) is unnecessary, especially when a new look may threaten the original, unique flavor of a particular design. But this doesn’t mean that improvements are out of the question. In design, even the smallest adjustments can make the biggest impact. I don’t mean to say that my previous blog design was anything special, but it did become something comfortable and familiar to me, and I know that this “new” look still retains some of the familiarity while being an improvement on some key design aspects. Dull? Well, nobody ever did make a reality show about mere touch-ups.