Design dithering

Thanks to everyone who commented during the 24-hour period in which Petrona was black (Clare, you made your comment after I'd switched back, your eyes weren't deceiving you). As this move was overwhelmingly unpopular, I've customised the design a bit by upgrading into a sort of "nervous nellie" Typepad user -- not a basic user and not a "pro", but somewhere in the middle, for a "somewhere in the middle" price.

Susan Barr and I can't read Typepad's "medium" font size, so I have set the current design's default at "large".

Please let me know what you think. I am no designer, but have tried to achieve a readable, clear look.

For those who like dark backgrounds, you can see what you think of greeny turquoise at Loopholes of Retreat, or of blue at the Refreshing Tree.

Comments

[Shameless]

Maxine,
This is perfect! This is classy, easy to read, and you've solved the light blue problem. I also saw the black version and didn't like it: it wasn't you - or the you I think you are from your blog. For me, a black background gives of something negative. White gives off a lighter, more pleasant feeling. Gosh, aren't we demanding!

[Steve Clackson]

Maxine here are some others I know of that are on typepad.

http://smgct.typepad.com/spinning/
http://syntaxofthings.typepad.com/syntax_of_things/
http://bookworld.typepad.com/book_world/
http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/
http://dhamel.typepad.com/book_blog/
http://condalmo.typepad.com/
http://esposito.typepad.com/con_read/

[marydell]

I like this much better. The larger type and black on white is definitely easier on the eyes.

[Elaine]

Muche better - I found the last one rather difficult to read (though it was well worth the effort!)

[Maxine]

Thanks so much, everyone. Steve, of your list I know Debra, and that she's a "pro" user. Thanks very much for all the other contacts. CrimeFicReader (It's a Crime...or a mystery) is another Typepad user and so is Kimbofo of Reading Matters.

It is really nice to get all your feedback -- and, incidentally, I am very used to demanding readers in my "day job" and in fact have to take that role a lot myself, so it is well within my comfort zone!

[Debra Hamel]

I love this. Very readable. Plain but elegant.

[Sian]

oh - things have been mad over the last week and i've been offline, so missed the black! I like the new look, but must confess I was rather fond of the purple...

[Maxine]

Oh, you had to be pretty quick to catch the black, Sian -- blink and you missed it. I quite liked it but it did give the blog a pretty scary, brooding air. Hope things have calmed down a bit at work now.
And thanks everyone else for your comments, too, I really appreciate the feedback and interest you show.

[Peter]

The black main type and the purple dates and times are fine, but the light blue for names and links is hard to read. Of course, one can just click rather than read in those cases.

[Maxine]

Hmm, that's odd, Peter, becuase the links are black or red (the red is manual), and the date is grey -- no light blue and no purple from my end. So there is something about the way it is coming through your screen at you which is beyond my control, sorry.

[Clare]

The links are an indigo or red on my screen...This is all a bit weird really isn't it? I use Firefox. I wonder if it is that that makes a difference.

[Clare]

Oh, and I like the large print and think general layout very pleasing, BTW. Especially good for steadily weakening eyes like mine. Which is just luck of the draw, I've decided, having spoken to someone whose 86 year old mother can read perfectly well without glasses. I wonder if someone has made a study of this...(why the muscles of some people's eyes stiffen more than others).

[Maxine]

It would be interesting, Clare. I am the classic (apparently) type who had 20-20 vision until hitting my mid-40s, now I am +3.5, about as bad as it can get. So I am happy to pay the extra 10 bucks a month to be able to increase the typesize the blog.

On screen colours, it is a real time-consuming issue at work, where we publish original research, signing off colour figures. Screens and print -- just aren't interchangeable, quite apart from all that RGB/CMYK formatting. Now that we use digital proofing, it is quite tricky -- what looks like a green line on a screen and that everyting tells you is green, comes out yellow in the print ---scream. So it does not surprise me that different computers give different colours -- though for reference I am on a PC using IE, not a Mac or Firefox (though I'd like to use FF and have done occasionally, the two systems don't sit well together on the same computer and all our work applications are based on IE).

[Bill Peschel]

It looks very readable.

I understand the difficulty in designing a blog. My site's gone through numerous redesigns (in fact, my main page is the current design, and the other parts the previous version; it shows you that I can't be consistent about anything).

And that's a good choice on the Georgia font design and size. There are several sites out there in which the text is as small as your sidebar links, and they do not allow it to be scalable (that is, you can't increase the size). They lose readers this way.

[Susan Balée]

Parfait, Maxine. C'est vous.

[Marie]

This is much better, Maxine.

[Maxine]

Thanks, Marie == but you have a black blog. Actually I think black works better on Blogger than on Typepad. In fact, I think I prefer the Blogger minima design to whatever typepad offers. One issue I have with Typepad is they make your blog so thin so you can have ads down the sides. Yet if you don't have ads, you just have useless space, which could be used for horizontal expansion of content. Blogger lets you have a whole page width. C'est la vie.