Dion Moult Seriously who ever reads this description.

thinkMoult blog design updated.

On 30 April 2010 with 7 comments

It’s come a long way since the original concept redesign back in the July of 2009. The thinkMoult blog has been incrementally updated probably once a month with small tweaks to the layout. The blog has been stripped originally from its (relatively) featureful edition to the bare essentials – ie. a streaming wall of text with emphasis on clear headers and content areas.

To me a blog is a very much a written journal. Social and pictorial blogs aren’t "blogs" in my definition of the word. As a result I’ve decided to condense things a little, cutting out pictures which don’t complement the article, focusing on clear typographical elements (pushing the limits of the beloved Arial font!) and effective use of padding rather than borders. I’m maintaining the simplicity of the previous layout (no sidebar, no link lists or fancy plugins) and sticking to my roots.

The design itself was inspired by the Depo Skinny Theme but with obvious edits here and there on font styles. What this implies is that I’ve also involuntarily drastically improved the semantics behind the blog itself – which is a good thing of course.

Everything should’ve been ported over such as avatar support in comments, asides along with my asides category pagination hack, and the various footer tweaks. There have also been a few edits here and there which add to the overall polish of the design.

Well, I hope you like it, and let me know if there is anything which looks messed up.

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7 Comments

hari says: (30 April 2010)

It’s snappy and loads fast. On the whole I think slight graphical elements on a web page enhance it. I liked your earlier theme as well. This one looks a little too bare for my personal taste but it works well for the theme of your blog.

Dion Moult says: (30 April 2010)

The issue is that most of my articles are quite verbose – and verbose article reading is not for the faint of heart, it’s more for those actually willing to ponder and go over what’s being said. I want to emphasize that verbosity. I want to capture this type of audience.

A problem I find with graphics on a blog site is that it never stays relevant for long – the very nature of a blog is that it stays “current”. Styles change, things get out of date. I’m always fed up with the design and want to remake it again and again – which is why specifically for blog sites I try to make it as purely typographical as possible. For other sites of course – there is a completely different need to cater to.

hari says: (1 May 2010)

Going by that, you might get bored of this too. Actually I used to do pretty much the same myself. Until I consolidated my harishankar.org site I constantly changed blog themes.

When you use a pre-built blog software like WP which makes it so easy to change themes, there is always the temptation to create or customize themes.

Actually for a lot of textual content, I suspect using an odd graphic or two might enhance the text flow and give some relief for the eyes. Too much text becomes hard to scan as well.

Dion Moult says: (1 May 2010)

Actually, the reason that I’m keeping it in this style is that for some reason I _haven’t_ gotten bored of this design. Simply because it has no actual design! It’s just spaced whitespace and justified text. It’s just a design that really fits its purpose, or so I believe.

Don’t think that I’ve giving up on graphics – I’m simply giving up on layout graphics, I will continue to use graphics within my post when they complement the post.

Dion Moult says: (1 May 2010)

Comments design has been updated slightly – and fonts for comments and posts have been improved and increased in size. I found the small font quite hard to read after a while.

hari says: (2 May 2010)

I like this. Actually the top header (Dion Moult) could be a bit more colourful (like a blue font, instead of black).

Dion Moult says: (2 May 2010)

Most of the point of the design is the absence of colour – so (at least for the moment) I’m going to leave it monochrome. However I have gotten some ideas during this “redesign” for WIPUP and a planned extension for thinkMoult I have :)

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Dion Moult

Born in 1992 (do the math), Male, and floating around the GMT+8 timezone. I do graphic design, some 3D work, and I'm currently working on a "soon" to be released 3D animated movie. I do some programming here and there and have become fluent in XHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. Web development is my main area of computer expertise but I always have some weird and fantastic projects being juggled around my schedule. I like the concept of open-source and run Gentoo Linux. I play the piano and compose music. I hate this blog design but I'm never happy with any design. I am currently a student and working part time as a webdeveloper.

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