Just for something to do I'm going to list the five top blogs I read for design. They are, naturally, great political blogs with exceptional writers, but in this post I'll be focused entirely on how the choices of the design led to such good results in the presentation and functionality of the blog.
As a blog addict from the very beginning I can attest to the under-appreciated merits of great design. After years of visiting blogs those with comforting visual presentation and seamless integration of user interface are chosen much more frequently. Those that are jarring or fail in their code, no matter how good the writer, are sooner or later dropped from the regular rounds.
A lot of those choices are simple--this isn't rocket science, most of the time, and all but one stayed within the padded lines of conventionality. The well designed blogs here merely reflect good attention to the design workup of the blog, it wasn't skimped on, that's all.
Without further ado, here are my Top Five (for now). Lord knows how many I've missed; if anyone knows of a design they really like, please add it in the comments.
Orcinus: David Neiwert and the mighty Orcinus is by far my favorite blog design. Brilliantly off-centered with a fat left margin and plain tri-colors, Orcinus is a testament to simplicity and authenticity. The site has classy book trophy links, comments, and no ads (no blog made the top five with ads). It even shows a blog can have great design with that indescribably awful Blogger header.
Liberal Street Fighter: In its second version with the flamboyant Theoria at the helm, Liberal Street Fighter got gorgeous imagery, a good font, classy tabbed imagery for each calendar day, and a good color set.
The site shows members currently logged in, has comments, most recent comments and entries, and archives. Thin margins in a 100% screen give the posts a pleasant width; many times this width seamlessly wraps text around a relevant image, impossible to do with narrow columns.
James Walcott: The deadly Tracer Fire uses a smart singular color strategy, simplicity, classy illustration and an enviably good, catchy text title to offer a classic design that cannot be replicated. The illustration is a unique element rarely encountered in my blog world.
There are no comments at Tracer Fire, and the blog has book trophy links. My only beef with this at Tracer Fire is that the brilliant and must-read Attack Poodles has a jarring pale blue color that is temporarily whapping out the color scheme. It nearly matches the links but still doesn't work.
Jean D'Arc: A great self-portrait, pretty color and wallpaper, simple plain dotted line call-outs, no ads--really, how is this difficult? Yet it is inviting and manifest in the mystery of all successful simplicity: it soothes, somehow, just to be in its presence. It's true, okay, that this "soothing from simplicity" concept could be an infatuation with the serious writing powers of Jean D'Arc, yeah, but I don't think so. She tried and did a very good job. There are comments at Body & Soul.
Billmon: Here, of course, there is an irrational infatuation with His Brilliance (not much of one--how bad could it be to look up to a great writer, really?), but the design nonetheless is brilliant, catchy, and cool. Good colors, classy links to good books, excellent category linking, all of this is here, but all is overshadowed by the brilliant idea of "Whiskey Bar" and the great graphic art, the snazzy bar snack links to the right. Gorgeous.
Bill shut down his comments after an ugly human incident in them, maybe a series of them, I have no idea what it was, other than it was ugly. In an act of reader loyalty that is a testament to the incredible power of the blog that I have not seen replicated anywhere else, one can pick up a comment thread for Whiskey Bar at the sister site Moon of Alabama.
Blogs I'd like to see with a design workup are Hullabaloo, Mathew Yglesias, First Draft, Michael Bérubé, and DC Media Girl. Their designs are not bad, of course not, it's just that the stature of the authors deserves better designs.
I'm afraid I can't offer them one; I am a producer, not a designer. My approach to a design workup would be to engage an information architect to map out every data delivery system and functionality of the site, bring in the designer, and finally have me getting all code running on a load-ready server that all browsers are happy with. After a month of user interface testing anything that has to be adjusted is worked up again. Then the site is officially designed.
Oh, what do I think of the design of the Big Kahuma? [smiles] That would make MetaJesus cry, I'm not going there tonight.
I hope more attention is paid to blogging design. I, of course, only see it from my producer's chair, and would like to learn more. Blogs are here to stay; the more eyeballs that are drawn away from the MSM with sticky blog design, the better.