The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
smashingmagazine.com
The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
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Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#2Translation into SmashingMagazine title: Top 3 Blogazines You Should Be Checking Out!
In seriousness though, those people they mentioned don't just have interesting designs with each article--they also have interesting content. Dressing up a "Top 10 WordPress Plugin" post in a special skin isn't going to make it any less shallow. However, maybe designing a skin for an article forces people to think more about what they are writing. After all, it'd be a waste not to put effort into the content if so much effort is being put into the design. I really just want more interesting content.
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#3Great survey.
Their question as to whether blogging is "too easy" really resonates with me: I began prototyping a CMS a while back on the premise that Blogging Should Be Harder (a reaction of sorts, I guess, to services like Posterous and Tumblr [full disclosure: I am a very happy user of the latter]). And what I found is that if it's hard to design a "blogazine"--manually setting type and choosing colors for each individual post--it's just as challenging to build an "anything goes" CMS.
I still think it's a great idea. There might only be a handful of people out there who would use it, but those that did would likely be producing really top-notch content.
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#4...said the blogazine.
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#5These guys aren’t using standard WordPress themes or cutting corners to make their lives easier. Rather, they are challenging themselves and producing some fantastic content.
appearance != content
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#6On that note, check the redesigned Engadget...not quite a 'magazine,' but edging in that direction...http://www.engadget.com/ (not in the sense that every post is designed differently, but in the way content is highlighted)
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#7These guys aren’t using standard WordPress themes or cutting corners to make their lives easier. Rather, they are challenging themselves and producing some fantastic content. appearance != content
Why not? What is content? Is it possible for the appearance to "mingle" with the content in a way that enhances or creates greater content? At that point is the appearance part of the content? Or is it more like a "content additive" ?
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#8This is a great idea if you're a designer and know what you're doing. I shudder at the thought of how appalling my personal website would look - think geocities at its worst! - if I tried this.
Conventions may be boring, but they allow us design duffers to focus on the content itself.
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#9If I'm reading something, I don't want to be distracted by the fancy text layout and bright shiny colors. I just want clearly presented text with a minimum of complexity.
In rare cases special formatting can enhance the effect or help interpret something written, but in most cases it adds nothing except clutter. I found this article nearly unreadable because of the "interesting" and "exciting" way they presented it.
Re: The death of the blog post (and rise of the blogazine)
#10These guys aren’t using standard WordPress themes or cutting corners to make their lives easier. Rather, they are challenging themselves and producing some fantastic content. appearance != content
Why not? What is content? Is it possible for the appearance to "mingle" with the content in a way that enhances or creates greater content? At that point is the appearance part of the content? Or is it more like a "content additive" ?
In this case, content is material that I the consumer am interested in. I'm potentially interested in writing. I'm less interested in design. I don't read blogs to look at the design, I read blogs to read blogs. So if you're capable of creating logical, readable designs time and time again, go for it.
But that's not happening. This article was not very readable: It broke itself up into fractious chunks, highlighted words in the middle of normal sentences, and generally jizzed.
I love that it brings up normal magazines and says they'd be boring if they looked the same. Newsflash: Normal magazines do look boring. When I read an editorial, it looks the same week after week. When I read articles, sure, there're big quotes and pictures and the text is laid out differently, but the writing itself sticks to the same font/size consistently. That's what makes it readable.
The problem with the blogazine is that most blog posts don't have enough content for what they're dealing with. A 10-page magazine article with a hundred potential photos can use a layout. A page-long article that's blogazined is fluffing up without providing shit. People who're so easily wooed by designers that they still ooh and aah at big fonts, they eat it up, but readers who want a no-bullshit presentation are turned away.