Process Post #5: Design

The website that I chose to visit is The Guardian, a very reputable news source. Generally speaking, though I have always appreciated a nice format, I never really looked closely at design elements as I normally focus more on the content. But after enrolling into PUB 101 and gaining the experience of creating my own blog, my attitude towards this aspect has definitely changed. I believe that what truly works is their colour scheme, to make certain features, such as the title in white with the background in a navy blue, “pop” as some would say. This strategy is also used for either the first word (or first full name) if stated at the very beginning when we see headlines of the latest articles. I like how they make this implementation consistent throughout. The site is quite eye-catching.

But I noticed how extremely busy it looks right away. Although the content is categorized accordingly, it appears as though someone attempted to fit everything onto one page that has multi-usage purposes. (The first page you see is the “News” page) And the way the categories are displayed is having seven, square-shaped snippets, including images, linking to the full story. Although I have seen many other news source with this kind of design, most of them do not post that many links on a single page. Banner-like posts also live here, some being their podcast episodes. Overall, the crowdedness is what does not work.

Regarding my own blogsite, I was satisfied with most of the design executions and actually wondered what I should fix or change. However, this activity did encourage me to really focus as well as contemplate about decisions I have made so far. Some of the design elements that I applied after taking a look at The Guardian are the colours and zeroing in/deciding as to what colour would be appropriate for specific texts such as the “Link Text,” which I decided to change from black to a darker purple, as it would fit my “purple” theme. I further changed the “Header Media” to an image better suited than the one I previously chose. The new image was a photo taken from a room in the house that was used to film one of my favourite movies, (which, coincidentally, involved lots of reading and books) so this felt like the best choice. I did consider changing it beforehand and I am glad that the process prompt this week encouraged me to do so.

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