Like the fresh look, only comment is perhaps the header is a touch too much approx 2/3 of the screen. Could have same impact with half screen and show a taster of what’s below.
Keep up the good work.
Brilliant, Phil, thank you. Can I ask what you’re viewing on – laptop, tablet, phone? It shouldn’t take up more than 1/2 the screen (a la Medium.com) but obv your mileage may well vary.
Hi Barry,
I was looking on a widescreen laptop. Now I am looking on a large monitor and you are right it’s about 1/2 the screen. Also on the mobile site it’s 1/2 screen.
New site looks great! Love the white space and font choices. For the blog images with people/faces, wondering how it would look with the title block slightly transparent, or perhaps with a narrow title block at the top of the blog pages instead. (Or not.) Also the grey line in the title block makes your name appear to be a button.
Keep up the good work, Barry! Looking forward to your book next month.
Excellent Tracey, thank you. I’ll see if I can widen the grey line – would that do it? The idea is that the black block over the header images looks a little like an old-school book cover… but I take your point about faces.
Ah! I did actually think the Peter Saville piece was reminiscent of books. I don’t think you need the grey line at all. (See the older-school version without lines http://designmuseum.org/design/penguin-books.) I think your name could be in white as well, potentially with the regular Gill Sans thickness if it doesn’t look too thin against the black.
Hi Barry,
Looking better on widescreen laptop now showing about 50% header.
Check it out on Windows phone and it looks great, however when I look on firefox on an android tablet on the mobile site instead of a menu and search tab at the top there is a drop down is permanently showing and covering the header.
It looks good. The prevalence of white space made reading easy in Safari on a laptop.
I’m partial to seeing tweets and popular posts in the right panel but I think the more centered look works better for viewing on a Kindle Fire.
Also, a centered ellipsis in a new line might work better for touch screens than “continue reading” but that would probably be grammatically incorrect.
Thanks Candacia – very helpful. By a centered ellipsis, do you mean something like this:
…
except centered and turned into a link? If so, I wonder if it might be quite small to spot / click? Maybe there’s an example somewhere of what you have in mind?
Hi Barry
Look forward to reading this. I’ve really enjoyed some of your stuff in the past, and meeting briefly at EMA yesterday (I was the guy who just needed you and Nate to know ‘everybody’) prompted me to have another look at your blog. My main comment is that with only one sentence of ‘preview’ it takes a while to work out what each post is about – and certainly on my ageing Macbook clicking takes a few seconds to bring up the page. It would be lovely to have a paragraph per post on the homepage so I can see what is of most interest.
Hope that’s of use,
Blessings,
Matt Searles
Future Perfect // Present Tense 
Like the fresh look, only comment is perhaps the header is a touch too much approx 2/3 of the screen. Could have same impact with half screen and show a taster of what’s below.
Keep up the good work.
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Brilliant, Phil, thank you. Can I ask what you’re viewing on – laptop, tablet, phone? It shouldn’t take up more than 1/2 the screen (a la Medium.com) but obv your mileage may well vary.
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Hi Barry,
I was looking on a widescreen laptop. Now I am looking on a large monitor and you are right it’s about 1/2 the screen. Also on the mobile site it’s 1/2 screen.
Keep up the good work
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Thanks Phil – really helpful. I’m going to mess around with the CSS and try to make the header a little bit smaller.
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Phil, have tweaked the header size. Is this better from where you’re sitting?
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Hey, Barry! Good to see the new site. I’ll have to catch up on your posts.
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Thanks Brad – welcome aboard!
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New site looks great! Love the white space and font choices. For the blog images with people/faces, wondering how it would look with the title block slightly transparent, or perhaps with a narrow title block at the top of the blog pages instead. (Or not.) Also the grey line in the title block makes your name appear to be a button.
Keep up the good work, Barry! Looking forward to your book next month.
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Excellent Tracey, thank you. I’ll see if I can widen the grey line – would that do it? The idea is that the black block over the header images looks a little like an old-school book cover… but I take your point about faces.
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Ah! I did actually think the Peter Saville piece was reminiscent of books. I don’t think you need the grey line at all. (See the older-school version without lines http://designmuseum.org/design/penguin-books.) I think your name could be in white as well, potentially with the regular Gill Sans thickness if it doesn’t look too thin against the black.
Btw came across this treasure trove of free images recently which might be useful to you in the future: http://designrope.com/design/find-stock-photos-dont-suck/
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Hi Barry,
Looking better on widescreen laptop now showing about 50% header.
Check it out on Windows phone and it looks great, however when I look on firefox on an android tablet on the mobile site instead of a menu and search tab at the top there is a drop down is permanently showing and covering the header.
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Thanks P, yes aware of that one – it’s the same on my iPad mini. Trying to fix.
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Fixed. Let me know if you still have problems your end Phil.
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Looking great now Barry on android as well.
God bless.
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It looks good. The prevalence of white space made reading easy in Safari on a laptop.
I’m partial to seeing tweets and popular posts in the right panel but I think the more centered look works better for viewing on a Kindle Fire.
Also, a centered ellipsis in a new line might work better for touch screens than “continue reading” but that would probably be grammatically incorrect.
Good luck!
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Thanks Candacia – very helpful. By a centered ellipsis, do you mean something like this:
…
except centered and turned into a link? If so, I wonder if it might be quite small to spot / click? Maybe there’s an example somewhere of what you have in mind?
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That is what I meant, but bigger, about the size of the header.
I feel like I have seen it on other blogs but I couldn’t find any examples. Sorry.
“Continue reading” or “read more” works fine, especially if it is in a new line.
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Hi Barry
Look forward to reading this. I’ve really enjoyed some of your stuff in the past, and meeting briefly at EMA yesterday (I was the guy who just needed you and Nate to know ‘everybody’) prompted me to have another look at your blog. My main comment is that with only one sentence of ‘preview’ it takes a while to work out what each post is about – and certainly on my ageing Macbook clicking takes a few seconds to bring up the page. It would be lovely to have a paragraph per post on the homepage so I can see what is of most interest.
Hope that’s of use,
Blessings,
Matt Searles
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Was good to meet you Matt. That’s a good point about the previews – I’ll bear that in mind from now on.
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