The HeavyChef Project

Great design online is difficult to pigeon-hole, as it varies massively in different contexts. Design for blogs, however, is a different kettle of fish to website design. These points are written for blog design, where the definition of a blog is something that you want people to actually read the content

1. Busy is not good
   Imagine settling into reading your newspaper and the advert to the right of the column youre reading starts flashing bright red and green, stars popping out and a message screaming Read me! Read me! pops out at you. I give you 2 seconds to throw the whole thing away. A blog should focus on the content, and give the viewer a nice comfortable context to take it in. This means clean, uncluttered lines, consistent with the brand.

2. Use compelling images
   My colleague Shane often berates me for falling into the minefield of visual clichs out there. Take this site: (40 Media) these guys have listed the top 10 cliches designers are guilty of. Dont discount the role of images in drawing attention to the content of your site. The top banner, side bar, or even background, is rich canvass material for some juicy imagery to substantiate the content.
3. Clean, cool typography
   Check this site out.

   

   I actually love the design, but I reckon its a good example of form overriding function. Reminiscent of the David Carson design era, harking back to 90’s pop-culture rags like Radar Gun. This is graphic art student material, but the question is: Does it work? The typography is edgy and compelling, taunting you to come closer. The problem is, I couldnt read more than three lines without my eyes drifting. Im not sure if this is a good thing, but if a goal of a blog is to retain readership, then one tip is make it readable. (On the side: With the exception of one or two surfing titles, all those amazing David Carson mags with the cool typography are now extinct. I reckon a classic case of form not marrying function.) Blogs call for clear, legible text.

4. Clearly defined navigation
   A huge issue in website design, this applies for blog design too. Check out your categories do they make sense? Is it easy to find your way to where you want to be? Some blogs have 100 categories running down the tramlines, which may work on some of the bigger blogs, but I suggest a handful of clear categories when writing on a targeted topic for a targeted audience. Do you have links to external sites? Do you have a link to your site?  Are there unnecessary links that distract the audience from the more important ones like Subscribe or the RSS feeds?
5. Use Widgets sparingly
   Widgets can look cool. Typepad calls them Bling for your Blog. You want your blog to be different. You want to throw in some features that the blog next to you doesnt have. So you go to the widget section in your blog interface, get kitchen sink feva and throw the lot in. Your blog then becomes a jumping, crawling, wriggling compost heap of distraction. If the focus of your blog is retaining readers, then distracting them is not a good idea.

I made these points up, taking from observations in my own research over the past couple of weeks. This list is intended to be a guideline, a starting point, and not as a Blogging Bible. This is especially relevant since Im not a successful blogger yet (spot the irony, all you skinny chefs out there). These points are more notes to self than a holier-than-you do this because I say so. Mike and I are looking at the rules we want to follow in creating profitable websites, the rules for creating a successful blog is part of that process.

Addendum note: To all those free thinkers out there, throw these rules out the window and figure out how to do it different.

Imagine you go to a Rolling Stones concert. On the way, you listen to all the best tracks on the stereo: Paint it Black, Angie, and Start Me Up. You arrive at the concert and find that the band decides to play only new songs you havent heard before. You know theyre doing it because they want you to buy the new CD. You feel betrayed, like the band is not faithful to you.

Since this Heavy Chef topic started, Ive been thinking a lot about profitable blogging. What does it mean to be profitable? This is a lot more philosophical than I thought, and a lot more thought-provoking than I ever imagined.

After spending the past 3 weeks intensely researching blogs, I realise that there is not a clear cut formula to success. Take Dooce for example. This is one of the Top 100 most popular blogs in the world. Whats it about? Not a heck of a lot actually. Its basically a dumping ground for the authors thoughts, feelings, photographs and fights with her hubby. Filled with images of her daughter, dog and husband (seemingly in that order), the blog is strangely compelling, like watching an intelligent Big Brother.

My esteemed colleague Mike is a world champion at driving traffic to websites though a suite of crafty techniques that he uses. These include ‘focused phrases in the content’, bolding key words and carefully worded links. These serve a website well, but Im starting to wonder if this is a smart move for the venerable blogger? The reason being that once you add these crafty tricks to a bloggers arsenal, its almost like preplanning a dinner conversation.

Put the function before form (form in the verbal sense) and you’re in danger of losing the plot.

As in my previous post, form must marry function. If the function is to, say, draw attention to cat grooming, then trying to conform to a set of rules will sap the writer of the creative urge to write. If the writer truly loves cats, then surely the subject matter should naturally come up enough times in a post to warrant search engine interest? (Mike, your advice is called for here!)

After all, it’s not just a case of the audience being faithful to the blog, it is also a case of the author being faithful to his audience.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been stunned to know that there are still a few folk out there who don’t actually know what a blog is. When I tell them about The Heavy Chef, they kinda nod their head and go: ‘Su-u-u-re, Fred, that sounds interesting. I’ll check it out.’ A client of mine recently demanded an explanation of blogging, which prompted me to insert the article below. I think it answers the question ‘What is a blog?‘ aptly enough:

If you haven’t heard of a blog, you’ve had your head under a rock. Blogging is "in" and here to stay. For those that don’t quite understand what a blog is or does, I offer the following:

A blog is basically an online journal wherein you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practically anything that you want people to read.

Read More »

This months topic is about blogging for profitability. We are focused on figuring out what makes all our efforts worth the while, if at all. Mike started the month off with the goals for this exercise, but I want to explore the concept of blogging for profitability a little more clearly.

What make a blog profitable…?

Read More »

Now the titles caught your attention, I can tell you this post has nothing to do with bra’s. But it is about Pinging. Fred was asking yesterday about Pinging so I thought I’d let you know of a site called Ping-O-Matic. Its quite well known, so you might have heard of it already, but if you haven’t its a really good free tool to get your blog out there. And only if its out there and getting found, will it get read by more people and hopefully make your blog more profitable (if thats your objective).

Read More »

I have been doing a little research on the side with regards to blogging. These are some of the results so far.

• Most of the top blogs use short, punchy posts. When the information runs into more than a few paragraphs, then a click here to continue reading button is used.
• Keep it real. The key here is something called authentic dialogue. People can sniff a fake a mile away.
• Its fine and well to use tricky manoeuvres like bolding tags for attracting search engines to your blog, but try and make it relevant to your content. If it doesnt read well, people will run. Screaming.
• Use pictures (see above). Contrary to popular belief, people dont really like hanging on every bloggers every word. A pic makes your well-structured prose so much more palatable.
• Use lists. Ive blogged on this before. Top blogger Guy Kawasaki swears by this. Who are we to disagree?
• Keep it short.
• Use punchy sentences. Once again. People dont like to read. Im serious. No kidding. And whats more. Get to the point quickly.
• The reason things are easier to read when your point is made quickly is because the longer you drag your long, well-constructed, yet interminably detailed, sentences, the more your mind starts to get distracted by the meanderings of your imagination, a fact well documented by such famous bloggers as Seth Godin, bloggers who have proven over time that less, well and truly is, more.

More to come.
Love,
Fred

I normally work on the optimisation of websites, so I’ve just been applying the same principles to our blog. Blogs are basically websites, with each new post becoming a new page on that site. We looked at the keywords and optimised the site, we are continually updating with fresh content - things we know the search engines like. Links are also vital, the more natural the better, but we do need to give it a little push and get our name out there.

I’ve been investigating possible ways to do this and as well as the same we would use for normal sites (such as Google site maps) we can use special directories. Okay lets start with Yahoo:

1) Set up a free Yahoo account by going to www.yahoo.com. It will ask you to set up your home page. Which will then force you to set up an account.
2) Go to your new home page. At the top of the page you’ll see a link that says "Add Open Content from around the Web by URL".
You will then need to get your URL for your RSS feed in your blog application (i.e. blogger.com or typepad.com). in Blogger.com it is in the settings, in typepad go to your blog and go to the "subscibbe to this blogs feed" and right click. Copy the link and place this where Yahoo asks you to add a link.
Then click "add to My" button in top right.

We’ll have a crack at MSN tomorrow.
- Mike