Your Thoughts
11.12.06 @ 9:14 amI have a relatively large post coming tomorrow, so I thought now would be as good of a time to do this as any. With this year almost at an end, I thought now would be an appropriate time to express your thoughts on how this blog could improve for 2007. 2006 brought quite a few major alterations/additions to this site and I still have quite a few changes still in the queue. Still, I would like to hear from you as I am always wondering if I am missing something obvious.
Any area of the blog is open game. What do you think of the Comment Love feature? Are the weekly links or designing good segments worth while? Are there any topics I should be writing about that I have seemed to ignore? Please, comment early and often - tell me what you think and be as brutally honest as possible. 2006, additions, alterations, answers, blog, changes, community, improvements suggestions
December 11th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
$0.00 in Comment Love for July
OK. Ur blog needs design LOVE. Put something fun, personal. Push it to the next level. there are tons of boring shitty un=designed or over=designed blogs. Make urs a classic CCAC style or whatever style. But have a style. Ok…sorry for getting anal retarted.
–yooch
December 11th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Thanks for the comment Yooch -
I agree, the identity of SRD just is not there yet - it needs massaging right and left and up and down and diagonally and…
My hope is after I nail down some of these new features I want to pop in, I can go back and get the design to the place it should be. Thanks for the good thought!
December 11th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
$0.00 in Comment Love for July
Sorry Yooch, Gotta disagree with you here.
I think PJ has a style going on here. He has a color palette, monochromatic as it is, a distinct look to his icons, a certain tone to his words, etc. While it is a style, its an understated style. And that’s fine. The CCAC look is wonderful and has its own merit, but its overdone and played out too many times by San Francisco designers.
As for constructive criticism, I would like to see more visuals on your site. A good start was the icons for weekly links and comment love. The front page of your site is very text heavy and may intimidate some readers, even though it doesn’t bother me at all. I call it the New Yorker syndrome. Ha ha.
I would love to see more short articles too. Little blurbs. Maybe it could be branded as a “random thought” segment or something. I think I suggested this before in a previous post….
I love Comment Love. Keep it up. Its an original feature, first of all. Secondly, it gives back to the community in such a positive way, feel good way. Imagine if every single blog, especially those hollywood trash blogs that get thousands of hits every day, gave 10cents per comment to a charity!
Great progress this year on Some Random Dude. I don’t know how you maintain this site so diligently with all of your side projects, personal life, and work. Astounding and admirable.
December 11th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
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Yeah… more visuals. More images, perhaps, here and there. I also feel that the main page gets a bit confusing at times, as if the different parts of the layout aren’t differentiated enough. Here’s a thought: I wonder if using a gray could help give the site a little more definition and clarity. I like the monochrome thing going on, but a gray might be useful for adding hierarchy without diluting the existing feel of it.
My 2c for now…. Let me know what you all think!
December 11th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
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Oh, and you forgot the “E” in “DUDE” up top. Right now it says “SOME RANDOM DUD.” Is that intentional??? Haha….
December 11th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
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I love the style too — my only quibble (and it’s entirely selfish) is that I’d like to see the list of links as granular blog entries, not just one big mega-post. This is entirely b/c I am so RSS-centric and it’s a lot easier to parse that sort of thing when it’s divided up… but I acknowledge that I might be an edge case here. And think of all the headlines you’d have to write!
That aside, I agree with Kellie about more blurbs. Surely PJ Onori’s thoughts do not only come in treatise format…
December 11th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Kellie - I would like to get to some common ground on the stylistic aspect as I do think I need something that makes the site fresh and unique while falling within the current identity system I have. The header is supposed to do that, but I just don’t have the time to create new headers at this point.
I totally agree with you about the visuals. I will honestly be trying to improve upon that in the upcoming weeks as well as in my future posts. My goal is to have some sort of visual appeal for each main article that I write.
I also agree with more shorter articles. I think after the new year I may start doing a daily blurb. Not sure how it’s going to work, but I’m going to give it a shot.
Lastly, I’m really glad you and others like the Comment Love feature. I think it’s something that (sadly) is very unique and untried. I really feel it’s both a great addition to the site and an important statement.
Pat - Good points all around. I’ve been holding off on a third color, but I think you’re right - there isn’t enough visual separation between different groups of information. That’s definitely on the list of things to work on. Also, could you send me a screenshot of the “DUD”? I don’t see it anywhere on any of my browsers.
Robin - Man, good to hear from you. Hope all is well!
That’s a really good point Robin - I think moving in that direction is definitely the correct course… If anything, I think having daily links could work in tandem with the weekly links. I know del.icio.us has a feature where links can be published automatically on a daily basis. It honestly would not be too hard to implement either. Very, very good feedback - I think that one is a winner.
Thanks again and please, everyone chip in. I take your opinions very seriously.
December 11th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
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The “Give, Get, Love” ad on the front page feels like the title of the site to me right now. I know it’s not, but when the page opens up, that’s the first thing I look at…. I wonder if you could make that a bit more quiet somehow.
December 11th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Another really good point Pat. I think that banner area can use some work in many ways and I have a good way of fixing them all in one fell swoop.
December 12th, 2006 at 10:37 am
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Awesome! On a more positive note, I LOVE the way your red block under the page title has randomly generated “dudes” in it. Really brilliant–technically and conceptually. Again, I’d let that bask in its glory a bit more by notching back the other red elements a bit, like the “Give, Get, Love” thing and TerraPass (I’m not even sure what that is, by the way…).
December 12th, 2006 at 11:08 am
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Um, you’re supposed to ‘click’ on the TerraPass feature to figure out what its all about.
I do agree that the “Give, Get, Love” ad on the front page feels a little like the title due to its layout, etc. HOWEVER, i think its very important for it to be there since Comment Love is your trademark feature. Could that be remedied by changing the size of the title ’some random dude.’ or to take a totally different point of view, does it really matter that Some Random Dude isn’t the main focus? Some Random Dude is mentioned often enough throughout the site that a reader would figure out pretty quickly that its the title of the site. A lot of brands don’t have their names as the top level of hierarchy any way. So you could look at it from that perspective too.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
$0.00 in Comment Love for July
Another idea for Some Random Dude.
You could sell prints of your photographs (once you gather a large enough body of work) and give a percentage to a designated charity.
December 13th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
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The ‘Give, Get, Spread’ makes sense once you know what it’s talking about but changing those words to just ‘Comment Love’ would make a larger and more lasting impact on blog readers, but new and regulars.
I think it would make new blog readers notice it more rather than perhaps mistake it for a general slogan or catch-phrase of the site which would then encourage them to read the smaller text and ultimately click the link. I think it would leave a more lasting impact for regular readers since they see the words Comment Love in smaller text in a lot of other posts and around the site and seeing it as one of the most dominant pieces of text on the main page would encourage people to comment more.
Just what I think. =)
December 14th, 2006 at 12:43 am
Great thoughts everyone - thanks so much for the feedback! I think I have a list of the things I need to work on - I’ll be (slowly) getting to it in the next few months. Honestly, thank you - this is awesome.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
$2.00 in Comment Love for July
[…] I had the fortune of being invited as a judge for Standards Reboot, a standards-centric web design event. The deadline is May 1 and I thought it would be appropriate to “reboot” my site to go along with the event. Let me clarify a bit, the reboot will be less visually oriented and more user-experience oriented. These change (which hopefully will occur) are tied to the moves I have been talking about for quite a while. I was lucky enough to have had an online buddy help with some changes that I have yet to institute due to a lack of time. I feel pretty confident that a few serious sit-down sessions could end up being quite fruitful. Life has finally started to slow down and so I feel right now is as good of a time as ever. Still, this project needs to be very focused and pragmatic. No significant changes can be implemented within the 2 weeks before May 1, so I really would like to tackle two or three areas in a very simple, yet effective manner. As the title suggests, these are short term goals, but they are all directed towards much larger ideas. […]