Blog Design Blog

The Renaissance was a “great period of revival of classical-based art and learning in Europe that began 14c.,” and it also means “rebirth” in French. (1)

So what does the Renaissance have to do with blog design anyways? I’m not suggesting we need to have some sort of grand movement within blog design, but what I am suggesting is that we take a look at blog design from different points of perception that we never considered to do before. Most blog designers have their roots from web design and while web design and blog design share a lot of commonalities, there are still quite a few different aspects that present blog designers with different problems, questions, and goals for their blog designs.

The same tools and techniques used to solve problems in web design can not always be applied to blog design in a seam less transition. Sometimes you might get lucky and it will work great, other times you might get disappointing results. That is why it is important to approach blog design in a different manner and why it is even more important to become a Renaissance Blog Designer.

So what is a Renaissance Blog Designer?

A Renaissance Blog Designer to me means a person who not only understands the graphic design side of how to select a color, type, and layout for a blog design, but a person who understands more than what is required to do the minimum of his profession. While it is certainly possible to get by on these skills only and leave the other aspects of the blog design to other people, it will limit the overall picture that you can see.

A Renaissance Blog Designer needs not only to understand how graphic design relates to blog design, but he/she also needs to understand the greater overall picture of how the blog design affects everything else. For example, how usability affects the blog design, how to design for better usability, and how to use this knowledge about usability to better achieve the goals of the blog design. There is no reason to stop at usability though, he/she should move to accessibility, and even more into the back end of blog design. No, the back end does not refer to CSS/XHTML, don’t get me wrong it is certainly important to know though. But when I refer to back end what I am talking about is Javascript/Ajax, PHP, MySQL, etc.

Most blog designers have no clue how PHP or MySQL works even though their blogs run on blog software that relies on them to function. While the separation of front and back end was designed this way so that themes could be easily created, I think there is a lot of benefit in understanding how it works. It opens up new possible creative solutions outside of what has already been done. And while there are plugins to add Javascript/Ajax capabilities to blogs, its not always guaranteed to work or do exactly what you want. These technology are just more tools that can help you create a better blog design.

The Renaissance Blog Designer is not merely just a person who understands the front and back end of a blog design, but a person who constantly seeks to improve themselves in order to improve their skills. There are direct methods of improving these skills by learning something new, then practicing it, and then doing it. But there are also indirect methods that are also quite surprisingly important such as exploring different types of arts outside of web and blog design, such as water painting. There is no guarantee that these indirect methods will improve your blog design skills directly in the future, but they will open your mind and let you see your blog design in a different light. Or at the very least it will give you a nice break so you can think more clearly.

Sidenote: Update about me

For the last few months, I have been working on several different projects where my involvement was a lot bigger than I anticipated. A lot of the work I did was on back end development, which is not my forte. But it was what the project required so I had to learn a lot of new skills and get more in depth with programming languages than I had previously been. That basically meant quality time with books, google, and my mentor trying to fix bugs and coming up with different solutions.

While working on these projects I was also able to work with some more cutting-edge technology, such as Google Web Toolkit and Grails. This and my increasing use of Php, Java, Ajax, Mysql has improved my skills and confidence in this area.The best thing is that the experience and knowledge I have gained in these areas allow me to have a bigger overall picture of blog design than I had before.

I am excited and can’t wait to apply my new knowledge to blog design to see how it can be improved. Look forward to more articles that connect the front and back end of blog design in the future!

Conclusion

The most important idea of the Renaissance Blog Designer is a person who constantly seeks to improve their skills in order to make a better blog design. In essence, everyone who reads this blog is a Renaissance Blog Designer. That then brings us to the next article, which will be called “10 Reasons Why Your Blog Design Will Never Be Done”

References

1. Online Etymology Dictionary

2. Photo by Soller Photo