A New Minimalist Look

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

The blog features a new look once again. The previous theme stayed put for the longest time between changes and it served me well. However, it featured lot of sidebar and bottom widgets that were hardly used by the readers. And of course, the primary motivation was as always, to try out something different.

Lekhni recently revised her theme and went for the magazine look. However, I went the opposite way. Websites/blogs by Dustin Curtis and Chetan Kunte provided the inspiration. I looked for a single-column theme and surprisingly there aren’t many. Minimalism, I notice, is not a popular choice for bloggers. Even the ones I found had widgets hidden away in the footer but I finally found this one and it suited my needs perfectly. Thanks in particular to Chetan and Curdriceaurora for their feedback on font types and sizes. For feed readers who don’t want to step out (although you should), it looks like this:

New Minimalist Design

That’s it. That’s the entire front page. With only 5 recent posts with just their post titles. You’ve to click on the titles to read the content. The menubar on the top takes you to the pages and the Twitter update is displayed below that.

Initial reactions from Twitter have been mixed but I really love this minimalist look so it will stay for a while. I’m still tinkering and cleaning up and will write more on the changes/features soon.

“A New Minimalist Look” [Short URL: http://www.ipatrix.com/?p=3080] was published Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am by Patrix, filed under Design, Personal, Weblogs, and tagged as blogging, change, Design, Personal, theme, WordPress. Both comments and linkbacks are closed.

« Do you read (paper) books anymore?

Defending Marathi Manoos? »

http://www.suyogdeshpande.net/blog/ Supremus
Welcome to the minimalist world! I like this look – your site responds faster and actually feels like a web 2.0 site instead of the previous one which took forever to load (thanks to your plugins) on a 20Mb connection :)
S
http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix
Thanks. I could deactivate nearly 14 plugins hence the improvement in speed.And web 2.0? Sherene said, it looked very old school :)
http://sherenejose.com Sherene
Haha, I note that you’re getting contradictory comments on the new look – well, well, I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to it, I suppose.
The only other time I can think of when people had such strong opinions on a layout change was when Facebook decided to tinker with its homepage…do you reckon someone’s set up an FB group yet petitioning that you revert to the old look? ;)

http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix
I guess change is hard accept; no matter how old or young you are :) And petition for reverting back? Haha! I doubt there are even that many readers left let alone that many who actually care that much. PS. the petition will make no difference. I exert dictatorial privileges on the design of my blog :)

http://sampada.wordpress.com Sampada
I was never one for change, because it takes me some time to get used to it. And I’ve changed my mind about this look too. Now that you mention it, I don’t miss all of the different widgets you had. This would be a distraction-less reading. Pretty cool!

http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix
Thanks for coming around :) I can understand the change is drastic and takes time getting used to. But that didn’t take long :)

http://elekhni.com Lekhni
Wow! Yes, this is a drastic change, and as minimal as you can get. I can see now why you didn’t like the magazine format :)

http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix
Heh. Well, not that I don’t think magazine themes; its just that I don;t think they are suited for personal blogs. But then to each his own, right?

http://lotusnova.blogspot.com Amit
If it makes you happy and works at your end, that’s what matters.
I personally prefer a “blog” look to blogs, and this minimalist look is very odd, too minimalist for my tastes and seems un-blog-like. I guess it’s a matter of getting used to it. :)

http://www.ipatrix.com Patrix
Heh. I’m glad you understand how everyone feels about the look of their blog. That’s what makes it personal. But I’m curious. What elements should a blog design have for it to have a “blog” look?

Nerve Endings Firing Away

A New Minimalist Look

Related Posts

Subscribe