Image by elroySF

Changing the style of your links is probably the easiest change you can make in your design.

If you aren’t sure how to do it, there is a good explanation at Echo Echo. It will show you how.

It takes only seconds to try out a new look for your links. With that in mind, here are some of the best ways to style your links, to both look good and be usable at the same time.

Minimalism is a big craze at the minute. Think for a moment; how many pure white designs did you see online today?

There are good principles underneath this all of course, and most likely you already know them.

Minimalism = Less clutter = Less distractions = More time focusing on the important stuff.

But do all minimalist designs work with this principle in mind? Do you not feel that in some cases, a designer has just thrown a few divs together and dubbed his theme minimalist?

What Sarah Said is a personal blog, belonging to Sarah of course. It was picked out of a CSS gallery to be this week’s review candidate; a high quality candidate!

What Has Been Done Well?

• Color. No-one will argue that the color scheme here isn’t unique. The unusual combination looks great, and works perfectly. Getting this right has instantly made WSS memorable.

When I asked what the most important aspect of design was, many of you replied that it was readability; how easy it is to read your content.

People come to your blog to read articles, and the easier they are to read, the better. A design that obscures the content will only turn visitors away.

So what can we do to increase readability, and keep those readers reading?

Blogging Bits is the blogging advice site run by Mohsin. What sets Blogging Bits apart from the hundreds of other meta blogs is the style he writes in.

You won’t find another site quite like it. If it suits your tastes, you may find his advice more interesting to read than some of the more dry alternatives.

The blog was redesigned not long ago, and his comments here have certainly earned him a review, so here goes.

Dillydesigns.com is a blog run by Evelester, and it has nothing to do with design. The blog hosted here is actually called Confessions of a Housewife and is her personal advice blog, with a very distinct style.

What Has Been Done Well?

• Cartoon drawing. Easily the most memorable aspect of this blog’s design is the cartoon housewife fixed in the background. The smiling housewife, hard at work with the house chores is a great design, and a uniquely memorable feature. You won’t forget her in a hurry.

Typography is the practice of arranging letters and words to make them more readable, or more visually interesting. On the web, typography has long been hindered by the technology. However, times are changing and the future is looking bright for the art of typography.

The major hindrance of web typography is the very limited font set that is available to all users. When settings font in a CSS file, you can set one font which the site looks best in, but if users don’t have it, you need to fall back to one of the usual suspects. Stuart Brown has a rundown of 5 of the most-common web fonts, letting you know which to use, and which to stay well away from.

With CSS, we do have some level of control over the appearance of our fonts. It isn’t the equivalent of the pixel-perfection in print design, but it is still something, and to this end, Clagnut has 10 helpful guidelines. One of the most basic, but most important choices in web typography is text alignment, which Kyle Meyer has explained extensively.