Design Review: Vikiworks
27
We’ve talked a fair bit about personal blog design this week. Conveniently I came across a fantastic personal blog yesterday, by Yichi from Beijing. The design of his blog, Vikiworks, is one that all personal bloggers could pick up tips from.
What Has Been Done Well?
- Personal elements. The header and left hand side of the blog contain a wealth of information about Yichi, all wrapped up in the design. The PSP? Apple logo? Yankee’s hat? Even the date of his birthday! It all tells you a little more about who Yichi is, and what his interests are.
- Graphics. As well as telling you who he is, the graphical elements are an integral part of the design. You will not see such a combination elsewhere, and rarely do you see such well designed graphics. They greatly add to the uniqueness of this design.
- Logo. It would be hard not to mention the logo. I love the little smilie with his shocked expression. Wrapped inside the curly braces, the smilie could easily be changed between various poses to stay constantly fresh and fun.
- Prominent tag cloud. In line with using a list of categories to clarify a blog’s topic, the tag cloud here is prominent and kept short enough to be a useful summary of the site’s topics.
- Icons. Icons make up a big part of this blog. Each section of the sidebar has a title with a curly arrow pointing to an icon. Furthermore, each section also has a large, faded, icon in the background. You’ll even find icons in the comment forms!
What Could be Changed?
- The “Usability Principles” graphic. This seems to draw my eye more so than the actual logo does. Making the logo a little more prominent, or this graphic a little less so, may restore a little extra balance to the header.
- The FireFox advert. I’m already using FireFox, so the bright orange advert in the sidebar is needless for me. I wouldn’t mind ordinarily, but it is rather attention grabbing. In a similar nit-picky vein, the “23th” date in the sidebar should be “23rd.” Hardly crucial changes, but perfecting the design can’t hurt.
All in all, Vikiworks is a fantastic site. Going through the checklist of recommended elements of a personal design, Yichi has included just about every one of them! This site should certainly serve as a role model to other personal bloggers.
And the best part? Yichi has graciously released his theme for free.
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About the Author
Michael Martin
Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies.
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Ooh, nice one!
This design is busier than I usually like to look at, but it’s also very attractive and all the bits seem relevant. I’m definitely going to read some more on his blog… tomorrow… when it’s not bed time :P
Very cool that he released the theme – and it’s good because his blog is still personal with all the little bits (e.g. Yankees hat).
I would agree that this blog deffinatly could give you a peak into who Yichi is. So many blogs nowadays seem to generate that very generic feel(even mine at the moment to some degree lol). Learning how to adapt the style of your blog to suit both you and your readers is deffinatly a balancing act.
Regards,
Bunk Price
The Lifestyle Maverick
Kristarella – It is indeed quite busy, but when it looks this good, I don’t mind. :D
Bunk – I agree. It’s refreshing to find a blog like this that stands out from the rest. :)
Did anybody click on any tags in the tag cloud on that site? I clicked on the worpress tag. The first page looks good, but on pages 2 and 3 there are a bunch of question marks (?????) all over the posts. What causes that?
Hehe, yeah – that’s because it’s in Chinese. Several of Yichi’s posts are chinese (possibly about half the blog and others are in English. I don’t get questions marks, maybe you don’t have a chinese font installed on your computer? Not that it makes much of a difference if you don’t know chinese I guess, but at least you know they’re not errors. ;)
I hadn’t clicked it, but Kristarella’s explanation makes sense. The question marks you’re getting Dave are what’s shown in FireFox when it finds a character that it doesn’t understand. You’d need a Chinese dictionary here. :)
The blog really looks nice and got personality. Hope that one day I can produce something comparable. I found that what hinders me most is my worry about messing up the template. Therefore, I am so far very relutant in introducing changes to my blog, if the script/CSS need to be touched… Maybe this is more psychological than techinical. But anyhow,many thanks for the many great blog design tips, which are all enjoyable and eye-opening. :)
Hey Shine – I know the feeling. You should always make backups before making edits to anything.
Of course, the thought of having to actually take the backups as well make the changes usually makes me put off working for even longer. ;)
To Shine:
I usually just copy the default theme to a new folder. Then as I make changes to the theme or get the theme to a point where I think I need to backup, I either: just drag and drop the whole folder to another hard drive or an external drive; or use a folder synchronizing program to do it. That takes away most of the headache of backing up. One point, if you’re going to use a synchronizer, make sure the synchronizing only goes one way. Otherwise, you may overwrite something on the hard drive.
Your design review is really profound. Please keep doing it :)
Will do Maximillian. I missed last week’s, but you can usually expect to find a review each Saturday. :)
is this theme also in blogger?.
Nitos,
Sorry, but it’s just a WordPress theme. You could try shooting Yichi an email, to see if he’d consider making it for Blogger as well, but no guarantees (Mostly because there aren’t too many WordPress designers that are all that familiar with Blogger templates).
Really Excellent Template… I like that much….
Agreed. And it’s fascinating to watch his own site over time. He always changes the header! :D
i downloaded his theme but it’s messed up. check my link. i am clueless why it’s like this. tsk
Chitgoks,
It seems to be working perfectly for me. :)
Hi here, it’s a great review.:)
From your picture of the site I can already see the beauty of the design of that site. Yeah, you’re right there so much I can learn on that design and it can be use as a pattern in designing a personal blog. And I must say that you have done a great review about that site.
Yeah your right it deserved to be role model for personal blogs because it really have great design with personal touches.
This site really looks good and what I like the most about it is its theme and graphics. They really fascinate me.
This is really eye catching, in fact all dark themes look good. The graphics are amongst the best i have seen.
I agree that you have said that it have a good comment form because I like its comment form like how
This site really looks awsome and The design is great
An interesting review. I think that to get feedback on your blog’s like this is really useful and constructive if it is given in the right way. Looking at the blog the good and positive elements on the blog are stronger than the negatives so this shows that with some minor tweaks this blog could be even better than it is now!
man your site is too good, it helped me lot. thank you buddy.
awsum….. good work…. seems like you worked too hard on site appearance