The ISO50 blog is now approaching it’s second birthday and with the new year I thought now would be a good time to rethink the layout and functionality of the interface. The blog runs on the superb WordPress platform (highly recommended) so it’s extremely flexible and I want to take better advantage of that flexibility. When I first designed and built the blog I admittedly had no clue what I was doing. At the time I wasn’t really an avid blog reader so I didn’t really understand the finer points of a well thought out blog design. Thankfully, WordPress supports themes so I snagged the classic Kubrick theme (now K2) and hacked it into the form you see here. I learned a lot during the process and during the following year or so of working with the blog so I feel better equipped now to give it another shot. But as anyone in web design knows, it’s very difficult to be objective about your own interfaces and to understand the difficulties end users may have with your design.
So I wanted to ask you, the readers, what you would do to improve the blog. Is there anything about the interface or the layout that’s confusing, cumbersome, or just plain broken? Are there any features that you feel are missing or would be a good addition? I am in the early stages of the redesign, I have some mock-ups and wireframes going and a development install running here locally, so now would be a great time for suggestions. I look forward to reading any ideas or suggestions you might have in the comments
Update: Based on Michael J.’s comments I have added to this post in the comments.
The part of the layout I understand the least is the ‘Random Work’ column. Maybe ‘Latest Work’ would be more appropriate? Also, ‘Enter Exhibit’ appears a couple times in close proximity, and I wonder if most readers understand this is a link to your website before it became a blog. Any chance that site will be updated or are you working to phase it out completely?
That said, I love the blog and will continue to read it throughout the new year and beyond. Thanks for keeping it interesting and informative, happy new year 🙂
I find it functional, don’t really know what else could be done. It has all the needed features, doesn’t it?..
michael-
you bring up a really good point that I neglected to mention in the post. ever since I morphed my personal portfolio into this blog I have struggled with how best to differentiate the two and how to direct people who came here looking for the original portfolio to the right place. my initial solution was to just make the “enter exhibit” affordances more prominent with the idea that I would revisit the issue later. I am still in the process of deciding how to approach this in the redesign.
As for the “random work”, good call. That was originally intended to be a dynamic section for browsing the portfolio while still in the blog, but as you can see, it didn’t make it out of the static form you see now. That part will hopefully be redesigned and active after the new design comes out. It was basically supposed to be sort of a stop-gap, but I want it to be a way to make the portfolio more discoverable to users who don’t realize that the site is actually a blog and a portfolio.
I have toyed with the notion of splitting the blog off into it’s own identity and giving the entire ISO50 domain back to the portfolio, but that would be a big move. It’s just always funny when I post someone else’s work and see someone in the comments saying something like “that’s a great design, scott!”. I think some people might be confused, thinking that I have something to do with everything posted on the site. I know, it seems ridiculous that someone would make that mistake, but I do feel more could be done to differentiate the ISO50 blog as a platform for talking about things that I enjoy and am inspired by, and ISO50 as a home for my personal design portfolio. I will revisit that idea when I start working on the next version of the portfolio. Has anyone else been confused by this in the past? I’d imagine that would just be an initial impression, I would think that after a couple visits it would become clear what was going on.
The other issue is of authors. Since Jakub came on board as a contributing author and then Beamer and Alex, I have seen a lot of comments by people that seem to think I post everything on the site. Again, this is probably just from people who don’t visit here often, but it still leads me to think that there’s not enough separation between what the blog has become and my personal work give that ISO50 existed solely as my portfolio for so many years. any thoughts on that would be greatly appreciated.
Well, I think it’s good the way it is now. In fact I’d bet that most of frequent readers of your blog do it by RSS. (In my case it’s Google Reader.)
The “Enter Exhibit” is confusing. It’s the only thing I’ve had a problem with as far as navigation goes.
I don’t know if it’s possible but perhaps give the other authors a slightly different colored background for when they post? Just slightly. Maybe just change the color of their name at the bottom of the post?
But in all honesty, I love the current layout. I’ve been reading your blog since it started and have found past posts and other things very easily. Why change a good thing?
I love using WordPress too. I’m still learning how to tweak it but I love it when I teach myself something new and it turns out with minimal frustration haha.
Well Scott, I’d say you on the right path to give newer visitors a better uderstanding of the blog.
In response to your comment. Maybe things like(which I am sure you already know), “The visual work of Scott Hansen” at the top of the blog page confuses them. Also, instead of calling the portfolio column “LATEST WORK”, maybe call it “MY LATEST WORK” -just so visitors distinguish the difference.. even if it is only subconscious.
Oh, and the “ABOUT” page gives a nice explanation of how everything works. Maybe edit it into a very short version to be added somewhere on the home page?
But I gotta say, I have always loved your blog and design+layout. I do subscribe via RSS but just visit the webpage from time to time just to see the design. One of the best on the web, hands down. You have a lot to live up to with the new design…. oh.. no pressure 🙂
@Scott – But, you cannot foresee every funny mistake people make… Even the first time I came to the site (after it was turned into this blog) I recognized several people are writing articles – there it is, right under the article title, in noticeable orange letters, the name of the author.
This reminded me of a MySpace situation, when I got sick of people writing nonsense on Drexciya fan profile (Drexciya was a legendary Detroit electro project, led by a man who DIED several years ago!). It clearly says R.I.P. in the profile subtitle, yet people randomly come in and leave messages like “I love your music, when is the new stuff coming out… let’s have a gig together…” and so on.
Maybe there should be a separate blog, afterall?
I believe many people come here just to see your work, maybe that’s where the confusion kicks in and they start thinking that everything posted here has been made by you 🙂
A few weeks back I Google’d ISO 50, with in the intension of finding a link to your portfolio. Google then brought up it’s list of results..
1. ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen (ISO 50 Blog)
2. ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen » Blog Archive » ISO50 (Blog)
3. ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen (Portfolio)
4. ISO50 Shop – powered by Merchline (Shop)
I wasn’t sure which was your portfolio as both websites have the same title. And their descriptions didn’t provide me with the necessary information.
It’s these titles and descriptions that I feel could use some refinement.
The Blog’s description – ISO50 – The visual work of San Francisco based artist and musician (Tycho) Scott Hansen.
The Portfolio’s description –
Visit the ISO50 Blog for up to date news and work · Visit the ISO50 Shop · Visit Tychomusic.com, AlL content copyright © 2004-2009 S.Hansen.
I’d like to see the blog’s title/description mention exactly what its it and same with the portfolio. I’m not super website / SEO savvy, so I’m not sure how simple this is to change. I guess what your trying to achieve is a more efficient site for your visitors, and this certainly would be beneficial for visitors coming from a Google search.
In terms of content, I love posts about hardware, photoshop efficiency/workflows, the design process, the recording process and a post many moons ago – “I’ve added a new category to the blog: “Photoshop Techniques”. I’ll be posting random tips and techniques I have found to be useful when working with Adobe Photoshop.”
I’m still awaiting these tips and techniques, I understand these type of posts require more preparation and time to execute. I’m positive they would be appreciated by the readers to make the worth wild.
I love the blog and the portfolio layouts and for me are completely functional.
About the confusions of some visitors:
about the author i agree with NAVIS about slightly diferent colors for diferent authors or/and maybe put the names appearing on the bottom of the posts.
about the confusion between the posts and ur work, maybe is caused by the signature on the top of blog “the visual work of scott hansen”. But again, im talking about details. The blog is great.
sorry for my english
Hey Scott,
It would be cool to have some author profile pages since you’re not the only one writing. You could also make the post author a little bit more visible in the post layout.
And in the past I had some problems with long archive pages. You use some kind of plugin that generates the headers with the trade gothic extended font. Maybe it’s possible to make shorter pages and streamline the process of generating the header images.
And check this great article on how to make your wordpress theme faster.
For the rest: great blog. I love the culture. Good luck!
– Leon
Hi Scott, You could make the section name for your design work clearer as others have noted. But, I’m going to play devil’s advocate and say I think you shouldn’t split out the group blog and your posts into something completely separate from your personal design work.
To me (and probably a lot of folks) ISO50 and Tycho are flip sides of the same coin. They both make up the creative work of Scott Hansen. You’ve already built up a solid audience of people following this blog. When you invited other authors to contribute, it only strengthened the ISO50/Scott Hansen “brand” and made the blog into something larger than yourself. It says a lot that other interesting contributors wanted to actively blog here when it’s all under the umbrella of IS050/Scott Hansen. To split the group blog or your personal blog off now and to rebuild an audience around a new group blog identity would be a bit like cutting the legs off of what ISO50/Scott Hansen has become on the web.
Since I started reading your blog, I’ve seen images from your posts show up on ffffound a lot of times. Images that are inspirational to you have the title “ISO50 The Visual Work of Scott Hansen” on them as they get passed around. I always assumed that this was all part of a brilliant long-term plan to build your presence on the web, so that people directly associate everything you find inspirational with your visual work and the ISO50/Scott Hansen brand.
I guess my point is that it’s worth thinking about the impact of changing this site, to your overall web presence..
In terms of specific feedback on the current wordpress format, you could: add a 4th column so more content is above the fold, display recent comments somewhere as a sitewide element, and introduce simple polls on some of the posts as another way to enable user participation.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who does this, but when I’m reading an interesting blog (which yours definitely is) and I find a post that I want to read, I’ll hit Command and click the post title so it opens in a new tab, and then I continue scrolling down the list to read other posts. However, I can’t do that with this one because the headlines are in Flash. It took me a while to figure out why the posts weren’t opening in a new tab, and for a few seconds I even thought my Command key wasn’t working!
The only thing comes to my mind is that I would get rid off the light text on dark background, specially larger texts blocks are quite heavy for eyes in the posts and comments sections, the text “lives” bit too much. I know that would change the design quite radically, but I think it would be worth it for the readability.
Otherwise I think it´s a really great blog, one of my “dailies”.
greetings from Barcelona!
I really like the content of this blog, and each contributor brings his personal touch building a steady stream of design news. You obviously know what you are doing, so please take the following as humble suggestions from an ignorant.
At first I was confused by the top section of the blog: when reading a post and its comment, it is common that the top picture links back to the home page, but not on this blog. It goes to the shop instead, now I know to click on the “ISO 50” logo. Maybe it would be an improvement to have the “random work” column dedicated to advertising your portfolio and shop. You could make navigation bar (Enter Exhibit, ISO50 Shop…) more visible, and closer to the top left of the page, since this is where the eye tends to start the reading from. I guess the rest of the “blog” column should be dedicated to the blog content, so that the latest post don’t appear at the bottom of the page when opening a window.
The 2nd and central column seems to contain everything you didn’t really know where to locate, without wanting to remove altogether… It could do with a rethink, once the rest is in place.
keep up the good work!
I too love the layout and was never confused once entering your site, however, I understand the issues that some visitors may be having.
Just a thought…what if you had a splash page at the very beginning when viewers enter your site, with say 3 navigational buttons? One for the blog, your portfolio and then your merch. so when your site is first visited the viewers who are looking for one particular section can easily visit it and then within those pages have links to the other pages.
Good luck with the site! I’m sure it will look great!
Hi Scott, I think that one of the areas for your consideration should be the fact that probably most of your reader-base accesses this blog via RSS. I use google reader, and the biggest issue I have with that is when I want to listen to posts by Jakub, I have to visit the blog itself (I know what a drag eh?). I think it is sad that the design that you work so hard on doesn’t translate to what many people end up experiencing in their RSS.
As for this dilemma of your web presence, I think the solution would be a splash page under the url ISO50.com. This could clearly define your sub categories like Tycho Music, Design, ISO50 Blog as being under one roof but remaining distinct. You will just have to find some clever way of reversing that effect while visitors immersed in each category.
So you’ve got two major target groups, your readers/frequents, and newcomers.
As a reader, here are some of the things I like;
Random Work: I like this idea because it includes things are aren’t in your portfolio, things that I would otherwise have to dig for in the blog.
Light text on a dark background: Even though this goes against what many would say about long amounts of text, I think it is one of the aspects of the blog that keep it distinct from much of the stuff out there. I wouldn’t change that.
The first things I thought of when reading this post where exactly the same 2 things as Michael j. pointed out. I think they are definitely one of the main problems (though not really big).
An other thing is the issue you pointed out yourself: it’s not really clear what the positions of Jakub, Beamer and Alex are. In fact: I still have no freakin’ idea how they relate to you. That
‘s really something you have to make clear. I also thought of the background colors, just as NAVIS said. It has become some sort of web standard, so why don’t use it? I think it will make sense to a lot of people immediately.
I also don’t really understand why this is a necessity:
This entry was posted by Scott on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 12:51 am and is filed under Web Design, GUI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I find that when opening the homepage of the site, it loads significantly slower then other sites, especially on slower machines. This is probably caused by the length of the pages, the significant amount of images and the sIFR post headers. Finding some way of speeding up the loading would be greatly appreciated.
Also, perhaps shrinking the large header image of the site would be useful for people with small screens, so that more of the content is visible without having to scroll too much.
Love your blog and the interesting content on it. Keep up the great work!
-Leigh
I read by RSS, so I had to come look at it for myself. I like your current interface, but I don’t see it on a daily basis.
Maybe I have not been able to find it but having a tag cloud certainly adds to the blogs usability. Blog readers often use tag cloud to fing information on the topic that interests them. A tag cloud in a prominent place is a common but nevertheless useful technique and adds to usability.
I view the posts first through Google Reader, and then usually click through to one in order to read it on your site because it’s more pleasant to read here. I guess that speaks to how much I like the layout and colors, so I hope those won’t change too much with a redesign 🙂
I can only suggest you rearrange or remove the large header image and reword the links on the homepage. The header takes up a lot of real estate and I personally prefer seeing the most recent post at the very top of the page. When I first came here I found the links confusing – enter exhibit is there twice, the header image and the shop link both go to the shop, etc. Maybe consolidating or rewording those?
This is one of my favorite blogs and I sent you a gushing email a while back about how much I like your work. Good luck with the redesign and thanks for making such an interesting place to visit!
I think maybe it is time for you to look into really branding yourself separately. At the top of this blog, it distinctly says “the visual portfolio of scott hansen,” but that is not what this is. This is a blog that spans more than just your design.
I don’t think you have to change your domain name, as much as you just need to separate this blog from your design & music. I think coudal.com does this nicely. It’s a blog FIRST, and then they do a nice job of inserting their own self promotions here and there…
Just an idea.
I started visiting the blog around last spring, and I only realized at around the end of the summer that Jakub was posting most of the music in the blog, I had assumed it was you and somehow just didn’t see the author listed…
I agree that if its possible to make a slightly different color or shade for the different author’s posts.
I don’t like the text justification. Because there’s no native hyphenation on the Internet, it comes across as stretched out, invariably spaced out paragraphs, making reading and skimming harder.
If you change one thing, make it this.
Suggestions? Make the site more lightweight. The dynamic sIFR stuff is neat, but it really does slow the whole site down, and the visual images on the right, just change and distract from the actual blog content.
I actually created a little user-style for the ISO50 blog that you might find interesting. It removes the site bar completely, and the header graphics, and leaves you with a nice, center column without any distractions. You can find it here: http://userstyles.org/styles/12438
I’m sure either way, you’ll come up with an amazing design.
I always thought since 90% of the posts on the blog are either related to design or music you could break the layout into two large columns. One for music orientated posts and one for design.
@Scott,
Dude, awesome job on the pepsi branding, joking…
Anyway, I would lean more towards separate entities, i.e.; shop, portfolio, blog, etc.
I don’t mind the random work being on the side, but the verbiage could be a bit less vague.
I’ve messed with a lot of different wordpress projects and it’s amazing how clean and simple it is. Not sure I could code one from scratch…
Might want to document the process for everyone.
Happy new year.
I can only think of one thing to change which has probably been mentioned previously: put the author at the bottom of the posts, or better yet on the long ones, both the top and bottom. I simply find myself checking who authored a post more than once most of the time — not anything brutal, but a minute distraction.
Hey Scott –
I am an artist as well who faces a very similar challenge in making a blog work aesthetically with a portfolio site (or vise versa). While I have come up with a short-term solution that works for me, I’m still on a quest to blend the two even better.
The only suggestion that I would offer for consideration is that your portfolio should come first. The blog is an attribute (and a strong one at that), but the main objective of your website should be your work. The rest of the content should support and lead to your portfolio as often as possible.
Now with that said, I uniquely understand the challenges that come along with that. The portfolio for the most part is static, and the blog is fresh, new and interesting. However your portfolio and what you have to offer should always have more prominence then the design/music/etc. of others on your site.
Honesty though I think you’ve done an amazing job managing your site/blog/shop. You always find a good balance between design and usability, and I look forward to your new wp theme.
Take care,
Tes
http://www.tesone.net
To reiterate what some others have said:
– “Random Work” is terrible. Those should be clickable to larger images. I was trying to find the Obama poster the other day to show it to my wife and I finally gave up. “Enter Exhibit” is kind of counterintuitive too. To me, an “exhibit” kind of sounds like a one-time collection of work, rather than a constantly evolving portfolio.
– The multiple authors are confusing. I still think of it as the blog of the designer who makes the posters on the right, and I only occasionally notice that other people post when Jakob says something like “I am not a designer” and I have to scratch my head in confusion for a minute.
– Those embedded mp3s are WAY LOUD on my system for some reason, relative to everything else, and there is no volume controller on the mp3 player which is a little annoying. Not a major issue, but a minor touch that could improve usability.
Hi,
I think it would be a great idea to give the option of a contrast-switcher on here.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the current colours but for readability the opposite would be handy. Personally, I find it easier reading dark text on a light background. Many websites make night/day styles available to visitors.
There is a good tutorial here about alternative stylesheets –
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/
and a brilliant post from smashing magazine, notably point number 5 –
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/05/style-switchers-are-back-ideas-examples-and-a-contest/
I’ve been coming to your site(s) for at least 3 years now and I just clicked the “enter exhibit” link for the first time. I didn’t know what it was until I read the first comment here. I just figured you got rid of your old portfolio site. I’ve been trying to find it ever since you switched to this blog. I guess this just verifies that I’m not really very smart. Ha! Love both sites and I’m sure you’ll do an awesome job on the redesign! You are one of my all time favorite designers.
Hey scott I’m sure youll find this soon enough, but in the little newsletter you have on your portfolio site, there’s a typo towards the end with a “you’ll” spelled you’l
just a heads up
i have to say i get nothing out of the other authors. i subscribe because this is scott’s blog, not jakub or anyone else. i skip over those entries. give us what you think, what music you like, what art catches your eye. that’s why we come here, not for some friends of yours who you got to keep the blog fresh. i’d take one post from you a week over daily posts from your buddies.
i always thought the font color of some of the headers made it a bit hard to read. Namely the brown and orange. Especially when my backlight went out and i had to bust out my old CRV flatscreen. other than that ive really enjoyed your blog and have faith in any redesign.
Scott, I don’t know about everyone else, but I was really hoping your website would provide me with a sammich. I was disappointed when this sammich was not delivered to me, but I could be convinced to continue checking for your work, but you’ll have to earn my trust back.
Concernded,
Mr. Mind
P.S. Thanks for continuing to stay interesting in an ever-over-saturated design blog market.
The few times I’ve posted a comment, I’ve noticed there’s no way to get back to the main blogafter posting. Not really sure if the back button would undo my post, I was sort of stuck on the comments page of an article.
(Untill I got up my nerve and tried the back button.)
There should be an easy way back to the main blog after commenting.
Otherwise I think this is a great blog, that I enjoy reading.
I like the current layout – but knowing your work, I know that a new layout would be equally great, if not better.
I have to disagree with Jason Lynes. I really enjoy everyone’s posts on the blog. In the past year or so that I’ve been coming here, I’ve yet to read a post that made me think “Man, these posts by Scott’s buddies really are bringing down what the blog could be.” Actually, I think it’s the exact opposite. Jakub’s posts are always nice to read. His posts have showed me so much great music that I feel I owe him something. At this point, I look forward to new posts, despite the author. I would imagine that anyone you let blog on here is of some importance to you or what you stand for, and with that, should be of some importance to us as readers and fans of your work.
I do think it would be nice to have some background info on the other authors. I think it would offer a little insight into the people behind the posts. Maybe nothing static; but just a post letting the community know who’s who. Just a thought.
With all that, I’d like to say that I love this blog. It’s one of the only blogs I frequent…. so don’t change it too much.
The embedded Flash thingies often totally slow down the site, would be cool if there’s a way to solve this in the redesign 🙂
I think that one of the best features of the site is that the whole article is available on both the home page and in RSS format. Whatever redesigns there are keep that feature!
I agree with the corrections that you suggested in the comments, but i think you need to address your columns a little bit more. You should have your main content column, your news/category column, and then a portfolio column. currently they are a bit mixed up as the Enter Exhibit link is in the news column and winter sale is in the content column. The columns could then be labeled accordingly, ig… ISO50 Blog / News+Events / Personal Work.
Great site and I am excited to see what changes you make!
I read your blog everyday and I really enjoy your graphic style.. I guess all your site lacks is a bit of organization between sections, you should think it like a tree, starting from the roots we have the main important information: what is this site? I just find confusing that you pretend to make your homepage out of a blog. Not that I don’t like it, but you make it the container of such many things as a shop, a design portfolio, a music project, and a multi-author blog.. I think there should be clearer and unambiguous divisions between things.. you have so many beautiful things to show off, I think this is pretty but too limiting.
Looking forward to see the new layout! keep rocking.
This is hands down my fav blog. Not only is the content high quality, but I think the current design stands out in a positive way. Basically I will only stress one point: Don’t streamline things too much. This is not a smooth corporate blog but is paramount in highlighting cool and quirky design – so I hope the redesign somehow keeps that in tune!
Looking forward to seeing the new robes!
Thank you all for the great comments, I really found them useful and will be putting most to work shortly. here’s and updated post about the upgrade process and the suggestions / fixes:
https://blog.iso50.com/2009/01/04/wordpress-27-success/
the one thing that confuses me is the vertical-ness of the site. Maybe that’s just because I’m more used to horizontal, though. Also there is a slight lack of ‘clarity’, the way the background is seamless throughout the page and everything is divided with lines is slightly cluttered. The lines tend to blend in with the text and the pictures don’t stand out much. But all in all I like the general feel of the site. I use and rss feed but I prefer to look at the site, a white page bores me =P
Just throwing it out there. Focus on url usability
http://www.iso50.com/blog
http://www.iso50.com/shop
http://www.iso50.com/
i never had any problems with the way your blog is right now, so i only could imagine some smaller changes.
– normally i very much prefere positive(darker fontcolor on lighter background) fontcolor for readability but i’ve nevere had problems in this blog with it (i think the colors are in a good balance)
– i would switch the position of the “older posts” “newer posts” buttons(and the arrows in the buttons). i find it easier when they match the forward and backward buttons on a cd player.
– maybe you can have different colors for the different authors, so people can see more easily who wrote the post.
i’m looking forward to see your redesign.
This is seriously one of my favorite blogs – and the design is hardly the least of why. That said, I know it’s really hard to break away from a traditional ‘blog’ layout these days. I agree, when you have to scroll, and the side columns empty into blank space, it seems a little wasted, but still wouldn’t say that’s the worst thing. I would agree that with multiple authors, you could draw a bit more attention to the post author, and perhaps condense some of the stuff in the sidebars. – dropdown menu for the archive/category links? – rotating slideshow style area to feature your recent work? Looking forward to seeing a redesign later this year!
hey man, you’re in my top ten blogs. i read via an rss reader, so no worries with the blog itself. i will say i don’t get into the music side of your posts, generally just skip those. but everything else is great. keep it up!!! and btw, i love your design aesthetic and bought your obama poster too.