Personal blog of Kimmo Kuisma - minamalistic, responsive

[kimmo]

Hi,

here's my personal blog just recenthttp://www.kimmokuisma.com/

The blog is meant for dealing with issues related to design and UX in general. My aim was to make design minimalistic while promoting very good readability. A lot of attention was paid to typography. I tried to cover issues of scale, font pairing, vertical rhythm, and correct use of characters as well as possible.

The design is responsive, implemented via semantic.gs. You can see the effect when you resize your browser horizontally.

Thanks in advance for taking a look!

[kimmo]

EDIT: I've realized there is one very vital piece of information missing from the first page. The image element is actually a slider, the purpose of which is to highlight featured articles and other content. The first slide in the slider will eventually be an image saying who I am and what I do in general. This slide is currently missing, but will be added asap. Right now the slider controls aren't visible because there is only the one piece being highlighted, which is the featured blog.

[GeoffreyYu7]

I like it quite a bit. I think you've succeeded in creating an attractive but understated design.

[Adrian.jc]

I really like this design, clean and straight to the point.
But I'm guessing it needs to be as it's a UX blog.

I especially like how the contact form displays on the same page, and doesn't load a new page once i'v sent the email.
I wouldn't change anything personally.

[enthusiast]

Your site is beautiful! The image of the man on the trike is a perfect metaphor, and I like how it extends slightly above and below the blue background. This image also contrasts well with the photo of you on your bike on the About page.

Regarding the logo, I like the way the first two characters look like code. However, it took me a second to realize it said “kimmo” instead of “mmo”. You may want to enlarge or modify the first character so that it looks like a k.

The grammar and color of “why designs . . .avoid the pitfalls” is slightly awkward. I think you should keep the tagline "why designs fail to fulfill" as is, but the title and subtitle should be tied together more. I suggest adding a colon after the main title, “user needs & desires”. The subtitile “how to avoid the pitfalls" could also be in blue Then flip the background and text color in “read this blog” to balance the white and blue.

The contact link is excellent, too, because it does not require the user to leave the page. It leads me to think that maybe I need to do something with my own contact page.

You may also want to move your social networking links from the footer to the right navigation so they can be easier to find.

Overall, this is a beautiful and elegant design. I look forward to reading your blog and seeing how you develop the site.

[kimmo]

Thanks for all the responses! I really appreciate the feedback!

@GeoffreyYu7:

A minimalist design is what I had in mind. I'm glad if it looks attractive, finding the right balance in the number of elements and decorations to use is difficult. Personally, I always tend to fall into the "too minimalistic" -side.

@Adrian.jc:

I had mixed feelings about the contact form myself. It felt like too much trickery at some point, but I left it like that simply for that one reason - you don't have to leave the page when sending a message.

@enthusiast:

I had a very thin | before the letter K there originally. I thought it could resemble a caret when writing. I'll see how that could work again. I was expecting the logo wouldn't be clear to most people, and you're right - it should be recognizable instantly, not after a couple of seconds of looking at it.

Typography and writing in English is something I'm trying to get better at these days (English is my third language). I guess I could use some sort of a conjunction there and just write "why designs fail to fulfill user needs and desires - five steps to avoiding the pitfalls" or something similar. I played around with the letters in that image for hours too, but nothing seemed to fit in just right. I selected that typeface in the image because it looks sort of humane, so it fits in perfectly with the theme of that blog article. I guess I just need to keep at it and try different variations I'll try some of those ideas that you had, thanks for bringing the issue up.

[gullfisk]

I really like the minimalistic design and layout. Very nice fonts and the large font size makes it very easy to read comfortably. I also loved the slide down contact form, and how it almost invites you to post something.

I could mention two things that wasn't perfect for me. First, like @enthusiast mentioned, it's not very easy to read "kimmo" from the logo. But I don't know if that really matters.. Secondly, the article "Why designs fail to fulfill user needs & desires – how to avoid the pitfalls" was very interesting, but a little long and tough to get through. You might want to break it up with some graphical elements of some sort, or short it down, or you might lose some readers berfore they finish it.

[kimmo]

@gullfisk: Thanks for the comments. I worked on the logo some more last night, and I will probably replace it with a slightly altered version very soon.

The length of the article was something I realized would be a problem when I was about halfway through writing the article. I could maybe split it into four different parts and link those parts together. That way each part would be less than 1000 words in length.

[kimmo]

EDIT: the article has now been split into several parts. Feels a lot lighter to read through it now.