Looking for constructive criticism on an author's blog

[SierraAR]

http://blog.seanwolfe.x10.mx/

I'm looking for constructive criticism on the blog's layout, design, and content. There's only one post on the blog, and one post on the second blog that's holding my actual written works, but I feel it's enough to give you a feel for the formatting and what not. I do realise there are two completely different color schemes, but I haven't decided whether I want a dark or a light scheme yet, so I'm using both right now.

 

[Darkmere]

Not too sure I am a fan of the Footer. Kinda looks odd being larger than the Header

 

[SierraAR]

Yeah, that does look really weird... Not sure what to do about it aside from moving the menus to the sidebar, increasing page length. Or I could change the colours of the footer to match the rest of the page...

 

[essellar]

The font for the "Jaws of Oblivion" series overview looks a little wonky to me -- it looks like it's using scaled upper-case letters rather than true small caps. That makes the upper-case letters look too bold in comparison (or the small letters too light -- your choice). I don't know if there's a suitable free @font-face compatible font that does true small caps (they're heavier than scaled upper-case), but it might be worth a search -- I do like the way the overview is set of by the typography.

The overview does drift a little too close to the "cover art", though -- it kind of breaks the grid you've established below without quite looking like you've done it deliberately. A little nudge in either direction could work, but I think moving the left edge of the "cover" leftward and lining up the whitespace with what's below would be easier. You might have to box or rule below that grouping, though, so it's obvious that the two are a horizontal grouping that is separate from the two columns below.

I have no problem with the tall footer -- if nothing else, it gives a place for Chrome to pop up its status notices without covering up any content. And it kind of reminds me of the title pages (not the half-titles) of some of the nicer artisanal books I've owned.

 

[SierraAR]

@essellar: I'll have to poke through the theme's CSS and fix the alignment issue, if it's possible. I do plan on the images being the same width for each update - I'll be changing the image with that of the latest chapter every time I update Jaws of Oblivion, or for any other 'current project' that comes up after I finish this one.

The small caps probably look too bold because they actually are bold. I was playing around with the settings, and liked the look of it. I'm not sure if it's 'true' small caps, since I didn't really know there was such a thing as fake small caps (I'd assumed scaling down is what was done in the first place).

 

[learning_brain]

My first impression was....

Simple header - liked.
Content - OK - same issue as Essellar - it needs a touch more padding I feel.

Then the content became a little.... merged..

I know you have titles, but the whole screen is just white with sections of paragraphed text and seemingly randomized images.

This isn't a major problem, but it's not easy on the eye. My advice would be to set up a modular design like www.greenwayhallgolfclub.co.uk for instance. You can keep it clean but the brain quickly works out the different areas with no strain and you keep it structured.

I'm not a fan of the footer either, but that's probably due to the colour change. Have you tried the header with black background?

 

[SierraAR]

I'm not certain what you mean by randomized images. There's only three actual images in the whole thing - The header and footer leaf things, which are both default, and the current project image for Jaws of Oblivion. I'm using the Pagelines Platform theme, free version, which is a moduler set up. http://www.pagelines.com/themes/platformpro/

I hadn't though of darkening the header, so I may try that when Stoli comes back online