Sunday, January 29, 2006

Gone With The “Blah Blah Blog” Look

Why haven’t I posted anything new in a couple of weeks? Well, I’ve been busy working on a new blog design. You’re looking at it right now.

The old design (preserved in a screen shot for posterity here) was simply a template that came with the ExpressionEngine blog software I use. But I decided I needed something a bit more creative than the same old “blah blah blog” look.

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Posted by Richard Bloch

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Sunday, January 15, 2006

The Blink of an Eye

A recent study published in the academic journal Behaviour and Information Technology suggests that people assess the visual appeal of a web site in about 50 milliseconds. (See “Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye")

This research seems a bit suspect to me. The “knee-jerk” reflex (when the doctor hits you just below the knee with that little hammer) is about 50 milliseconds. And that doesn’t even involve the brain—just the spinal cord.

Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear we make snap judgements about web sites we visit. But 50 milliseconds? I don’t think so.

Posted by Richard Bloch

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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Proud of Myself

I just posted my new web site. I’m not a graphic designer, so it took a long time to create. But I’m happy with the results and I sure learned a lot.

One phase of the design was to come up with a signature image for the site. I searched and I searched for a stock photo, but I couldn’t find one image I could just buy and use as is. So I ended up buying two – and then tried to figure out how to use Adobe Photoshop to combine the two images.

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Posted by Richard Bloch

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