We should not have to use things that are ugly or unwieldy, kludgy or confusing. For some time I was unhappy with the way that my blog appeared. It was dark and heavy and I think, for some people, difficult to read. I had originally chosen dark colours to make the photos stand out. Visually, I wanted the photographs to be the primary source of light on the browser image. This works great for high contrast, highly saturated images but not so well for a more muted, subtle image and even less well for black and white. Good design is very difficult to do and I am a bit of a hack at it but I feel like I know it when I see it. At least, there are objects in my life that are well designed that I love to use, that I love to hold in my hands, that have an appearance that announces its presence yet fits comfortably into the world in which it exists.

Dieter Rams is really the godfather of modern industrial design and I really appreciate the principals by which he works. Take a look and listen to a few of them. He is a really interesting guy.

I cannot take credit for the design of my blog. One of the reasons that I chose Squarespace to host my blog is because of the very well designed templates that they make available to the user. Very beautifully useful. I took one of their templates and tweaked it a little. I hope it works better for you and is more pleasing to use.

-Russell Berg