Rodent Regatta

I’m no designer, but I love good design.

I’m not a web developer either, but I enjoy learning.

For those of you who have never been behind the scenes of a Movable Type weblog, those are buttons associated with the management of a Movable Type weblog.

I cite this as an example of the kind of design I want to build into the next version of this weblog.

I like the following:

• Smaller rather than larger text
• Muted rather than gawdy colors
• Narrow rather that wide columns of text to read
• Clever use of features to get multiple archive options
• Clever use of plugins/CSS to make ”typical entries” easy
• A small calendar rather than solely a list of archives
• Design based upon web standards
• Specifically, XHTML and CSS-based design

I’m adding sites that I like to a reading group inside my RSS aggregator. If you know of sites that specialize in designs like I’m describing, please leave a comment below.

Just to give you an example of how much I like smaller rather than larger, I use a 15” monitor set at a resolution of 1400×1050. Things get pretty small at that resolution.