Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

New Blog Design!

cliffski

Well it should be immediately obvious to anybody reading this, that I finally got a proper design for my blog sorted out. It’s been a long time coming, and the blog gets more and more popular over the years, so I thought it was about time I invested in having a theme properly designed and implemented. I admit that I am way too busy with other stuff these days to learn the finer points of CSS and HTML, let alone javascript and flash. it makes much more sense to do what I’m good at, and use the profits from being more productive to hire someone else. That’s just good old fashioned division of labour. If I ever go the extra mile and employ people to write my blog too, you know I’ve sold out. (yes…some people DO so that…)

Quite a few indie devs write blogs these days, and I find a lot of them very interesting and readable. it surprises me that the big companies can’t see through the legal paranoia and allow their lead designers and coders to keep a regular blog. I’d love to read a blog by the lead coder or designer at Maxis. I don’t mean a once-a-month update that has been vetted by three different marketing departments and lawyers, but a real blog, with regular updates on what it’s like to do that kind of stuff.

Anyway I digress… I will have lots of very technical explanations of the inner workings of Democracy 3 coming up. if I ever start suggesting I’ll code Democracy 4, just tell me to have a lie down, and remember how involved this one was…

14 thoughts on New Blog Design!

  1. Very cool redesign. Didn’t you blog about work while at Lionhead? Did they vet your blog?

  3. While for a lot of indies (like yourself), having that kind of connection can be very positive, there is a danger associated with it. Look at some of the problems The Indie Stone had with community management that lead to them hiring a PR person. The more people involved, the greater that danger becomes, particularly when your organisation is large enough that some people aren’t necessarily incredibly invested in the work (it’s just a job) or there is infighting within the organisation. While it might be impersonal, having a consistent, positive message may be the better alternative from the company’s point of view.

  4. In my opinion this new blog design has too much contrast between the black background and the white post box. I would like something a bit more … relaxing!

  6. I mostly like the blog update, but there are a few things I think are worse than in the old design.

    First off, I don’t like that there are only two posts on the front page. I don’t read your blog as regularly as I do some other websites, and it will be a much bigger pain now to go back through older posts to find what I’ve missed. Perhaps you could check your server logs to see how often your typical readers come by and make sure to have at least that long of a span covered on the first page?

    Second, the font being used for your posts (and the comments) has horrible, horrible kerning. That is, the letters of a world like “Democracy” are unevenly spaced from one another (I see a bigger gap between “e” and “m”, “c” and “r” and “c” and “y” than between the other letters). This could be browser or OS specific, so let me say that I’m using Firefox on Windows 7, and I don’t believe I have made any unusual font selections.

    xkcd 1015 is alas all too true. Once you know about kerning, it becomes tremendously distracting whenever it’s done badly.

  9. yeah, I also liked that old pic a bit more, although I’m not sure about the ‘rabbit in headlights’ expression I had :D

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