What I fear… is that perhaps Instapaper, Reeder, Safari Reader, Readability, NetNewsWire, Google Reader, Flipboard, and any other app that allows you to read a site without seeing the actual site are starting to chip away at the personalities each site offers.
They are making the web a bit bland.
Ben goes on to say that, in the future, he’s going to endeavour to read every site in its native context – i.e., reading the pieces on Daring Fireball by actually typing www.daringfireball.net into the browser, instead of consuming those pieces through an intermediary service or application (i.e. an RSS feed reader). By doing so, Ben hopes to better understand the “voice” of the bloggers he follows by fully immersing himself in the design of their sites.
That’s interesting, but there are a few things worth keeping in mind. First, I’d argue that the only thing worse than bland is illegible – and the truth is that the vast majority of web pages are styled so as to make the core content virtually unreadable. The writers Ben follows are almost all design-savvy – most bloggers aren’t. At least one of the selling points of (most) RSS readers is that they can rescue poorly-presented content and display it cleanly. Not all great writers are great designers, so reading their pieces through RSS actually allows me to better focus on their voice, by stripping away design that might otherwise lead me to presumptions of amateurism.
Second, I’d argue that the real uphill battle right now, if we want to make the web less bland, is in convincing bloggers to move away from generic themes and templates and toward unique, original designs that make their sites feel cosy and intimate. If you move into a house, the first thing you do is make it your own, but so many bloggers seem content to jam their writing in the digital publishing equivalent of an aseptic display home. If you typeset your blog in Georgia or Helvetica or Times New Roman, have you actually considered how those fonts support your voice? Perhaps what you’re trying to say might sound better in a contemporary slab serif, with a punchy condensed sans for headers? If a stranger visited your blog right now and didn’t read a word, would the design be enough to tip them off about who you are: your personality, beliefs, values?
If you want to succeed as a writer online, do you need to know design?