Blog design has sure come a long way and then some in the last 17 years. Trends have come and gone (Do you remember those hideous tag clouds?), while a few innovations have helped blogs remain the best way to engage an online audience through telling stories and providing thought leadership.
Earlier this year we decided to rethink our product line-up and create a new primary offering that focused on the fundamentals of a solid blog. After 15 years of designing thousands of blogs, we decided it was time to take everything we have learned and create a design we would love to use on a daily basis.
And so we created Wrigley, a new, best-in-class experience with a priority on simplicity. It’s a design that showcases the content in as few elements as possible, giving priority to typography as the key feature. We looked over the font families used in the best editorial experiences all over the globe. In the end we chose a type family created by an Italian designer for an Italian foundry. The typeface has a tall x-height, roundish features and calligraphic terminations, which come together to provide a better reading experience.
Wrigley is a simple yet striking design that loads fast because it requires less code. The limitations in this new design are purposeful. What you see is what you get. We reduced the options down to almost none so you can focus on publishing. There is no logo to make bigger. No taglines to edit. No buttons to select. And only one color choice.
The layout encourages browsing and exploration through exposed navigation to all of your topics and a third list for promoting other blogs—like the old days when blog authors sought to help promote other authors and create a community.
What you are seeing is our best foot forward in blog design. The greatest part is that we’re not finished. We have more ideas and more refinement to do, but this is our minimum viable product. And we’re putting it to the test the best way we know how, on our blogs: Kevin O’Keefe’s industry-standard, Real Lawyers have Blogs and a new team publication called 99 Park Row. In the month of June, you may see slight changes here and there as we progressively evolve this new offering.
We hope you like it, because we love it! And it’s just going to get better from here.