Monday, February 14, 2011

Holly Blog Templates! If you can't read it, don't use it!

I was updating the template for one of my blogs.  Wow!  That took much longer than it should have.  It is so easy to get lost in the choices and it takes time to figure out how to change the exact text or back ground that I am looking for.

While doing this I remembered a rule that I always used when creating marketing materials when I was running brands, but had some how forgotten.  "If you can't read it, don't use it."

There are so many pretty font styles and colors.  You don't want your pages to be too cluttered, so you just make the font a little smaller.  There is almost always more that one wants to say than their is space.

At the end of the day, marketing materials -print or digital- are intended to communicate.  If the communication is hampered by the style, color, size, or space, the stop and figure out something else.

I really wanted to use what I thought was a cool chique black and grey template.  WHAT A MESS.  It was really hard to read.  When I would "share" a story to curate, the text came in black  Which was very difficult to read on a dark gray background.

Finally, I just gave up and made it very simple, white background with black text.  Sometimes the tried and true is the very best solution.

Anyway, what really made this whole ordeal funny is that I had a comment pending (from Oct. - sorry @epatientdave).  He really made me feel that all my work was worth it with a comment he made about  how awful the template was.  He thought something bad had happened to his computer when he viewed my Digital Health Revolution blog.  Sooo glad I had already updated the template before I read his comment.

Glad to share a funny and somewhat embarrassing story about myself.   Would love to hear about comical blogging stories from you too!

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