I know am, dead tired actually. Everything’s rounded these days, sometimes with a touch of gradients for depth. There’s nothing wrong with it, technically, I do it as well since it just plain looks good sometimes, but I do feel that especially blog design have gotten into a slump.
I blame Kubrick.
If you’re thinking “The what now?” then you haven’t paid much attention to that default WordPress theme. It isn’t bad, it’s just old and in desperate need of a refreshing update. Or an honorable farewell, perhaps. It’s a bit stunning that they stick to it as the default theme really. Just look at the way it displays tags, as of WordPress 2.3 – a boring centered list below the post. It feels thrown in there, which it probably is.
While it might not be Kubrick that is responsible for all these rounded corner blog design today, it sure has been putting them in a limelight. Yes, it was new and cool, and rounded is the shape of Web 2.0 as well.
But enough is enough.
I’m not saying that you should go all blocky on me, dear designer reader, but maybe you should stop and think before you do yet another rounded box. Consider other forms, consider squares and uneven forms that might or might not bring lots of problems with your CSS coding, since there isn’t a billion tutorials covering that particular form out there.
Solve it. That’s the way we used to do. You see, when 28.8 kbps modems were king, we did table layouts and solved every weird little problem without Google. Without frameworks and CSS magic, Ajax and IE hacks.
Those weren’t the good times, don’t get me wrong here. They weren’t the lazy times either.
Screw the rounded corners in your next design. I dare you. Maybe that particular project will prove to be an eye-opener. Because you know as well as I, that it’s way too easy to just slap something together in Photoshop, rounded with gradients and big fonts, a bit of Helvetica and a touch of Georgia and you’re there.
That might be all right, but it won’t help you evolve as a designer.
Grow Grow Grow, wails PJ Harvey. Don’t mind if I do.
Originally posted on November 2, 2007 @ 6:23 pm