Thinking Beyond Blog Posts

UPDATE: Changed the link so you can all view the violator design as a post instead of an index page.

June 2010 celebrates the 7th year anniversary of UNO Magazine. I have pages in their tech section and also serve as online editor. Apart from our huge anniversary party happening this month and a really great issue, I wanted to experiment with the contents of the site. Web 2.0 pretty much “templated” everything on the Internet so I decided to break away from that to do some customized CSS.

If you’ve read the special ‘Mystery’ issue of WIRED Magazine guest edited by J.J. Abrams, he talked about the challenge of editors to creatively maximize a 9×12 space for a print cover. It’s the same with blogs and the like, where you’re limited by a more erratic display of pixels that translate to media. Since templates have become a status quo, breaking it creates value.

CLICK: THIS

For June, this is UNO. Nowhere else to go (the links all still work of course). As the days pass, we’ll have a series of these up. Enjoy!

I think it was in the ‘Mystery’ issue of WIRED where guest editor J.J. Abrams talked about the challenge of editors trying to fit content into a 9×12 piece of canvas. That’s the playing field right there: after you recognize that as a rule, you get to do anything you want — even break it. It’s the same with blogs and the like: you have a screen in front of you and you have the infinite resources of creativity to do what you want. CSS and blogs invented templates. And that’s a good thing. But at the same time, you’ve just invested in the double edged sword of commodity. If you really want to capture, maybe it is time to do something different.