Writers’ Treasure Redesign: Minimalist, Responsive, Better Typography

After nearly a year of waiting, the new Writers’ Treasure design is here. Yup, it’s finally here. After last redesigning this blog way back in December 2010, I started work on this design a year ago, but was forced to put it on hold for my exams (see last article). But now, it’s here. And it looks better than ever, don’t you think?

The key features of this redesign are:

• Minimalist. Over the last year or so, web design trends have rapidly evolved. From clutter and the mess that were three-column designs came minimalism and two-column designs. There’s something so soothing about cream backgrounds and simple two columns… much better than the three-column mess the old design used to be (and not to mention that the new cream background looks so much better than the old oh-so-garish dark blue background). This is a writer’s blog, and now, it really looks like it.

• Responsive. Responsive design. What a buzz word! The days of feature-drained, mobile sites are over. Ever since the technology could be used by a layman, most of the websites have now converted their designs to this new method. The promise is futuristic. Desktop. Laptop. Tablet. Smartphone. Want to see responsive design in action? I’ve now increased the base width of this website to 1140px (before it used to be 940px) but if you still have an old 1024×768 monitor, you can still view all the content without having to scroll left and right. Same goes for tablets. And if you’re on a smartphone, no need to pinch zoom or click the desktop site button (mobile sites are painful to navigate). This is the future of web design.

And Writers’ Treasure is now fully responsive. Everything scales to every resolution (down to lowly HVGA on low-power smartphones to HD screens on the latest smartphones) and scales well. Check it out on various devices and send your feedback!

The last major feature of this redesign is…

• Typography. From the beginning, when I first started this blog, I had an interest in typography. Writers’ Treasure now uses Google Fonts like Open Sans for the content, Open Sans Condensed for the headings and Volkorn for the title. On top of that, things such as line height have been subtly altered for your better reading. The result? A design that makes text look great.

There are still a few finishing touches left for this redesign (e.g. a new subscribe box) etc. But the majority has been done, and I’d say it looks pretty fantastic. What do you say?

What about new content?

Stay tuned for new articles, and more. What do I mean by more? Well, I have tentative ideas to start a mailing list, write an eBook, possibly make a video about software and web writing, and etc. etc. This is going to be exciting. Very exciting.

So, if you don’t want to miss out on the new action, you’d better check if you’re not subscribed for free updates already.