For our second peer review, I had the opportunity to explore Kenna Clifford’s Personal/Lifestyle blog: Speculative Fiction. A first look at the site immediately drew my attention to the intro image that depicts a creature of some sort with twinkling lights spread across it. I really admire this choice of image as it’s striking and aligns with Kenna’s blog theme very well. The blog is “an ongoing experimental fiction project living after lights off” that presents readers things to think about before bed.
This is a very clever theme and the design elements mimic this uniqueness. The customization and design decisions create a simple backdrop for the text “Lullabies” and image to pop. This is again rooted in a theme of bedtime thoughts and sleep as it’s not too busy or colourful. The simplicity of a cream background and the choice of Arial font creates a cozy, night-time theme that successfully captures “structure on narrative forms” as the reader’s attention is drawn to explore the page further (Kissane, 2013, para. 5). Kenna has created a theme and narrative through specific blog posts in a very authentic and genuine way. Once again, this illustrates a vulnerability in bedtime stories and before bed thoughts.
As for typography, I would suggest breaking up text boxes and arranging them in a way that is more cohesive to your theme. As your content is beautifully candid and well-written, it would be beneficial to structure your text so that it elicits more emotions and conveys the specific messages. Typography brings the text to life so as Travis Gertz (2015) stated, making clear typography and layout decisions will actually reinforce and support the message that you’re conveying to your audience! So in this way, the content becomes part of the design.
Speculative Fiction has good accessibility features. The font pops against the background making it legible and clear. The links are navigable through both mouse and keyboard (“Tab” function”). Well done! I would again suggest breaking up the text, making the content more accessible.
You’ve really captured the theme creatively and moving forward, I would love to see more images and customization on your site that aligns with the narrative and theme of the blog. I do appreciate how you included little blurbs of text at the end of posts that are like your signature/signing off, such as: “I love you. Have a good sleep.” These design and content decisions are a more authentic approach to human connection according to Gertz (2015).
All in all, the theme is coming along well and looking forward to seeing how your online self develops over the semester!
References:
Kissane, E. (2013). “Contents May Have Shifted” in Contents Magazine 4. Available from: http://contentsmagazine.com/articles/contents- may-have-shifted/
Gertz, T. (2015). “Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse.”
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