Smashing Magazine did a great post called A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs.
They compare the top 50 blogs’ layout and typography using about a dozen different criteria. Here’s their summary in bullet points:
- large blogs require a multi-column layout solution (usually 3 columns suffice) (58%);
- layouts are usually centered (94%),
- layouts usually have a fixed width (px-based) (92%),
- the width of the fixed layout varies between 951 and 1000px (56%),
- 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content,
- CSS-layouts are used (90%),
- the background is light, the body text is dark (98%),
- the most usual (not necessarily most user-friendly) line length lies between 80 and 100 characters,
- Verdana, Lucida Grande, Arial and Georgia are used for body text (90%),
- the font size of body text varies between 12 and 14px (78%),
- Arial and Georgia are used for headlines (52%),
- headlines have the font size between 17 and 25px.
Silverback – Simple Usability Testing Software
July 25, 2008
Clearleft has officially released Silverback.
Silverback is a Mac desktop application designed to make website and application usability testing easy to manage. It captures everything that is happening on the screen and uses your web cam and microphone to record users’ reactions and comments. Usability test can be very expensive and time consuming, but now designers can conduct tons of casual, quick tests with out having to hire an outside firm. I can’t wait to start playing with it
…And it’s only $49.95.
Check out this video for a demonstration:
Cincinnati’s Barefoot Aquired by BBDO
July 14, 2008
Yesterday Cincinnati agency Barefoot made a press release announcing that they have been acquired by New York-based BBDO. Doug Worple, Barefoot’s Founding Partner and Chief Creative Officer will stay on as the head of Barefoot and join the board of Proximity (which is apparently part of BBDO). BBDO has 287 offices in 77 countries is owned by the giant holding company Omnicom Group.
I think I got that right. Following all of the “who owns who” of the media and advertising world can get a little confusing. I think it means Barefoot and Budweiser are now owned by the same company. 
