ClearYourMind is our company blog about business, the Internet and everything a "web-guy" loves by Javier Cabrera, owner and principal of Emastudios, a tiny web design agency based in the beautiful caribbean-like Buenos Aires, Argentina.

April 25, 2008

Why Guy Kawasaki Blog Sucks (Big Time)

First of all (and before someone kills me), I respect Guy Kawasaki. And I respect him a lot. Even with that hair, I respect him. He is one of the few people I admire and that actually drain my day-to-day activity into reading his blog rss feed and books. If I have an advice to give to anyone is this: read Guy Kawasaki blog, the man knows what he is talking about. He understands business really well, and although you may not be in the same business as most of his public, listening and reading his blog WILL (pay attention, it’s true!) OPEN YOUR MIND to new ideas and better practices.

For those ones who doesn’t know Guy Kawasaki Blog
http://blog.guykawasaki.com
And welcome to the earth.

That said, now is time for the punch. Guy Kawasaki Blog Sucks, and big time if you ask me. I’m not talking about the content he writes there everyday, but about the blog itself which, believe or not, I designed.

You missed a widget over there Guy!

Last year Guy and I talked about his blog and end up throwing a new design on the table. I was amazed to be able to work with Mr.Kawasaki, a living legend! He is like one of those cool clients you like to have and love to work with; those ones that understand how the work is done and can see beyond what’s going on. Most clients I cross path doesn’t, which isn’t a big deal but when you find those ones that can see the whole picture, you gotta love them because they are rare!

Later this year I contacted him after looking at what was going on with his blog and offered myself to design it again. I even throw a sketch I believe (don’t recall). Maybe I wasn’t in the correct mood, maybe I wasn’t motivated or I just didn’t went far enough, the thing is we call it off and let it as it was. He likes the one he has now (at least that’s what I believe!) and that’s the one that stays there.

Now, I read Guy’s blog through his RSS feed. Actually never visit the site because I read a lot of other blogs feed through Google Reader. If I find something interesting, I starr it and that’s it. I visited today Guy Blog to see how the layout was hanging.

I was horrified.

The content is priceless, but the layout is not coming well. I think Guy is sick with “widgetinitis” which is a new syndrome some bloggers acquire after realizing they can go to some new web application, copy some widget code and paste it on their sidebar or content. The problem is those widgets usually grab info from another place (in some cases in flash) and if you catch that Widgetinitis you end up by having a serious disease in which your blog is cluttered with info and dynamic tooltips (those little windows that appears when you over a link) pulling content from all over the Internet. That end up make things slow!

You simply can’t even scroll at his blog from all the widget mania going on there. If you start moving your mouse, tooltip windows start showing up and loading content there; moving, jumping, biting; it’s a mess!

And it’s a shame, because Guy Kawasaki content is priceless. Those posts should go right into a new book.

It’s your fault Javier

I should have seen the first symptoms but I didn’t. I think I was too amazed working with Mr.Kawasaki. The blog I designed is very far away from what’s there right now. Although, the layout and font choice is the same; I didn’t plan for the future in that case. Major screw up, sorry. My fault. My design should have been more flexible with what was going on at that point (facebook, youtube, all social networks, etc). I needed to do a more flexible layout, even more clean; maybe I should have made some areas there where he could throw widgets without blocking the reader’s view. Is not totally lost, but damn; it isn’t also easy to read.

Conclusion

Always be ready for change. Prepare for change, even in design. Embrace change. A blog can add a new feature that will come up next week. A “share this” that takes the whole screen, or a new “comment on video” and will break your whole layout. The only way of make a move before that happens, is having everything ready for the unexpected. When I re-designed Guy’s blog I didn’t thought about future. When I designed this ClearYourMind blog, I thought about future and understood that the only way of going along with change is by leaving some space for it to come.

Javier Cabrera
From the EmaStudios HQ.

Follow us on Twitter for more productivity, business and Internet posts at the "DonCabrera" tweet!

Viewing 121 Comments

 
close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Copyright EmaStudios 2008 | Legal notice