I’ve changed my blog design for the third time, but I feel this one will stick. I wasn’t happy with the centre-column format of the last design, or the black background. This new design, a heavily-modified free Revolution theme from Chicago based designer Brian Gardner, with its wide left-hand column for the main posts and its tidy two right hand columns and easily formatted style.css, is, I feel, far more professional.
In the Social Media module that I teach on at Sunderland University we debate the importance of the ‘brand-of-me’ approach to online reputation via blogs, posts, social media etc.I found Chris Brogan’s entry through a blog search, asking similar questions and turning them into practical advantage as an individual brand (he’s a social media consultant). And so I went back and had a think about what the goal of my blog was. I realised it needed to be far more ‘professional’ than it currently looked. But what did that mean?We’ve had some interesting discussions in this household as to the nature of what makes a professional aesthetic. Why sans serif is better than serif (or vice versa, if you believe the opposite) and why the discarding of a patterned background makes for a more professional platform to publicize my work. It does all hinge round the sense of how aesthetics enters into the ideal of the term ‘professional’. There are some interesting discussions on this, for example, the need for a black aesthetic in graphic design.
For me, the issue recalled a day in my last job when a good friend and colleague called Chris Wild took us through a values session at an away-day where the outcome was that the word and term itself, ‘professional’, doesn’t really mean much. I fully agree–what does it mean to be ‘professional’? For a values-led group of people, the ideals of honesty, integrity and passion, particularly that last one, can often be at odds with the need to remain ‘professional’ (not to rock the boat, to be tactful rather than honest, to maintain a cool head rather than lose it to passion). What was left in the professional bucket were the slops of a suit-and-tie attitude, held mainly, across industries, by the people with the power, i.e., those who have most to lose from honesty, integrity, passion…
I feel the blog as I’ve designed it now allows for a more sincere communication of both my personal and professional goals, which are both related to the sense of the honest, passionate and considered communication of ideas of reporting climate change, magazine and new media, the training of student journalists and the other opportunities that I take to communicate and consult around the professional development of research-informed content provision across new media platforms. So, no major changes for a while. Which allows me to concentrate on the content.
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