To me, a good blog is all about passion, and an exceptional design of course. Readers want a blog that speaks to them through dedicated, intense, and intelligent writing about a favorite topic.  Readers also need strong visuals to back up the written section and to make skimming simpler. A blog has to be easy to read and be about an enjoyable subject.

Take  deadspin.com as an  example (a sports, parody blog). A reader will first look at headlines and pictures before taking the leap into an article. The current headline is “Madden Fumble Lasts More Than 9 Minutes,” and contains hilarious animations of players unsuccessfully trying to pick up a football. This immediately catched my eye and proceeded to waste 9 minutes of my life that could have been used to work on this blog post.

Deadspin is full of obnoxious articles that are enjoyable to read. This sports blog does a great job of including images and clips to catch one’s eye and makes the website pop. In “Why We Love Beautiful Thing” by Lance Hosey, Hosey states that the human brain is drawn to beautiful designs. The same can be said for a website. A website that is beautifully designed with photographs and appealing headlines will draw more readers.

Espn.com is another example of a fantastic website. These articles are more serious and informative, but are still very interesting and easy to read. The writing itself, is very strong  for the avid sports fan. Writing is  extremely important to any kind of website or blog. In “Organic Writing Uprising: Third-order Thinking in the Digital Humanities” by Sean Michele Morris, he compares the writing process to the growth of an organic plant.

“There is not one right way to evolve. Growth is determined by the encouragement and critique of the community.” In the same way that a tree may grow, a writer and his or her writing will continue to improve over the course of a period of time.

My hope is that over the course of this blog, my writing will continue to grow in the same way.