Good Blog! Now stay!

Copy this link for a short URL

August 5, 2009 at 3:21am

This blog rated B for Brown!

Yesterday, I wrote about the tragic losses our community has suffered. Like an Oscar’s death montage, displaying all our recently not-blogging bloggers on display, we must move forward to the awards (and discuss who got the most applause… I didn’t know they were gone etc.). Now, I’d like to dissect one of the good ones, one who’s fighting for the right team.

His name is Matt Brown of Things That are Brown. He is a friend of mine. That’s full disclosure assholes. But just because he’s a friend of mine doesn’t mean I have to like his blog, let alone his writing style. If T.S. Eliot rejected Animal Farm then I think I can tell a friend he should stop writing and stick to designing. The stakes are much lower, and the repercussions much smaller.  Granted, I think April is a rather kind month.

So, as all good friends must, I’m going to dissect his writing style publicly and explain why this type of writing is still necessary and why we’re at a loss for the people who have stopped.  I’m going to use this post.

Style.

While I abuse hyperbole as if it were my mistress in Brazil, Matt has a very short concise style. Most of his posts aren’t long, but it’s not a tumblelog. In his scriblings, Matt usually offers the following.

• An engaging personal insight
• A practical analysis
• A strong, well-founded opinion.

An engagement, like none other.

The everyman approach is what blogging is all about. Providing an enriching personal experience that we all can learn from or relate to is important. After all, it’s your blog and it’s important that you’re on it.

Matt pulls these kinds of personal insights or revelations like petals from a flower: “I don’t have a formal background in type, but I do know a good typeface when I see one.”, I’ve been itching to really experiment and push myself by ‘going big’ with type and using it as a graphic callout.”

It’s enjoyable to see people write like this because it’s so personal. Now Matt doesn’t disclose a lot of really personal information, like his addiction to huffing African elephant ivory grounded into a powder, but he does give us enough to understand him.

Bruce Springsteen does it. Yeah, he wrote “Born to Run”, but he also wrote this crap. So why the hell can’t you do it?

Practical, by any other name, wouldn’t be practical

One of the many insights Matt offers is practical advice. Practical advice can range from a code snippet to an idea that has application and contextual understanding behind it. It can range from a CSS Technique to a philosophical approach for handling a type of client or firm. Keith Robinson was awesome at this. May his blog RIP.

Matt’s posts usually offer this in spades, and here are a couple of his gems: “This draws a lot of focus to the copy, which is exactly what I wanted to do with Tiff’s wonderful callouts and headings.”, “Many of the conventions and patterns we use on a ‘standard’ website don’t apply to a single page site. Navigation, plopped into the site header? Well, you really don’t need much navigation on a single page site”

A strong, well-founded opinion.

Blogs, or the craft of web development and design blogging, are primarily about weighted opinions. They help clarify the subjectivity in the subject matter or point us in our own direction. There are very technical blogs, which use code to express a point, or very design-y type blogs, which use a jpg to explain design.

The opinion of a blogger, especially in our industry, is weighted by the work he has done, the material he has written. In Matt’s case, he has a very strong portfolio, so you sense that he has authority on what he speaks. They’re weighted opinions, but they’re not the truth, for many of these topics, code, design and the like, are subjective. If you don’t think code is subjective, by the way, you’re an idiot and your code looks like crap.

That being said, there is an authoritative voice which great bloggers have, where you want to be able to create like they do.

Take for example, these gems from Matt, which are founded in experience and personal belief but are sound reasoning: “You may find that imposing a little constraint makes you a more disciplined designer.”, “When you get your hands on a good font, you can let it do the talking.”, and “One thing that great web app companies do well is humanize their interface copy.”

Magic.

This.

This is what I’m looking for. Where are my Matt Browns?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen: Show me your links. Shamelessly self-promote. This is the forum. This, our darkest hour.