Gift Giving Guy

Note: This post refers to a past blog design.

“Simple design, intense content.” That’s how renowned information designer Edward Tufte summarized the goal of his work. Inspired (and humbled) by Tufte, I’ve made some minor design changes to this blog over the weekend. First, I’ve added three major category links to organize my posts, found under the knight-and-rose masthead:

• Gift Ideas & Advice
  Gift brainstorming with links to purchase, gift theme and presentation ideas, links to other recommended gift guides, and gift guidelines and etiquette.

• Giftology
  What is gift giving? What can we learn from current giving research in sociology, economics, psychology and other disciplines?

• Shopping Topics
  Consumer surveys, top retailers, shopping innovations and notable gift e-commerce web sites.

Then I promoted two features to the top right column: the blog search engine box and the link to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed. I also added a link for the Five Most Popular Posts, drawn from Google Analytics web metrics. To simplify the right column, I switched the lengthy label list (72 labels!) to a tag cloud. Tag clouds rely on font size and color to emphasize the most frequent topics covered at Gift Giving Guy.

Next, I customized two kinds of bookmark images. I posted a new favorite icon for those readers who kindly bookmark this site. And for Apple iPhone/iPod Touch users, I’ve created a WebClip bookmark image that appears when using the “Add to Home Screen” feature.

Finally, I closed the design with a footer, offering links to the top of the blog, “Why Gift Giving Guy?,” “Subscribe to RSS feed,” “Five Most Popular Posts,” and “Disclosures.” I hope these tweaks improve your visit to Gift Giving Guy.