Applying The Principle Of Kaizen To Weblog + Website Design July 24, 2006
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One of the most overwhelming aspects of publishing multiple blogs is coming up with suitable page themes. Sure, there are loads of free theme templates available, but you probably want to customize it to give it your own “brand”. If you have limited time, resources, or skills for improving your current design, consider applying the principle of Kaizen.
Kaizen is a Japanese word for a Chinese concept. Essentially, it translates to “improvement by slow, steady degrees.” Application of this concept is the main reason I don’t worry when friends tell my blog designs are ugly. Yeah, I know the stats about how design will make a difference as to whether people will stay on your site or not. However, since a great deal of my traffic (at least on other sites, and not necessarily on this site) is from search engines, visitors are searching for content, not necessarily eye candy.
So I’ve tried to be pragmatic about the whole design thing, which is part of the essence of Kaizen. I only have so much time and absolutely no budget. I’m a disciple of the school of bootstrapping life. As such, I try to start by picking a basic theme and tweak a bit of the CSS (Cascading StyleSheets) code first. Anything design changes that will require adding code or spending time designing and creating graphics has to come later.
However, I do have a design goal in mind for the future, for each of my sites, and I have an implementation plan for each, which I’m working on in small steps. It helps to sketch out a design that you are aiming at. (I prefer my Moleskine-style sketchbooks, but any blank pages will do.)
Corporations may think they need to spend loads of money getting their website visuals done fast, to “get out there”. But for a lowly blogger like myself, the slow, steady Kaizen approach lets me test small changes and easily rollback if necessary.
- Posted in : Visuals, Web design, Branding
- Author :rdash
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