I found this interesting article that discusses the concept of a "blogazine". The central idea is that a blog is laid out more like a magazine, so the layout of each post changes to match the content of the post. I found it interesting because I'm considering launching a new site in the coming months that will feature a more journalistic-style of writing, and I'm thinking of taking this layout route.

One of the writers/designers discussed was Jason Santa Maria, who has a pretty interesting blog, both in terms of content and layout. Here are some examples:



Another one I liked was Dustin Curtis, whose work looks like this:



There was one quote that stood out to me in the article:

What if a print magazine used the same template for every article? It would be pretty boring, no?

What do you think? Should a blog post look the same on every page, or should each post be styled appropriately?

I do like sites a f*ck lot more when each and every page doesn't look the same. No idea how you'd do it with something like WP, but hand coding would be easy.

That blog by Dustin Curis = fantastic and amazing to no end.

I think the article's discussion about "long" blog posts is interesting. As a kid, I always hoped to be able to make a living as a writer, possibly for a magazine or newspaper. Unfortunately, I was born about 10-20 years too late, and print journalism is on its way out. But I don't think our online media has really filled the gap. Blogging showed promise, but I think it's turned into a medium in which "shorter is better" and people tend to regurgitate almost every thought they have, without really thinking about it. For personal blogging, that's okay; but I think that more "professional", informative, "journalistic" blogging requires a bit more thought. I think that professional bloggers should put the same time and effort that they'd put into writing for a print publication into their online writing. And I think that the Twitter model of posting a thought in a constrained, 140-character limit, or the Tumblr-style blogging of reposting the content of others, lacks some importance and relevance. I think the "blogazine" format is a good way to bring the professionalism of print publications into the online sphere.