I’ve decided to give the site’s masthead a bit of a makeover, as the old one was starting to feel more than a little dated. The new one still has elements of the old: the same background image, the guillemet, and a bit of bold-italic verdana being the most obvious examples. But I hope the overall effect is a bit more modern, and a bit more typographically interesting.

The old one (see here) had remained basically the same since 2005 (see here), albeit with various different tag-lines, a couple of different size variations, and a short-lived change of background image. I can’t think of another website that’s had the same basic masthead for seven years – and the last masthead itself was an updated version of the original 2003 logo (see here).

Anyway, I hope you like it. I’m sure I’ll tweak it over the next few days and weeks – the curse of perfectionism, I’m afraid – but it’ll settle eventually!

Those readers who view my posts directly on this site can’t have failed to have noticed a few design tweaks over the last couple of days. I’ve been attempting to improve the readability of the text, and make it easier to delve into the archive. There are a few graphical changes too, to make things look a bit more modern.

A lot of the changes are really tiny – text sizes, contrast and line spacing, for example – but some of the more obvious ones are the improved handling of archive pages (which now show full posts rather than lists of titles), the ability to flick through the blog chronologically, and the vastly clarified “calls to action” under posts on single post pages.

The latter includes one-click access to similarly tagged archive posts. Unfortunately, few of my posts actually have tags, as they’ve never had any practical function from the front-end until now, but I am determinedly ploughing through the archive tagging away.

I hope the changes are to your liking – as ever, I’d be delighted to hear your feedback.

Mango’s new typographically uninspired logo. For comparison with the old one.

I’m always impressed by the typography of Mango’s logo – clearly communicating the letter “M”, as distinct from “N”, using only 3 strokes. Alas, they’re in the process of ditching this logo for an altogether blander alternative.

It’s like they couldn’t decide whether to go for serif or sans, so went for a bit of both.

I’ve made a couple of changes to the site’s layout, of which I hope you will approve.

Most noticeably, I’ve tidied up my handwriting a bit – if only it was so easy in real life! It is still very much my hand, but I’ve straightened out the baseline and reduced some of the letter spacings to more closely reflect actual handwriting. There are a couple of other tiny changes, too – it’s an addictive business, tweaking a font!

Also, I’ve stopped DailyBoothing. I’m not self-obsessed enough to take a photo of myself everyday as it turns out… Though notice that I am egotistical enough to keep a static photo in the corner up there… And to have a site of thousands of pages all devoted to me, of course…

As always, your comments on the above, plus the multitudes of other tweaks around the site, are most welcome!