My first responsive design. How did I do?

[smrf]

I’m a developer, not a designer. But I decided to try my hand at some design because I like learning new things. So I read a few books and redesigned my blog. It’s responsive and should work on almost anything. I had quite a bit of fun with that aspect.

Here is the [home page](http://www.planningforaliens.com/ “http://www.planningforaliens.com/”) and here is an [example post](http://www.planningforaliens.com/blog/2013/04/14/redesign/ “http://www.planningforaliens.com/blog/2013/04/14/redesign/”).

How did I do? Does it look amateurish? Too boring? :-) I’m a complete newbie to design so any feedback will be helpful.

[CrocoDillon]

Doesn’t look amateurish at all :)

I like the colors and the simpleness of the design. But I don’t like the condensed type and losing the `tl;dr` on smaller viewports, some post titles aren’t that descriptive so having the excerpt would help to know if it’s worth clicking on.

[smrf]

Thanks!

I went with the condensed type because the text is justified and at that resolution it started to look bad, the condensed font helped matters quite a bit. It’s definitely harder to read and I agonized over that, but I’ve seen other websites doing it.

Maybe it would be better with a ragged edge and normal font. I’ll give it a try and see. But I like justified text so much… :-)

[CrocoDillon]

I’ve seen other websites doing [this](http://www.lingscars.com/), doesn’t mean I’d ever do it :P

Anyway, I just tested on mobile and the condensed type looks better with high pixel density.

[smrf]

Wow. That’s amazing. I might borrow the singing girl with the megaphone…

[CrocoDillon]

Best website ever!

[Blackhawkso]

Looks nice mate. I don’t know if it’s just me but the site looks like it’s over to the left a little and not centered it might be part of your design but it just looks a little odd if your plan was to have it centered then you need to add a width to the div.content and put an auto on the left and right margin, but the way you are dealing with the list of posts on smaller screens is nice way to go about it.

[smrf]

Yeah, it’s on purpose. I didn’t want it centered like every other site and I thought it would be cool to lay it out like a book page. You are not the first person to react this way, (thinking it looks a bit odd).

I used this idea as a guideline:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3fIL1RkuhKMJ:retinart.net/graphic-design/secret-law-of-page-harmony/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[pkos99]

I really like it!
I think that the second “state”, where each post takes up 100% width should be visible for a little bit longer.
I like the idea of the posts nested in links that you have to click to appear, but those seem to work best <400px and not <1000px.

[smrf]

Cool. I agree with your thoughts and that also ties into CrocoDilon’s feedback about wanting the article summaries at a lower resolution. I’ll have to toy around with some solutions to this problem but at the very least I think I could show the summaries sooner…

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