❧ Describe, in your own words

So, I started a blog called 13 Weekends a few weeks ago and it’s been going pretty well. I just posted Week 4’s entry last night.

For this project, I wanted to take a stab at the “art directed” style of blogging (in which each post is uniquely designed). I’ve got five posts under my belt and since this is my “professional” blog, I’ll share some things I’ve learned along the way.

Separate writing from design

I write on Mondays, design and edit on Tuesdays. Separating the design work from the writing work is essential. In the past, I’ve gotten bogged down in the details of what I want something to look like, losing sight of what it was I was trying to say in the first place. Spreading the posting process over two nights lets me focus on what I want to say first, and then worry about how I want to present it second. Also, the writing improves dramatically if you give yourself time to sleep on the first draft.

Art directed blogging is a lot of work

I may have bitten off more than I can chew. I know my way around Wordpress and I know what I’m doing with CSS, and each post still takes somewhere between 6 and 10 hours to write, design, worry about, and publish. I try to keep the designs light, too—each post probably averages only 15 unique CSS declarations. What I’ve learned is that there are many other time consuming aspects of the process: image selection, layout decisions, and of course the inevitable false starts and bad ideas. 

But wait, there’s more. I had intended to use 13 Weekends as a way to get familiar with media queries, too. I wanted to design a desktop, iPad, and smartphone version of each post. But that is proving to be too much to learn on the fly. The homepage has been iPhone/smartphone friendly from the start. The entries… less so, although when I have a free moment I’m going back and adding a few media queries so they are legible. As it stands, I think I’m the only person who’s looked at this site on a phone anyway.

Frameworks and plugins are essential scaffolding

For this project, it might have been better to write and publish flat HTML files instead of using a CMS like Wordpress. But Wordpress I used, and if you do the same, I recommend the following tools:

• Boilerplate—a solid HTML5 “clean start” theme. I created my own child theme, which is where I keep many of the post-specific customizations. This gives me a consistent foundation to build on with each post. 
• Art Direction—essential plugin, and it took me weeks to discover it. It allows you to include unique Javascript and CSS for each post. Hat tip: viewing the source on Trent Walton’s amazing site.
• Typekit—Typekit is a great service, I love it. But it’s not designed for my setup. Until you have a way to deliver post-specific scripts, you’ll end up with one of two undesirable outcomes when working with Typekit+Wordpress: 1) one giant kit that contains all the fonts for all your posts, which adds needless weight to each page or 2) a hacked header.php file in Wordpress that delivers slimmer Typekits depending on the post ID. Not pretty. If you plan to use more than one or two typefaces from Typekit, the Art Direction plugin is essential to keeping page load times down.

Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us

I had hoped that by taking the time to notice every detail about my summer weekends and record it all for posterity, I might have a sense of time slowing down, that I could savor the moment and enjoy my time with Maggie and Charlotte even more. Not true. Summer is screaming by faster than ever. But I’m quite happy I decided to do this project, my hope is that in 10 years it will provide the same satisfaction as the dusty photo albums my parents took the time to put together.