Why do we need a blog? For expression. What to express is a blogger’s personal right, but most authors expect attracting readers’ interest in this or that degree. And that is right. By and large, a user needs to be cherished and indulged in every possible way. Then he will grow languid from such attention and become not only a haunter but an active commentator. And what else does a real blogger dream of?
However, high-quality indulging of a user is not an easy task for any blogger. Why so?
To give an answer we could have started a diffuse tirade about the greatness of Jacob Nielsen and each of his works separately. But we will not do that. We will simply say: a user must feel comfort and beauty. Now, in the era of the “plush” Web 2.0 design, the latter is especially important.
Certainly, not everyone has a designer talent or a graduation paper from designer courses. There is no money on professional design with all its shades and gradients. What to do? How to make the design “cheap and beautiful”?
The optimal variant in such situation is using icons. But not in the sense of falling down to your knees in the face of the Saints and pray: “Good gracious, give me money for the design!” You need to purchase a set of professionally drawn pictograms and place it in your blog. In spite of a considerably smaller size (both in pixels and in US dollars) icons have a range of advantages to any tough design.
First of all, you cannot do without icons any way - you will have to accentuate at least some places of your blog. The idea to use only one icon is imperfect – to put it mildly.
Secondly, professionally drawn icons magically transfigure the general impression from a blog’s design. Even the tritest standard template is able to “play” if there are quality icons in it.
Thirdly, we can’t help mentioning mass passion for icons. For some people they have become something like a fetish. Those who do not believe in it can try to use a set of cool, professionally made icons in their blogs, and watch the hysteria that will arise in comments: with requests, demands and prayers to inform where and for how much they were purchased, and how many sets are given out to one person.
Fourthly, using a unique set of icons is an easy, fast and cheap way to provide an individual look to your blog. They meet by appearance, that is why you can place original icons in your blog and talk nonsense – no one will dare to dispute against you (probably, we went a little too far, but there is some truth in it).
And finally, icons are simply a matter of image. If in your blog there are unique icons that you purchased from a designer or an e-shop, this will considerably improve your status in the blog-community. In exactly the same way icons taken from a warez-site will influence your image. Only in a quite opposite way.
Thus, icons and a blog is like Lenin and his party: they do not exist separately. Certainly, may be they may be without each other, but it is something else. And let us stop on this flowery phrase.
www.icojoy.com | Krikanov Dmitry
