I’ve been meaning to do a review of The Silent K since it’s author asked me too an eon ago. See Krista, I didn’t forget. Since this is both a request, and a personal blog, my criteria for this review are slightly different than me previous reviews. A personal blog should reflect the style of the author. As in the professional or political blog, technical components are important, but style is comes more to the forefront in the personal blog. Krista’s style is in a word… colorful.

Style:
Krista describes herself as, among other things a “hobbyist, photographer, knitter, craftster“, and an “appreciator of aesthetics and art“. Her artistic nature is openly apparent in her blog. It’s theme may change with the season, or more often, but it’s always colorful. Her current theme is nicely done in blues and greens with a nice header image. One of the trademarks of her many themes is the great use of color and imagery in the headers.

• Her use of color is skilled, she’s not afraid of bright colors, but they are always well balanced and thought out
• Uses personal photography often and well
• Layout and typography are very good, her site’s readability is always high - not an unimportant aspect of design
• Good sense of whimsy in her themes - designers shouldn’t take themselves too seriously

Structure:
The Silent K is a WordPress blog which says good things about it’s long term stability. Load time is a bit high at 49.77 seconds on DSL or 162.05 seconds on 56K modem. Huffington Post’s was about half that. This longer time is likely mostly the result of pulling her photos from Flicker.com rather than her own domain.

The coding of the site could use a little improvement, but there is nothing that would put the site or the RSS feeds in any jeopardy. Most of the code issues I see are the result of incorporating widgets and so forth into the sidebar. They can be temperamental, as they’re often coded in the “one size fits all, but nobody well” theory of design.

Content:
Krista writes about art, knitting and other crafts, a little about blogging, and a lot about life. Often humorous, she’s always entertaining.

What I would change:
Krista is an artist, and a graphic designer in the process of becoming. I’m hesitant to suggest much here, I’m more interested in seeing where she goes next. As I’ve written about before, and designer needs to know their tools. Krista needs to continue to learn, and continue to grow as an artist and designer.

Summary:
Web design is artistic talent mixed with technical knowledge and skills. It can be hard to balance those two divergent directions when you’re learning. The Silent K is a very nice blog by someone trying to do just that. I can’t see her design doing anything but improving as her technical skills grow to match her artistic vision. Good luck Krista.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, Is It Just Me?, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, Thought Alarm, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, Conservative Cat, Sujet- Celebrities, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, third world county, Right Celebrity, The HILL Chronicles, Woman Honor Thyself, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, Renaissance Blogger, and The Pink Flamingo, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.