How Thinking About Blog Design Reveals Moral Questions

Last week I posted some preliminary thoughts about this blog’s future and it’s a topic I want to revisit every week or so as I start redesigning this site and rethinking its future. Today I’ve been pondering what a “good” blog might look like.

Metropolis magazine is a rewarding read on architecture and design. The current edition talks about what good design might look like, especially in our current moment of “…deeper cultural anxiety about consumerism.” They suggest 10 “urgent criteria” for good design,

Sustainable
Accessible
Functional
Well Made
Emotionally Resonant
Enduring
Socially Beneficial
Beautiful
Ergonomic
Affordable

Although Metropolis is arguing for these categories to be applied to physical design, I believe they are relevant for our thinking about social media as well. In the same way that design and architecture are responses to physical problems, blogs and social media are responses to communication (and cultural) problems.

“There are no solutions to design problems. There are only responses in the form of arguments.”

So, right up front, I want to ask what is the problem that blogs are trying to answer and more specifically, what is the problem my blog could answer? Without a sense of that, it’s impossible to present an argument for what a good or bad blog might look like, or more importantly, whether my blog is good or better in the it’s new form than in the current or past forms.

With that in mind, my task over the next week will be to come up with some words that could form a criteria for what a good blog might look like.