Plain text web design

June 18, 2024

Making your own website is not for everyone. What it means to create a website has changed as time goes on. The iPhone launched. Software is eating the world. And yet while it is necessary for everyone to use the web, the skills and experience to code a site yourself are not obvious for most people. I’ve never been paid for web design, but as a long time casual user and creator of basic websites, I have a preference for sites who design for text first.

How the words and text appear on the page affect how a website works, but also how it functions for the user. These details may seem minor but often people leave out or make it difficult to find the information they are looking for.

Chris Corsano, a percussionist on a long tour at the moment puts all of the information you need right on the front page without making the user navigate again. I heard he is playing a show, so I visited his website and it lists every show he has booked.

Make the text small enough so there is dense and easy to scan. Don’t make the text too big. If the user wants to make the text bigger, they can. Use regular text, not images with text in them. The act of using plain text sounds almost too simple. And yet you need not be flashy. Plain text loads fast. Much faster than JavaScript or burying information in an image. Darrell’s Tavern in Shoreline, a dive bar with frequent live music puts all of their shows in a single list you can easily scroll through and scan with minimal effort.

These are the ideas behind my design for the blog here. I put the finishing touches on the footer with an unobtrusive horizontal rule and also styling for the links so they match the monochromatic tone of the main text.