Wednesday, June 10, 2026
You can tell it's a personal website because it has personality
Gordon McLean and Case Duckworth had a good back-and-forth about typography and layout. Gordon says you should make your website uncluttered and easy to read. Case says there are reasons why you might not want to do that.
Read for yourself:
Gordon: Sort your sites out!
Case: Your sites are fine!
Gordon: Your sites are OK I guess
As you can see from my own recent posts, I’m with Gordon. Check out Go big (with serifs) or go home or How to make your blog or forum post hard to read.
But I do understand one of Case’s main arguments. A messy, hard-to-read blog not only stands out from the corporate web, it can be a way of taking a stance.
Weirdness has more than aesthetic value; it’s also praxis: all deviation from expected corporate norms contributes to a website’s illegibility by the Algorithm. Thus, a “weird” layout is an expression against the commercial web just as much as it is an expression for the author’s own tastes and creativity.
That got me thinking about the difference in appearance between personal and corporate websites. It’s easy to tell which is which, but how?
Some are indeed intentionally weird, or apparently have little talent for design. But others are slick. They are created by people who obviously know a lot about design. Still, you can tell they’re all part of the small web.
What they have in common is that they are a reflection of someone’s personality. Some people have odd personalities, and that’s fine. Others love fine typography, and that’s fine, too.
A beautiful site that’s easy to read might be the product of someone who is comfortable with the corporate world, but not necessarily. Instead, it may simply show an allegiance to their craft.
Principles of design and typography have been honed over hundreds of years. Those who learn them care about something bigger than what is implied by corporate or commercial.
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