Apologies if this isn't the right place to post this, but I see plenty of technical items being discussed here but very little design-related ones. As someone who keeps a site up together I wondered what you other webmasters/designers out there had an opinion on this issue:
For some reason something I have been interested in over the last few weeks is the way many static sites are trying to ape the look of generic blog sites, you know, sometimes massive mastheads, big text, big buttons with plenty of clear space around, the use of vignettes (shading graduations) and lots of light blues / lighter colours on white backgrounds.
Born05 and
Smashing Magazine are prime examples of what I mean by the "Blog" look.
As opposed to
Un.titled.co.u and
designhive.co.uk that has been until now typical of a lot of web high quality considered web design – small text, intricate rollovers tight typography, flash navigation [although Flash is obviously not compulsory in this "look" of course] etc etc.
The above examples are merely selections from my bookmarks, I realise that neither are perfect examples of their respective "looks", but hopefully they are diverse enough that you can understand the underlying question of 'theme' that I am asking without getting too involved with each site's design per se.
So the "blog" look, love it or hate it? Is it really a useability issue or just a trend?