Our first assignment from Advanced Web Architecture (my wonderfully early Friday morning web design class) is to review three blogs: one pertaining to media, another technology, another entertainment.

I have chosen to review Cartoon Brew as my “media blog”. At first glance it may seem to fall more into the entertainment category but their handle on relevant current events and sharing the history of the medium makes this blog well-rounded and intelligent, setting it apart from many that only concentrate on upcoming attractions and fandoms.

One example of this is a recent article, Luxo sues Pixar/Disney. They were also quick to share the controversial news of Disney’s purchase of Marvel Comics, spurring an amusing collection of commentary artwork. Here’s an interesting article that takes a look at an overlooked part Disney’s history: Disney artists write home during WWII. Also shared are fine art events, such as times and places of particularly interesting exhibitions.

They utilize a two-column design with a simple theme that is clean enough to feel official, yet just stylized enough that it has an appropriately cartoony atmosphere. The tag cloud at the top right of the page brings good balance to the basic header and often colorful content on the left.

The right sidebar has quite a bit of information but is well-organized, containing only relevant tidbits such as well-placed advertising, networking links and plugs for other sites. The navigation is kept easy and efficient with minimal extra pages and a clean design.

Well-organized and always interesting, that blog will always have a place in my RSS feed.

Now that I’ve written about a site I absolutely love, now I’m going to choose one I am not so keen on. I don’t keep up with any techie-type blogs (except maybe Comicpress updates) so I had to do a Google search.

Out of the top results I found when I Googled “gadget blog”, Ubergizmo is the one I felt the least inclined to spend more than ten or so seconds reading… and then I realized that, after such a glowing review of CB, I should perhaps take something I can dissect with a more critical eye.

The content of the website itself is nothing to crap on too much, it’s actually written pretty well and seems to be informative… at least from the bits and pieces I’ve picked up. I had little interest in exploring the content because the design of the site failed to draw me in, but what I read concerning a review of the OneShot Camera concept was intriguing enough.

A common mistake I see in blogs is the failure to really utilize the customizability of blog themes and arrange thing in an organized, attractive manner. It seems unfinished in a lot of ways. The sidebar content isn’t aligned and the bottom of the page kind of drifts off into nothingness. Navigation has been tossed in seemingly randomly in a place I kind of had to search for, and by the time I found the “About” page I had lost interest.

Another trend I noticed specifically in techie blogs is the emphasis on utility-based designs; no non-sense, they tend to be plain and efficient in every way. This works very well for some, but I think Ubergizmo loses that with its hard-to-read lime green on white text and haphazardly added sidebar content and ads.

This site has decent content, a cute logo and a lot of potential. Its design just needs some tweaking, some simple organization would do wonders for them. Kudos for making it in the top five sites on my Google search, though, apparently they’re doing something right!

The last blog I’m going to review is Gorilla Artfare, probably the #1 entry in my RSS feed that I am always excited to check. I’ll throw it in the entertainment category as it’s an artists collective, and many of them do concept art for games and movies and other projects you’d hear about on more general entertainment sites as well.

It’s really hard to find anything critical to say about this blog, but that may also be because I’m biased. Generally it is simple yet tasteful, the focus completely on the art. The sidebar contains little content, only some links to networking sites, the featured artists and friends being of interest. I almost expect more, though I appreciate that they make the effort to exclude advertising.

Some of its best points are also those that I am unsure about upon further consideration. The neutral background color is advantageous for the display of many types of art, but it also manages to turn everything but the content into a sort of beige mush when I’m not concentrating on the design itself. The simplicity of the blog is refreshing, but at the same time I find myself wishing there was some more content somewhere, or some treasure to be unburied like with many art sites.

My only real complaint is the fact that the graphic-intensive entries make for very low loading times at some points and has, on many occasions, caused a bit of impatience. It was worth the wait in the end, but for new readers or people skimming through, that could hurt its draw.

The content is pretty amazing, though, so even if it is slow to load and the design overall not too interesting, I’ll always look forward to the next update.