Well, a-loooo-ha! Pessimistic Satisfaction certainly has an upbeat and floral design going on. From the name of the blog I thought I’d be greeted by something dark and gloomy. There’s something vaguely jarring about the color scheme that put me off, and I thought I was in for some boring reading.
Melinda, the writer, is a 17 year old from Australia. It appears that this blog is not even a whole month old, so there really weren’t very many entries to read. Melinda has a nice flow to her writing, and makes even the minutiae of her life seem interesting. I caught a few spelling and grammar mistakes, but nothing major. I do wish Melinda would flesh out some her thoughts – occasionally she hits on something interesting but doesn’t really say much about it.
There is an exhaustive biography section – anything you ever wanted to know about Melinda can be found here. In Pessimistic Satisfaction’s section called “Bits and Pieces,” Melinda links to surveys, her own movie and book reviews, and miscellaneous other things. The blog also has the typical things: guestbook, tagboard, guestmap, and calendar.
I’m not crazy about the design. The background color and the graphics don’t really match very well, and it was bugging out my eyes. Each element separately is fine, but together it’s not good at all. It is unnecessary to have scroll bars all over the place, and really breaks up the screen in an unflattering way. Navigation is a bit confusing – the reader must work to find his/her way around the site. I was unable to locate a link back to the blog section from other sections in the blog, and the link to the archives is hard to find. I recommend making navigation more self-apparent and streamlined. I also recommend coordinating your entire site to match the main page.
I might stop back in a few months to give Pessimistic Satisfaction another read when there are more entries to read. I like Melinda’s writing style, and I think if she finds a design that is more easily navigable her blog could be really wonderful.
Pessimistic Satisfaction