Blogger Template Designs

A Happy Cog Blogger template.

A Happy Cog Blogger template. Now anyone can have a (standards-compliant) website.

Pyra Labs’s Blogger web software helped make blogging the mainstream phenomenon it is today. Google soon noticed and bought the company. With its May 2004 relaunch, Google’s Blogger reinvented itself to be even more accessible to the non-technical, novice user while simultaneously competing with higher-end, professional blogging products such as Six Apart’s Movable Type.

Good-looking, standards-compliant (XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS layout) templates created by leaders from the world of standards-based design, were a key component of the “new” Blogger. Happy Cog contributed three:

  1. Mr Moto
  2. Ms Moto
  3. Son of Moto

The technical challenge: create CSS layouts that would be tough enough to stand up to the worst browsers still being widely used in 2004. The creative challenge: craft a distinctive look and feel not driven by specific brand attributes or user goals—a “one size fits all ” look and feel, if you will, flexible enough to appeal to almost any blogger, writing in almost any style, on almost any topic.

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Responsibilities

Graphic design, user interface design, CSS/XHTML template development. Launched May 2004.

Selected Work