I’ve been a long time user of services such as Instapaper and Readability, and that’s because it’s so hard to read on the web. Small and bad typography. Loads of ugly and irrelevant advertising. Rows of “Share this” buttons in every post. Overally, really bad design.

It seems to me that if people wasted their time on creating better content and less on making their websites look like Times Square, the web could be a better place to read and learn. Dmitry Fadeyev of UsabilityPost recently wrote a great post entitled A Motive For Bad Design, which expresses my thoughts perfectly:

[…] if the publisher really wanted to teach or inform, then they wouldn’t need all those links and ads around the page. The article would be the primary focus, and after the reader finished reading they should not be compelled to read something else, they should be compelled to go away and reflect on what they’ve learned and put it to use.

He goes on by saying that pageviews are no longer what he cares about in his blog:

The focus of a blog should be either to teach, inform or entertain others, or to learn yourself, and both of these things are much more valuable than the pennies you get paid for cluttering your pages with ads.

This is one of reasons why I want to keep The Pilcrow clean and simple and only post when the content is worth my readers’ time. And judging by the design and content of UsabilityPost, I’m glad to notice that Dmitry feels the same way.