Traditionally, weblogs are redesigned as a surprise. The person who maintains the site generally toils for a short time and then abruptly unveils the new design, hoping for maximum shock value as the new design hopefully impresses and awes readers. I am going to take a different approach: I’m going to ask what people would like to see.

I have been tinkering with a couple of ideas, but haven’t quite settled on anything good yet. One of them was yellow and black and red – sort of a throwback to an old mikel.org design. One of them is almost identical to this one, but a little cleaner. I’ve also been looking at some of the very white-looking low-contrast text-oriented designs.

So I throw the ball to you: what do you think the next mikel.org should look like? Are there any design elements here that you think should be untouchable – maybe the pencil? From a strict usability standpoint, what do you think it is important to fix? The orange I use, for instance – I know it’s a little bright and hard to read on some Win machines. How about the one lowly table in an otherwise all-CSS design? OK, or ditch it? What do you think?