Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Energy Efficient Blog Layout Design?

A long time ago I remember going to a blog-layout site that advertised "green" layouts. "Green" meaning eco-friendly. This was a foreign notion to me and I didn't really read too much into it other than noticing all the layouts they had available were black or dark. In re-designing my blog layout, I randomly remembered about this and wanted to learn more about it.

Here's a few things I found out:

  • Reduction in energy usage can be obtained by designing web sites that use darker colors or shades, particularly within sites’ backgrounds.
  • According to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, “White and bright colors (especially in backgrounds) can use up to 20% more power than black or dark colors.”
  • Your screen is composed of pixels, and the color of each pixel is determined by the amount light passing through it: white is 100% light output, and black is zero. The takeaway here is that for certain types of devices (e.g. projectors, older monitors, and LED screens), brighter colors consume more energy than darker colors
  • If you’re viewing these websites on a state-of the-art LCD screen, the difference in color amounts to pretty much nothing. But with old-style CRT monitors (which are still heavily used) and even LED monitors (which are increasingly being adopted) —the impact of color is significant.
  • If you want to save energy while searching the web, try Blackle, a black-bacgrounded version of Google.
  • While there is controversy over whether a black color palette is more energy efficient than light colors on a website, there are still proponents of the darker website design.
Sources:
http://www.sproutreach.com/blog/design-for-environmental-causes/energy-efficient-web-design/
http://blog.opower.com/2013/06/saving-energy-by-design-how-simple-considerations-by-web-designers-can-shrink-the-internets-energy-footprint/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/20/making-the-web-a-better-place-guidelines-for-green-web-design/

I have an iMac which has an LCD screen so I guess the color difference is "pretty much nothing," but I figure if other people viewing my blog might have different kinds of screens, it would be good to revamp my layout to be more energy efficient and thus, more eco-friendly.

So I went from a super bright-based layout...



...To what I have now. I opted for a dark background but of course had to have a pop of pink :P

What do you think of the idea of "green" blog layout design?
Is your layout energy efficient?


3 comments :

  1. Definitely interesting! Mine is definitely not energy efficient.... Haha, change is nice though! Great post :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hehe I love your layout! Now I miss my light & bright pastels XD

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  2. Thanks , I have just been looking for information approximately this topic for ages and yours is the greatest I have found out till now.

    ReplyDelete

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