I am reviewing Ainah Enduma’s blog, lifewithainah.com.

The homepage design is simple but pleasing. I was worried her homepage would look like the examples in Travis Gertz’s article, but I was pleasantly surprised. Most minimalist websites I see opt for a sans-serif font as it looks more “modern”, so it’s a nice change to see her site’s title in a big serif typeface.

Her menu at the top is very simple, it does not have dropdowns to clutter it up. There are very few categories which I feel adds simplicity to the site. However, one critique I have with her menu is that it is not immediately intuitive on how to return to the homepage. I assumed the link to home would be on the menu bar with the other options, so I clicked the symbol to the far left. This symbol did not bring me to the homepage, but instead linked me to her Instagram. It was after this that I realized you must click on the site title to return to the homepage.

I find it a bit strange that “about” is the first section on the menu. The about page on most sites is usually last or close to last on a menu, and the more important items such as content will be at the front. When navigating her site, I kept intuitively clicking on the first menu item to try and go back to the homepage.

Her menu only lets you navigate to pages that have a feed of specific blog categories, instead of letting you view the feed of every blog post regardless of category. To view the full feed, you must return to the homepage, which again, is not very intuitive. Victor Kaptelinin says “good designs are intuitive”, so I would suggest moving “about” to the end of the menu and adding a “home” button at the start. This would make site navigation much more intuitive.

Another small issue is the link to her socials. I only ended up finding her Instagram by mistake while trying to navigate to the homepage. The symbol you click to reach her Instagram is not very clear. I can’t really tell what it is supposed to be. Changing this symbol to something more representative, like the Instagram logo, would be helpful.

These critiques I have are rather minor, and it’s just my opinion. I see in her “about” page that she is a content manager at a brand and web design studio, so who knows, she’s probably more knowledgeable than I am on web design. Overall, her site is lovely. It’s very clean, the navigation is not overly confusing, and she has plenty of content to read through.

This site has a very congruent visual style. The photography in particular is very nice. All her photos match the colour scheme of the rest of the site. It’s the same thing with her posts on social media, they have a very consistent style. The photos are all very light with white/beige featuring very predominantly. Her Instagram looks like it could be a brand page with how consistent she keeps her visuals. Scrolling through it is very visually pleasing. 

The graphics she makes for posts such as “Ways To Take Care Of Your Wellbeing This Month” also align with this visual style. She uses the same serif font as her title which I am a big fan of. Small details like that make the site feel much more polished and professional.

Overall, Ainah has made some great design choices on this site. It’s easy to read and doesn’t make me want to tear my eyes out. She is putting a lot of work into her visuals and I hope to see that continue.