humanb

Your site could look very nice with a few adjustments.

Font-type – It’s a bit overwhelming. Maybe experiment with just the header in Garamond and use a serif font easier to read like Times for the rest of the site. You don’t want to mix your fonts, but your header can be different.

Font-size – the header font is too big; the size of the rest is a little too big, but might be improved by changing the body font to Times so you can go smaller, or going down a size in Garamond – including in the sidebar headings.

General cleanliness: the site is simple, but it is not calm. There is not enough spacing between everything, and nothing is grounded. I think the site could benefit from the sidebar being clearly delineated somehow. Many modern sites let it float, but they place the sidebar to the right so the text creates its own straight vertical line to separate it from the body.

Any other comments
For the sake of cleanliness and calm:

1 The top of the site feels a bit bunched. Maybe add some padding above the header and some padding between the header and the body.

2 Consider extending the black lines beneath the header all the way over on each side, and moving the Hart publishing graphic into the sidebar

3 Consider separating each post with a thin, dotted or solid line – again, making a clear separation and grounding each post

4 Consider not using all caps: not for tags, headings, site title, “Filed in”, etc. It is very “in-your-face”.

5 Consider using the “Read more” link for long posts. You have a lot of text in some of your posts, and you can cut the posts off at strategic points to entice the reader to click for more.

6 If this is to be simple, calm, and intellectual, consider using different link colors – darker, more grey, more subdued colors – including for your hover color.

7 The site might benefit from a background color (light grey for example) that makes the actual webpage a crisp, professional white sheet of paper so to speak.

Hope this helps. You helped me a good deal, and I have since made the other changes recommended.