I am still interested in the question of why and how people choose to read a blog. I believe there is a something to be learned from the marketing world. I found several articles that appear inter sting. The first is on how incredibly fast most people make decisions as tho whether they will stop at a site, which is must be driven by the visual. There seems to be some debate about the actual time frame, but no matter what, it is very short. There is also a book , see review, on the issue and the focus appears to be visually based - color and clean lines. I thought this academic article was also interesting.

There is also this blog about the the visual being as important as the writer’s content.