I like a well-organized, well-designed blog. Big Picnic was immediately attractive to me for this reason. It has a simple yet interesting feel. It has a professional look to it, which clued me in that there would be some good writing.
Big Picnic is only a few months old [or, at least only has a few months worth of entries]. It offers commentary on current events, links, and various reviews. The commentary is involved and interesting. An interesting piece is the writer’s contemplation of sumo wrestling. A good percentage of the entries are well written and thought provoking.
Extras include a section of links, ability to post news bits, member listing [those that have accounts], good search capability, a store with Big Picnic merchandise, and categorical archives. There is an About link, but it doesn’t really link to anything that could be construed as informational. One could consider the ability to create an account at Big Picnic an extra, but I found no good reason to create an account. If you want to leave a comment that includes your name, you have to create an account and log in. I’m an instant gratification type of girl, and needing an account to properly comment interferes with that.
I really do like the look of this blog. It’s a clean and professional look, and site navigation is obvious. I do recommend making a change to the archival setup. You have to scroll through six pages before getting to the first post, and I’m not sure that all entries even came up through the archives list. I think I would prefer just a list of titles with the dates. One other thing I would recommend is putting up Next and Previous links with each entry to make navigation just a little friendlier.
I might visit Big Picnic again in the future. The thing that’s stopping me from really being enthusiastic about the blog is my confusion over navigating the archives. Overall, Big Picnic is a good blog and worth a read.