Upon first glance, Spreegirl.net resembles countless other online journals. Nothing jumped out at me screaming “Woah, this is something I’ve never seen before.” But it was clean and spare and easy to read and I’ve always maintained that the true value of an online journal lies in the writing itself, so I jumped into the archives to see what the author had to say.
Spreegirl is Ren (short for Erin), an Australian woman in her mid-twenties with plenty to say. Passionate, honest, foul-mouthed and funny, Ren doesn’t hold back. She rarely discusses politics, preferring instead to focus on her personal life. From her rocky relationship with her father to her exasperation with her fiance, Ren lays it all out and she doesn’t mince words. One gets the sense that Ren is a woman who says exactly what’s on her mind, something I find refreshing. I can tell from the snippets of stories she posts that she’s a good writer, but her day-to-day entries have a relaxed, uncensored, rough feel that I like. My personal favorite entries are her work-related rants. She’s a customer service representative who works a helpline and frequently journals some of the more difficult customers she’s forced to deal with. I’ve been there, and I feel her pain.
The author is a quite creative. She’s a photographer, a writer, and a graphic artist. She spends a lot of time creating “dollz”, pixelated figures which I had never really seen much of before. She’s very talented.
The design of the journal itself seems to be a fairly standard, slightly modified Moveable Type template. It’s visually appealing but nothing we haven’t seen before. The author has a ton of personality, and it would be nice to see some of that reflected in the design.
I enjoyed the time I spent at Spreegirl.net. It’s not the most outstanding online journal I have read, and a design that reflects the author’s raucous nature a bit better would be a nice addition, but I’ll be going back for more.The (mis)Adventures of Spreegirl