The Boidem doesn't use a background image, or graphic navigational buttons. Horizontal lines and a consistency in type size are about all the basic design elements that show up in the columns. Still, quite a number of graphic images have appeared throughout the 42 columns.

Altogether, 35 comics, or cartoons, have appeared on the Boidem's pages. Twelve of these were in the first 21 columns, and 23 in the second 21. Quite obviously, as time as gone by I've allowed myself to integrate more and more comics into the columns. On the other hand, numerous columns have no graphic additions at all, and I include comics (scanned from my personal collection) only when they are actually fitting to the topic under discussion. Other than in the first column, where the comics themselves were the topic, they have been used quite sparingly. As the columns have developed, the comics have found themselves less on the main column page, and more on linked internal pages. As I have found myself trying more and more to add elements of surprise to links from a column, I have found that I also try to embed the comics a bit removed from the main column in order to allow the reader to discover them.

Twenty-four additional non-comic graphics have appeared in the column. During the first year most of these were basically cosmetic additions, placed where they were to try and brake the monotony of text on the page. But as I realized that I actually preferred that monotony to the busy-ness of decorated pages, the use of these elements declined. The graphic elements of the later columns (18 since column 21) are on the whole scanned photographs of items that relate to the more personal aspects of the columns: a photograph of my mother's house when she vacated it, a photograph of the first room in which I lived in Israel, and the like. I have found that I enjoy including these elements, but also that I have to restrain myself at times. The Boidem has grown into something "personal" but it is definitely not a "personal web site".

Go to: A bit of Boidem chronology, or
Go to: Staking yet another middle ground, or
Go to: What a difference a da... makes, or
Go to: Trying to make some sense out of all this, or
Go to: An introduction to the extroduction, or
Go to: Web Essays - The evolution of a (personal?) medium