DeviantART, on the whole, is designed to be highly low-contrast. Some people complain about this, but as part of the UI team here on staff I can say that we do it entirely on purpose so as not to visually overload people and distract from our real offering: artwork.

Still, there are areas where it becomes appropriate to make elements stand out, and one of those areas is the journal. Ideally, a good journal is strong, vibrant, and makes a person enjoy reading what's in it. Granted, my current journal design is a bit harsh on the eyes, so I'll digress a little bit. Your journal design, here, fits in perfectly with the UI of the site, but in my opinion that's actually a negative. While you've done a ton of work to provide people with elements to enhance their journal designs, I think this one in particular is a bit too "blah." You've also made the words per line (the quantity of words in a given line of text) really quite long. The ideal wpl number is 7-12. This is strictly from a legibility standpoint. I suggest adding in some max-widths to keep the copy blocks from getting too large.

After watching Nokari's journal I've found the CSS to be lacking in any originality. Its very basic and seems to be missing something. The impact is minimal and doesn't draw you towards the journal when your on his dA page.

I do like the edit button, but.. since it doesn't work in IE its a useless feature for anyone that doesn't use Firefox. IE and Firefox are the most common browsers and having an application that cross-browse' is an important feature.

Great technique. Which has always been Nokari's strong point. I hope that he utilizes this technique and creates a more impact-worthy CSS in the future.