You may not be a graphic designer, and fortunately you don’t have to be to get a nice design for your blog. Thankfully, there are a variety of places you can find templates for your blogging platform of choice.
Blogflux has a great directory for themes, as does Wordpress.net. Design Disease, the designer of all the Bloggy Network blogs, has an amazing collection of designs, and there are countless others. The problem you’re going to run into, typically, is not that you can’t find a design that’s right for your blog, but that you have too many choices, and can’t narrow it down to what will suite your site the best.
With that in mind, let’s talk about what works, and what doesn’t work, in blog design.
There are some wonderful - and some terrible - blog designs out there, and its really important that you look long and hard before picking the right design for your blog.
Here are some things you need to keep in mind before you make your selection.
Content is Key
The content of your blog is 1,000 times more important than the look of your blog. Now I don’t say that to mean that you can simply stick with the Wordpress default blog and expect to be successful. Your blog does have to have a visually interesting appeal, and does need to be distinctive, but the most important thing is that your readers can easily see, and easily read your content.
Simple is Better
There are some amazingly beautiful, and amazingly complicated looking blog designs out there. You can find some that are so visually stunning they will blow your mind, but you have to think to yourself before you apply one of them to your site - is this simple enough?Is it easy for your readers to navigate? Can they immediately find the content, or will they be distracted by a giant header image?
The simpler your blog design is, the better off you will be. Take a look at few example blogs from popular online ‘WebCelebs’. Robert Scoble’s blog is almost blank, Jason Calacanis is similar, but slightly more complicated and sporadic. I think both blog designs do a good job of not only making the content easy to find, but they also represent the personality of the blogger. Which happens to be our next topic...
Make it Personal
Your personality is key to the success of your blog. Sure, some of the big corporate owned blogs can be run by 15 or 20 bloggers and be as sterile as the inside of a bottle of hand sanitizer, but you’re not one of them. Your personality is going to be key to making the blog unique.
Now, let’s be clear - I’m not talking about your ego, or slapping your face everywhere and trying to make yourself into a WebCeleb, what I’m talking about is making your blog different from any other blog out there, and the only way you can do that, is with your personality.
In your content it should be expressed in the “voice” in which your write. In your design, it should be expressed through the colors you select, and the layout you choose.
If you’re a happy-go-lucky person that is going to joke a lot, a dark black site with white text and purple highlights probably isn’t the best choice. If you’re very environmentally conscious you may want to earth tones to match your subject matter. If you’re looking for a more journalistic approach, then you’ll want something with a stark white background, and possibly a newspaper-like layout.
Make It Your Own
If you have even the most rudimentary image editing skills there is a very good chance you can edit a header image (if available) or add a side bar image to make the site distinctly yours. You need make sure that when a visitor stops by your site, that they understand it is - in fact - your site. You don’t want them to be confused because you’re using the same theme as someone else.
Before you edit anything, though, make sure that you have permission to do so from the designer of the template. In most cases, you should be ok, but check your usage rights before you install the template of your choice.
Make Room for Ads
Its highly recommended that you don’t litter your blog with ads - especially not when you’re first starting out. You run the risk of alienating your potential readers, and making them think your blog is actually spam.
You should, however, be prepared for your eventual success. If you don’t expect to be successful, then you’re defeated before you even start - so think about where ads are going to go when selecting a theme.
And Finally...
Remember that there is more than one way to go about selecting your theme. You can choose from a variety of free themes online, you can find themes for sale in a lot of different places, and you can even hire a custom designer to help you get a totally unique blog design.
You have plenty of options. Choose the one that’s right for you, and make your blog shine.
