Five Tips to Simplify Your Blog Design

Every blogger would want their blogs to be emerging as the most unique designs. By applying a unique blog design in addition to easy to remember, it will also give the impression that the owner of the blog is quite serious in his blogging activities.

However, design is not merely to beautify the blog. But more than that, it is also used to reinforce the elements that are considered important so that visitors can more easily interact with your blog.


These five design tips below may be familiar to your ears, but all the tips presented here are fairly easy to apply, even by those who are new to the blog design.

1. Clickable Logo and Blog Title

Mostly logo placed on the left-upper corner of the blog. On the right of the logo, there is usually a blog title. Logo or blog title should be a link (which can be clicked), as a shortcut that leads to the main blog page.

All blog engines, such as Google Blogger will automatically link the title of this blog to the front page. So you do not have to worry or bother to modify your template.

If you want to add a logo, then you can put the logo image using <img /> HTML tag and add this between the tag '<a>' and '</ a>'.

Here is an example of its use:

<h1><a href='http://www.graphicdesignsources.com/'><img alt='BLOG LOGO' src='http://yourimageurl' /></a></h1>

2. Choose the font that is easy to read

Blogs are generally made for public consumption. Selecting a font that is easy to read would please the visitors. They will focus on the content, message, and purpose of your writing, and are not burdened to distinguish between letters, for example, "A" to "I" or the number "9" with "4".

In this case we can use a font that is still in the web-safe fonts, the default font types that are already installed on various operating systems.

Some of these fonts are: Arial, Verdana, and Georgia. The first two types of letters included in the group of San-Serif. The latter group is classified at Serif.

Both groups typeface is currently a debate among web designer, which of the two is better to use?

Some also argue for the use of these letters both groups simultaneously; 'San-Serif' is used for the title, and Serif for the content part.

I personally prefer to use San-Serif, Arial and Verdana in particular, for both the title and contents since it is easier to read on screen as well as the relative has the same appearance when viewed using the operating systems and different browsers.

3. Provide different views for Links

A link or hyperlink in the text should be given a different look, so that the reader can easily distinguish between regular text and linked text in part or other documents.

We can distinguish the appearance of a link by giving it a different color or underline. Giving a different color or underline is the most common and recommended by many designers.

4. Adding a Profile Photo

While bloggers, in order to maintain privacy, prefer to use avatars as vector images, or other pictures which no actual photo, or even include them at all.

Indeed, there are no regulations that require us to display your own photos on the blog. However, the visitors were more likely to read an article where the author may be known, at least by a head shot size of 60 pixels by 60 pixels.

By displaying a photo, you give the impression that you are fully responsible for all the articles you write on the blog; it also shows that you are serious about writing.

Rest assured that people would not insult you because you do not have a face as handsome as Brad Pitt, or as beautiful as Jennifer Aniston. Search engines will not penalize your blog because wearing sunglasses while posing.

5. Avoid placing annoying ads

Currently, we will easily find a lot of bloggers who display the ads on their blogs. Indeed serve ads on your blog is one of the most favored and popular way to earn money online.

Professional bloggers like Darren Rowse and Seth Godin even monetize their blogs with ads in their own way.

Blog monetization certainly does not hurt. However, ads will be less meaningful if done improperly, and the worst is to discourage potential visitors to further explore our blog.

If you are Google Blogger users like me, you can monetize your blog by creating a Google AdSense account. But Google recommends us to keep advertising their services beyond the blog content, such as on the sidebar. Thus, the readers will not be distracted by the ads.

That was five pointers in designing your own blog. If you have any other suggestions please share them in the comments form below.