A personal blog is a place where you can share your ideas, interests, and feelings in a nuanced manner. It is your abode where you love to invite people to listen to your conversation over a hot cup of tea. The right personal blog design makes the reader feel welcome just like a guest visiting your home. Speaking of guests, the best personal blogs attract the right audience with their use of the right colors and visuals.
Source: Freepik
Whether you want to create a personal blog as a journal or want to attract visitors with the best blog site designs, you have come to the right place. We will explore blog designs that will make your blog look amazing. But first, you need to understand why blog designs are so important and how to use them to your advantage.
Understanding the Importance of Blog Design
Source: Freepik
A blog design dictates how a reader will make their opinion of your blog. It includes the layout of your blog including the homepage, the header as well and the icons that help users find useful material on your blog. Take a look at some of the things that make a blog design important in the long run.
1. Improves Visibility And Retention
First impressions always have a big impact. When visitors look at the sophisticated design of a personal blog, they are tempted to stay on the page and even remember the blog to refer to later. For instance, the personal blog Inside My Library Mind by Marija, a college student, has a huge following because she decorates her blog with colorful fonts and unique logos.
2. Attracts New Visitors
Each personal blog caters to a particular niche, for example, women’s lifestyle blogs cater to women’s fashion and offer life tips. This means that the number of visitors to your blog is limited by the content you put on your blog. But if you design your blog and make it attractive, you can convert targeted first-time visitors into long-term followers.
3. Creates Space For SEO
A blog design that is filled with unrelated images and choppy headings confuses the reader as well as the search engines. Simple headings provide a structure to your blog and are easily picked up by search engines. A clutter-free personal blog design is more likely to appear on the Search Engine Result Page or SERP and boost traffic to your page than an unattractive blog design.
Best Practices for Amazing Personal Blog Design
Source: Freepik
Designing a personal blog doesn’t mean you have to know everything about graphics, coding, or photography. A personal blog design is like an empty canvas that you can fill with a template, colors, fonts, and, of course, content. So, let’s dive into the best practices that lead to an amazing personal blog design.
1. Design The Header
Source: Dribble
The header of your personal blog contains the name of your blog and all the important gateways that lead to other resources of your blog. Within these elements, design the header with a unique logo. You can keep the font simple or use typography to make it look more attractive. The Diva personal blog website template is a great example of an easy-to-navigate header while keeping your audience in mind.
2. Use White Space
Source: Pinch Of Yum
White space is the empty space between the header, images, and subsequent sections on your blog. The proper use of white space makes or breaks the design of your blog. If you use too much white space, the viewer may think that you don’t have much content to offer. But if you use it in moderation, you can create a trending blog design and grow your audience.
3. Keep The Navigation Bar Simple
Source: The Barefoot Blonde
One of the most important things that retains traffic on your blog is your navigation bar. The first area on your blog where a reader’s eye goes is the navigation bar. Your navigation bar should include all the sections of your content, social media applications, search buttons, and the logo of your website. You can choose to not include the About Us and Contact page in the navigation bar to keep it clean.
4. Add Images and Illustrations
Source: Vector
No blog is complete without a display of colorful images and illustrations. You can take inspiration from photography blogs on Tumblr to find unique images for your personal blog. You can use also vector images because they have high quality and do not show any pixels when zoomed in.
5 Examples of Killer Personal Blog Design Ideas
Creating beautiful designs takes time and patience, especially when it comes to personal blog designs. You can find the right design for your blog by going through various inspirational blogs as well as lifestyle blogs for women on the internet. However, we have narrowed down your search by picking the top 5 personal blog designs you can use to create a masterpiece of your own.
A Beautiful Mess
Source: A Beautiful Mess
Clear, crafty, and consistent. These are the words that come to mind when you open the blog, A Beautiful Mess. The sisters Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman have designed the header of this personal blog to showcase the main content with the icons Cocktails, Crafts, Recipes, Decor + DIY, Advice, and Style. The word “cocktails” is designed in the form of an image, whereas the logo itself is written in a messy typography. Moreover, the images of a delicious drink and a rice dish tie up the whole look of the blog homepage,
Good On You
Source: Good On You
Good On You allows you to take a breather in a world where people are constantly trying to outdo one another by buying expensive clothing. Sandra and Gordon created this personal blog to help people select clothes made by companies that support the ethical treatment of workers. This personal blog design is an excellent example of using white space properly. The header has three simple icons juxtaposed with the picture of a girl wearing ethically made clothing on the homepage. Moreover, Times New Roman and Arial fonts create a lasting impact on the reader with a clear and simple message.
Keep It SimpElle
Source: Keep It SimpElle
Every fitness ad shows us a guy sweating profusely and trying to enjoy his workout. Keep It SimpElle on the other hand is a personal blog that makes fitness fun. The header of the blog utilizes white space to display its icons. As soon as the header ends, you are welcomed by the picture of a healthy and happy fitness instructor Elle smiling into the camera. The background is filled with multiple colors overlapping with a pink base. These color combinations make the reader feel calm and feel all the positive vibes.
Anywhere We Roam
Source: Anywhere We Roam
The personal blog Anywhere We Roam’s homepage fills with the majesty of beautiful mountains and as you look closer, you see a man standing at the base. Mark and Paul are two adventurers who love to share their escapades. The blog design is simple with a scenic image with icons written in white colored font. The navigation bar is easy to use as the social media icons are integrated into the header. The addition of social media icons works just like social media hashtags as they redirect the audience to their social media pages.
Behind The Shutter
Source: Behind The Shutter
Sal Cincotta, the founder of the personal blog, Behind The Shutter, provides a breathtaking view of everything she sees through her camera. Her blog design has everything an engaging blog design should have. It includes a minimalistic navigation bar, social media icons, and a fantastic image of a woman wearing goddess-like clothing. Each picture showcased in the blog deserves a photography hashtag whereas each blog provides in-depth information on improving your photography skills. The blogs are displayed in bold letters with attractive images leaving a lasting impact on the reader.
[Bonus] How to Design Your Own Personal Blog
If you want to design your own personal blog, just follow the given steps.
- Choose a blogging platform like Blogger, WordPress, or Medium based on your blog idea.
- Think of a domain name and buy it from your favorite hosting platform.
- Select a template that you can customize for your personal blog.
- Design – or select – a theme by choosing the right colors and images.
- Add graphics, and modify the header and footer according to your theme.
- Add icons based on your content to give your blog a wholesome look.
Wrap Up
Unique designs and typefaces are an integral part of personal blogs. Without them, a blog would look like an MS Word file with black text on a white backdrop. However, personal blog designs provide us with the opportunity to play with different designs and colors to create our own works of art. If you want to top off an attractive blog design with unique blog titles, you can use a blog post idea generator to come up with unique headings and start writing for your personal blog.
I am a full-time online marketer, for over a decade now. Helped over 100,000+ people & generated well over $12M in online sales.