Well, there are tons of blog design trends out there just clamoring for your attention — some more advanced than others — and depending on the style, content and theme of your blog, there are a lot of factors to take into account. In fact, sometimes the plethora of choices you have at your disposal can be overwhelming, especially if your only experience blogging was on LiveJournal back in 2003.
Before you give up and start scrawling your musings on notebook paper to distribute as a makeshift ‘zine on the street corners of your ‘hood, take a look at some words of wisdom we’ve collected from a bevy of designers and other webby folks about what’s hot right now in blogs.
Take inspiration where you will, initiative where you dare, and, of course, everything with a grain of salt. After all, unless you’re a designer peddling your graphical wares, your blog is all about your content, and the trick is to showcase that content to the best of your abilities. And, of course, it’s important to avoid creating a messy, busy GeoCities-esque travesty — unless, of course, the theme of your blog is “Messy, Busy GeoCities-esque Travesties.” Then, by all means, have at it.
1. More Complex Layouts
According to the majority of designers we talked to, the magazine layout is the new hotness. The above image comes from the portfolio of Jason Santa Maria, the founder and principal of the design studio Mighty and creative director for TypeKit (among many other jobs).
Leslie Bradshaw, CEO and president of JESS3, cites Maria as a luminary in his field when it comes to magazine layouts. “[He uses] unique headers, layout and graphics to pair with the mood of the post,” Bradshaw says. “I would call this artisan blog design and not as much something that can be done in a Tumblr /Posterous /mass production sort of way.” Blogs that adhere to this style have specific beats that require them to have multiple columns, Bradshaw points out — they’re usually news sites, like Mashable.
Beyond that, even, we’re seeing a rise in per-page layout templates, according to Chris Pearson, a web developer who builds WordPress () themes, “If you browse around today, you’re likely to find a slew of hybrid layouts that look different based on where you are within the site. For instance, a homepage might consist of four columns, but an article page might consist of one primary column with a secondary column containing nothing more than article meta-data (like an author name, published-on date, categories, or tags).”
)Still, this type of highly specialized layout isn’t for everyone — especially if you’re running your own, monomaniacal blog. According to Klodian Dhana, who designs templates for Blogger (), “First-time blog authors start with magazine layouts, because they think that they have a lot of things to add — like ads, widgets, etc, and they need space. But over time, they understand that they simply have a blog, not a magazine site, and for blogs, content is more important. Minimal designs put content first.”
)Therefore, if you’re planning on blogging all on your lonesome about a single subject, it might be best to keep it simple and go with a design that’s clean and content-oriented — perhaps a two-column blog with content on the left, widgets on the right.
2. Fonts Galore
If you’re anything like me, you judge a book (or website, rather), entirely by its font. Well, there’s about to be a whole lot of judging going on. Until recently, font choices on the web have been limited due to technical and licensing issues. But thanks to advances in technology (including the recently released Google Font API) and the advent of services like TypeKit, which partnered with a bunch of font foundries to bring a ton more fonts to the web, our choices when it comes to lettering have ballooned.
“Right now, expansion is the name of the game in the font world,” Pearson says. “It’s all about increasing the number of fonts available for use on the web, and more specifically, it’s about making world-renowned commercial fonts available for use in a web-safe manner.”
You can read more about the nitty-gritty of the expanding font world in Christina Warren’s article, “Top 5 Web Font Designs to Follow,” but suffice it to say, it’s an exciting time for those lusting after a little personalization and flair.
“Thanks to huge advances in web font technology,” says Brian Casel, the owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes, “I think ‘typical’ fonts are now a thing of the past. Just a few years ago, we saw Georgia, Helvetica, and Verdana everywhere. Now, we have so many choices at our disposal.”
If you’re looking to make your blog pop, play around with services like TypeKit — as Warren points out in her article, a lot of Tumblr themes are coming equipped with TypeKit support now. You can also check out Monotype, Fonts.com and plugins like Lettering.js.
Still, if all these choices are overwhelming to you, take heart — you’re not alone. “Typography is quite a skill in itself and most bloggers/blog owners don’t have the knowledge or experience to make informed decisions in this regard,” says Adii Pienaar, co-founder of WooThemes.
“At Woo, we take quite a firm approach in this regard to make the typography both as sexy and usable at the same time; thus not relying on the user to make that decision themselves.”
Note, however, that if you do choose to take font-related matters into your own hands: Don’t go crazy with the fonts. Fonts should be used as an accent, a way to draw attention to different parts of your site and differentiate content. Try to come off as creative, rather than a grown-up version of the kid who just discovered Dingbats, Papyrus and Comic Sans all on the same day (Book reports had so much flair when one was 10…).
3. Lots of White Space
It may be after Labor Day, but, apparently, white is all the rage at the moment — or white space, rather. “For design and photography blogs, where the content itself contains many different colors and visuals, I prefer to use a cleaner and more neutral color palette for the actual blog design,” says Casel. “This way, the imagery within the post content is the primary focus.”
Dario Meli, CSO of Invoke | Interactive Agency, tends to agree: “White continues to reign supreme, and while other colors can be presented tastefully, it’s important to take readability into account. Black text on a white background is easy on the eyes and causes the least amount of fatigue.”
In fact, if you check out the most popular themes on Tumblr at the moment, most of them are heavy on the white — “Litewire,” the number two theme, is basically just white (see above).
There are a lot of studies circulating as to what certain colors mean when affixed to certain blogs — “The Colors of the Web” by COLOURlovers springs to mind — but, in the end, the color of your blog should fit the theme and content (and allow for maximum readability).
“I think too many people read and then implement the results of color analysis studies,” Pearson says. “Yes, it’s true that blue is considered ’secure, trustworthy, and professional,’ but if everybody else’s site is blue, then you may achieve better results simply through differentiation!”
4. Going Social
Like the rest of the web, blogs are getting increasingly more social. Case in point: WordPress adding Tumblr-like quick reblogging and the ability to “like” posts.
In fact, the Tumblr effect is noticeably spreading across the web as the site gains in popularity — it attracts some 42 million visitors per month.
“Tumblr is great because it allows you to follow people and to be followed,” says Meli. “In that way its similar to an RSS feed, yet more social in that you can indicate that you like the post and you can quickly reblog. I’m not sure what Tumblr has coming up in the future, but as they become more popular and pull further away from their competition, I would look for more leadership in the trends they help to create.”
Tumblr has created its own kind of insular — although easily shareable — community (you can only comment on posts if you’re also on Tumblr, unless the blogger installs a commenting platform), the popularity of which highlights our growing interest in specialized social networks centered around content.
Still, the more open realm of commenting is still extremely attractive to users, according to Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress. “Social, phatic actions like reblogging and liking are nice ways to engage your readers in a low-impact fashion, but the king of social on blogs is still commenting.”
Casel would agree: “The comments section is key to encouraging conversation. The quality blog themes take special care in crafting visually interesting and usable comments sections that encourage reader feedback. The Disqus () comment system has become very popular as well. This gives users the ability to simultaneously post their comments to their other social networks like Twitter (), Facebook () or their own blog.”
Still, if you’re sensitive about your content — a.k.a. scared to death of trolls — a platform like Tumblr might be a better place to share your epic poetry or snaps of all those tea cozies you knit to sell on Etsy.
5. Go Easy on the Widgets
This trend goes hand-in-hand with the above, but we’re mentioning it as a separate issue here because it also fits into the aesthetic realm of blogging.
Experts agree that Facebook and Twitter are the most popular widgets when it comes to blogging. And that makes sense; Facebook has 500 million members and counting, and the launch of the “Like” button at f8 in April has generated a ton of traffic for the sites that utilize it; ABC News’s traffic increased by 190%, Gawker’s ballooned by 200% and Sporting News’s shot up a shocking 500%.
Twitter, for its part, is now getting more traffic than MySpace. Most of the experts we talked to agreed that the retweet button is a must for any blog when it comes for amping up traffic. Yup — Facebook and Twitter are the reigning lords of the blogging realm at present.
Still, according to Pearson: “As far as making sites more social is concerned, I’m immediately reminded of a familiar adage: ‘Everything old is new again.’ Retweet and Facebook Like buttons are the new Digg ()/Reddit requests.”
So we recommend paying attention to which social networks are gaining an audience (as well as whether that audience would be interested in your content) and add widgets accordingly. Also take into account what other blogs in your arena are doing, Bradshaw says.
Still, go easy on the widgets. A whole lot of buttons and badges can detract not only from the cosmetic appearance of your blog, they can also confuse your readers.
In the end, what matters is that people are reading the brilliance that you’re spouting — so make it easy to access. The quality of your content, however, is up to you. Good luck with “Tiny Kittens in Tinier Cups” — it has book-deal-cum-tv-show written all over it, friend.
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