The Writer’s Blog Workshop Series: How to Design Your Blog, Part 1
The Writer’s Blog Workshop Series Lessons: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
Lesson Five:
How do you choose a functional, practical, and beautiful design for your blog? What points should you consider when designing a blog? I’m going to divide the discussion about design into three parts–the emotional impact of design, the technical aspects of design, and the down-and-dirty on getting a design installed. This lesson covers the emotional element.
Let’s go back to the professional purpose for a creative artist’s blog–marketing. What does your blog design say about you as an artist? Whether you use a “formula” platform like blogger that is hosted as part of a free service or a more complex platform like Wordpress that is hosted on your own website, design counts. Just as we discussed finding your heart in your blogging style and content (as you must do in your art), you must find your heart in your design style. Your design should reflect you just as much as your content does.
Why does design count and what does emotion have to do with it? Everything you do as a creative artist in presenting yourself to the world–and I mean everything!–is part of your branding. What is a brand? A brand is your special image, perception or identity. Your brand is clearly and specifically you. Think about your creative work. Your work must stand out with voice and style. So must your blog design. When people click on your blog, the design should stand out to them immediately–they should know they are nowhere else, at no other blog–they should know immediately where they are and who you are. Even a first-time visitor should know something about you just on first glance. Visitors should have an emotional reaction to your design, and that emotional reaction should tell them something about your work. In other words, design is just another clear and yet subtle marketing tool in which your blog sells you and your work.
For example, what do we know right away from Michelle Willingham’s blog? The design is clear, functional, but it also tells us immediately that she writes historicals and not just that she writes historicals but that she writes medieval historicals. And it tells us more….. It has an emotional impact to the senses. Look at the details. The soft colors–romantic! The swirly font–sentimental! The shadow type behind the type repeat of her name–dreamy! The imagery–magical! Michelle writes the stuff of legends! She does not have to tell us that. We feel it when we click on her blog.
What do we know right away from Jill Shalvis’s blog? Again, design is clear and functional. We know right away that Jill writes fun, sexy, beach-read books. But let’s go on. What is the emotional impact? What does the design inspire to the senses? Look at the details. Cool ocean, warm sun, toes curling in hot sand, total relaxation. Vacation! The curving, flowing font–romantic! The imagery–sensual! See the branding in each of these blog designs? We know who these writers are, what we might expect to get from their books, from their designs alone without reading a word of their excerpts! Their designs are unique to them as individual authors, unique as the voices in their work. Their designs create subtle but direct emotional reactions in blog visitors–and that is exactly what you want to do in your design. This is branding, and it shouldn’t be just in your work but on your blog, interwoven in the design. Branding should be in everything you do–it’s part of creating your “buzz”–and the time to start building it is always now, wherever you are in your career, and it’s founded in the emotional connection readers have to you–in your words, in your voice, in the type of stories you write, and in the design of your blog (and website). It should all work together and fit.
How to develop your own blog design that reflects your branding as an author and has an emotional impact on your readers:
1. Make a list of words that match your voice and style as a creative artist. Romantic, sensual, sweet, hot, funny, dramatic, fantastical, etc–use a thesaurus to come up with the specific words that are uniquely you.
2. Create a list of colors that inspire an emotional reaction that connects to the words you came up with in Step 1. Are these colors primary, hot, soft, dark, light?
3. What images would reflect the emotions and branding you want to present? Make a list of potential sorts of images. Close your eyes, think of the words in Step 1 and the colors in Step 2. Let your mind float through your memory to find images from the past–from your own experiences or from movies or TV, that fit the emotions you are trying to present. (This is sort of like dream-brainstorming, mind-mapping images instead of words.)
4. What type of font reflects the branding you want to present? Modern, gothic, funny, etc? Find examples of fonts here.
Choose a blog design that is so special, so emotional, so you, and your blog will shine as brightly as your creative work. Wear your heart–on your blog!
The Writer’s Blog Workshop Series Lessons: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
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