How to Design an Outstanding Blog with best examples and templates
Are you trying to create a perfect and popular blog? Are you having an idea of the type of content you want to create but do not know how to design a blog? Do you know a blog that encourages people to read your content and share it on the social web gets high rankings in the search engines?
Well, if you are going through all these questions, this post will be tailored for you. In this article, we’ll explore the best practices of blog design and share with you the best examples and templates to help you create an effective and popular blog. Now, let’s dive in.
What is blog design?
By definition, blog design is the practice of optimizing a blog’s look, feel, branding, readability and functionality in order to maximize visitors, readership and conversions. If you have an idea of the type of content you want to create, you’ll need to spend some time crafting a design that entices people to want to keep exploring your posts.
But how can you have a blog design that will increase your conversions, bolster your credibility and make your visitors feel right at home?
The following practices will give you the answer.
How to design an outstanding blog
Choose the right design platform
The first step in creating a beautiful site is to pick a design platform that allows you a wide range of design possibilities. Mockplus is my platform of choice. I love it and run all my sites on it. Here’s why:
- It offers tons of design components and icons for designers to use directly;
- It is a cloud-based design platform that enables you to create, edit, share, test, and handoff design on the cloud;
- It has real-time collaborative environment, which means that your team members can work on clickable features simultaneously.
Alt: Mockplus
Design an eye-catching homepage
Whether your website is solely dedicated to your blog or it’s a separate section of your website, it should grab visitors’ attention and inform people immediately what the core purpose of your website is. You need to spend time considering your web design, including layout, font and colors. It is commonly known that your blog is a central part of establishing your online presence, then you will need to think about how to best navigate visitors to it from the homepage using a navigation bar.
Create high quality blog content
There are plenty of blogs out there, all clamouring for people’s attention, so you’ll need to have your design stand out to get it noticed. When designing your blog, you need to bear in mind that the core purpose of having a blog to begin with is to entice people to read your posts. Therefore, it is important to have high quality content and make it the sole focus. Never forget that a good blog must be attractive, creative and clever, and it needs to speak to its audience. You need to design a blog with high quality content to tell why you’re different, what you’re offering, and why they should take the time to read on.
Keep your design clean and simple
It is easy for designers to go a little wild when designing a web, but for a blog design, it should be clean and simple. Do not incorporate complex design features to distract potential readers. All you need to do is to stick to no more than three colours, and three fonts. With fonts, you need a heading, subheading and body copy font. Your main text font can then be enhanced by different weights or attributes, but keep these to a minimum. Remember not to steal focus with too many fancy features and just let the quality of your written and visual content speak for itself.
Embrace empty space
A user visiting your site will make the decision whether your blog is worth exploring or not within a few seconds. As we mentioned above that the quality of your content is of great importance, and it’s also important to emphasize what not to include in your blog. This is where empty space, also known as white space, comes into play. When you are designing your blog, please don’t be afraid of using white space — it can really enhance your design and keep it looking professional. Using white space as borders can help to highlight key parts of the blog. Remember, sometimes less really is more.
Show the thumbnails of your posts
No matter what page on your blog site contains your post, it needs to be engaging, colorful, and easy to explore. Displaying thumbnails of each article in grid or listicle format is the best approach to help you reach this goal. Displaying thumbnails can help to keep all your content organized and accessible, and allow readers to quickly browse through various titles. Also, you need to make sure every post has a title, date, and picture. Making your blog visualized will be a key component in capturing the reader’s attention.
Show related content
If you want to keep site visitors engaged on your site for a longer time, do include a Related Posts/Content section. You can include this section in the middle of the article, or just put it at the bottom of the page. You can choose to include your most popular articles, because this is the content in which readers find the most value. Therefore, you will be more likely to get the new visitors’ attention and keep them stay on your site for a long time, thus increasing your conversion rate.
Make your blog responsive
Nowadays, responsive web design is a prerequisite for any respectable design blog. If you use a design tool like Mockplus, it offers you a responsive layout and also you can share and preview your design with a simple link, helping you test and iterate your design early on. More than that, on this design platform Mockplus, designers and developers can work closely to help produce a design that is both eye-catching and functional.
Promote your blog
After finishing the design of your blog, it’s time to promote it. One of the most common ways to promote it is creating Facebook, Twitter or other social media pages for your blog. You can also use some most modern blogging platforms such as Squarespace to help you spread the message quickly and effectively. All in all, try to employ as many methods as possible to make your blog noticed by potential users.
Best blog design examples to inspire you
Now let’s check the following beautiful blog design ideas, hope we can get you inspired.
1. Shillington
This blog page does a great job of highlighting one of their most recent or popular blog posts, alongside a clear call to action and a short excerpt. The posts are also neatly positioned and easily accessible to readers. Visitors can pick the type of information that matters to them the most by choosing a topic from the drop-down menu on the top right.
2. Tubik Studio Blog
This blog page has a minimal design that incorporates white space. This blog design shows that you don’t have to cram a lot of elements onto the page to make it effective or interesting. Instead, you can let your amazing content speak for itself. The page displays thumbnails of the latest articles, which let visitors simply click on the thumbnail to read the full post.
3. Twitter Blog
The Twitter blog is visually appealing and it is an example of a really sleek design that includes some cool personalization.The color scheme, background, and fonts are all consistent — which keeps this blog looking professional, but still distinct from the basic blog templates we might be used to seeing.
4. Emma Gannon
This is a blog of a talented writer Emma Gannon, who has expertise in many different areas. We love the colorful, consistent design of Emma Gannon’s blog. The design has achieved its great balance of simplicity and boldness. It is also a great example of how the right imagery can achieve an appealing “less-is-more” appearance, especially if that fits in with your overall brand concept.
5. Lee From America
Lee is a lifestyle blogger and author that writes about her adventures in travel, her love of music and living in good health. The page is mainly focused on showcasing pictures about her life. As you scroll down the page, more of her latest blog posts are presented with large, eye-catching thumbnails. There’s also a navigation menu in the top-left corner and links to her social media platforms are displayed horizontally on the right-side.
6. Mr. Money Mustache
This blog of Mr. Money Mustache is exactly what it sounds like. You can find tips about getting rich in a laid back and fun teaching manner. It is known that an important aspect of a well-designed blog is a consistent color scheme and style, and this blog uses color consistency to unify the diversified elements. But it also uses several different fonts — all of which manage to look seamless together,when tied together by a cohesive color scheme.
7. The Recipe Critic
The Recipe Critic blog was launched in 2012 and it is a beautifully designed food blog. This blog page is organized into sections like appetizers, breakfast, dinner, salads and more. Readers can easily find the exact recipe they need with this design.
The social icons at the top are a pleasant addition to the overall look and feel of the site — they’re easy to spot, and make it easy to share Recipe Critic’s content.
8. GoSquared
GoSquared is a software program that helps businesses grow in a variety of ways. The blog itself has tons of good reads about customer service, engineering and marketing to name a few.It absolutely catches the reader’s eye with its bold colors. Visitors can also use the navigation bar in the middle of the page to find articles about specific topics like Customer success, Engineering, Master marketing and more. You can take note of how the simple white background makes the images pop.
9. Christmas HQ
This is a warm and welcoming blog design, which captures the holiday spirit beautifully. The page is divided into two left and right panels. The left one features stories in three columns while the right pane showcases the carols as well as decorations. The overall design of this blog is appealing and visitors can tell from the get-go that they hit the mark with the holiday theme.
10. Brandland
This is an example of a very distinctive and unique design. The blog features an elegant font pairing of a serif and a sans-serif font, forming a graceful look. Vistors will notice the bright geometrical background which has a sort of ‘pastel’ look and feel to it. To the right, you will find a horizontal navigation menu which takes you to three different pages on the blog: Guidelines, resources and help center. This blog is different from most blog designs, it uses a new approach — minimal but effective.
Free and premium blog design templates
11. World
World is a stunning and feature-rich responsive magazine website template.
12. Podcast
Podcast is an ultra-flexible Joomla template well-designed to promote your podcast shows.
13. Axole
Axole is the best writer website template that you can get your hands on today.
14. FoodeiBlog
FoodeiBlog is a modern, responsive and very eye-catchy free food and recipe blog template.
15. Magazine Ghost Blog Theme
This template is easy-to-use, you do not need to compromise the design and code quality.
16. Original
Original is, unquestionably, real eye candy of a free and responsive blogging website template.
17. Yummy
Yummy is a professionally designed food blog website template which you can also alter to many other niches outside food blogging.
18. Moose
Moose is a remarkable online journal website template.
19. Multipurpose Ghost Blog Theme
Nurui is a Ghost theme with a sleek and modern design. Personal or professional, lifestyle blog, a culinary blog, or design blog. Nurui will easily fit it all, an online journal or a magazine.
20. Daren
With Daren, a free beautiful blog website template, you will definitely turn heads.
Wrap up
Blogs are an invaluable tool for businesses and individuals alike. They are arguably one of the most important media you can use to spread your brand’s voice and awareness online. In this post, we have covered a whole spectrum of blog design examples and templates, we’re sure you have some great takeaways for your next exciting endeavor. Keep in mind that these blog examples you have seen here, follow the proven best practices that are designed to keep your bounce rate low — and encourage people to return to your blog for more.
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