The value of a unique design
I just have a quick message for all my fellow bloggers out there: I firmly believe that every blog should have a unique design. Whether it's a modification of a freely available template/theme or a design you made all on your own, or even something you payed paid (apparently I can't spell) someone else to do, I really think you are better off going with something original than just using the default themes available with your blogging software.
Why do I feel this way? For one thing, your design speaks to your personality, and personality is key in blogging. For another, an original design is memorable. Good or bad, having a unique design that I can associate with your site separates your blog from all the stock blogs out there running the basic themes we see all the time.
When I was writing for Go Flock Yourself back in the early days of Wordpress.com, we were running on the most basic blue Kubrick theme (this was before the days of custom CSS). As successful as that blog was (if only for being snarky and controversial), I think it would have fared much better with a unique design, but to the end GFY had Kubrick as its theme. To this day, whenever I see a blog running Kubrick, I think of GFY and I have a hard time thinking of the new blog as a unique entity. That's not too good for the blogger trying to get my attention.
Obviously if you are going to make the effort to put together your own custom design for your blog, it's important to make sure that said design is more good than bad, so here's a few tips I'll put on the table:
- Make it usable. Avoid enormous images, flashy animations, and funky tiny text. If it's something you don't feel comfortable reading then you are on the wrong track.
- Take your own photos or get some stock imagery from stock.xchng.
- Look to your friends. Maybe you know someone who could do a nice header graphic for you or could help you with the CSS. Meg got an amazing blog design from her good friend Phil and Foxy got a half-decent one from me… I guess it all depends on which friends you ask.
- Avoid the Myspace look… as in, if it looks like your Myspace, scrap it and try again.
At the very least, plug a unique banner image into Kubrick or K2 and be done with it. Just make sure it's something for me to remember you by.
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Hi. I have no idea what I'm doing with my blog/computers. Frankly, I'm lucky I can type. As much as I think my blog is lame looking with its template format, I don't have the time or desire to learn how to change it (or the funds to pay someone for a masthead). And that's fine by me
Well, at least with a picture of yourself I can identify that your blog is your blog and for a journal like what you have going, that's very helpful.
Hey Montoya. Right there with you on this one. It's probably terrible for me to say but when I stumble upon a new site, it's "judge a book by its cover" all the way for me. If it looks like Kubrick, I'm out unless it's got a really snappy headline or image right there in plain site.
Thing is, it doesn't really take all that much to individualize your site. It just has to be different enough to conjure up a bit of interest. Then, once you get me interested and wandering around there's a much better chance you'll hook me with your content.
Thanks for the post!
Hi again. I gave this some more thought. I would like to add that while I like that templates technology makes blogging more accessible to the masses (hey, we are Times Person/People of the Year…) if I wanted to do something MORE with my blog, especially on a professional level, there is some upgrading that must be done. Your post definitely got me thinking. It was an interesting read. Thx.
I'm glad I was able to influence you in a positive way Audrey.
Personally, I believe content is more important than design for things such as blogs.
Unless you are a designer, I don't really see the point in going crazy over designs.
Of course, if your site is completely inaccessible, then I won't bother read anything there.
One could argue that even with the many available WP themes - many blogs look like clones. But again that is up to you — it takes devotion, talent and good content to do that!
I'm glad I didn't wait until I had my design before I started blogging, but I definitely feel like my blog would be taken more seriously with a custom theme. My readers have told me that as well when I asked does a blog need a custom design to be taken seriously?
I just reviewed two books on WordPress - maybe anyone could use these books to build better themes??
http://fadtastic.net/2007/01/24/wordpress-books-reviewed/
I feel like you may have written this about my site but probably didn't, however it was posted a couple of days after I made it and my site is still really plain. I agree with everything you said, and I'm still working on it.
In any case, I enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work.
Also, your live preview isn't working for me. I'm running FF 2+ on Windows.
I believe that every blog NEEDS a custom design and I am seriously hoping to get a custom design before the end of February (I am trying for mid-February).
Oh yeah! The live preview doesn't work for me either. Firefox version 2.0 for Mac OS X. The exact browser tag is Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X;en-US;rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0.
Guys, I'm going to get rid of Live Preview in the next redesign. I'm pretty sure I killed the script because it's not working for anyone. Just ignore it.