Blog Design: Templates, Layouts, Colors and Fonts

Starting a blog is like staring at a blank canvas.  There's just so much potential and so many choices to make, we often don't know where to begin.  Some of us just click away, adding as many bells and whistles as possible, while others of us feel paralysed not wanting to "wreck" anything.

Whatever the case, one thing is for sure:  we want our blog to be an accurate impression of who we are and what we have been thinking about.  The problem is so much attention is placed on what to post on the blog that we forget about the more subtle design choices that can really make a difference.

Teaching into these design choices can make a real difference especially in this day and age.  Our students have to take their ideas, design and present them in formats that were unthinkable only a few years ago.  And it doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.  In fact, design will likely play a huge role in their lives not only as a student, but as a future employee as well.  It's with these ideas in mind that you may want to teach into the following aspects of blog design.


Templates and Layouts

Blogger has a complete set of pre-designed templates (background designs, font colors, and layouts) that help create a certain feel for a blog.  By clicking on "Templates" in your dashboard, you can scroll through the various options.  When you see one that intrigues you, click on it, and it will give you a preview of what your blog will look like in that theme.

The nice thing about templates is that students don't need to think about what colors go together.  The layouts are also preset and allow the blogger to showcase certain features as needed.  Going through templates with students is a great introduction to design thinking as you can ask questions like:

• What does an overall template make you think/feel?
• Why are certain colors used?
• What are the background images/designs and how can they match who you are?

Once you've selected a template, click "Layout" on your dashboard.  This is where you can rearrange, add, delete, and edit items that appear on your blog.  

Colors and Fonts

If you're up for a challenge, you can design your own Blog Header.  Use Color Scheme Designer to see which colors go well together on the color wheel. You can even study the meanings of colors (see Symbolism of Color) and choose your colors accordingly.
Then use Pages to create shapes filled with those colors. 


Not only do colors portray feelings and moods, so too do fonts.  Another great resource is dafont.com where you can download fonts and insert them into text boxes on your Pages document (be sure Pages is closed when you import them).

As with the templates and layouts, be sure that you can explain why you are making the design choices your making (see sample below).  Ask questions like:

• What colors did you choose?  Why did you choose them? How do they represent you?
• What fonts did you choose?  Why did you choose them? How do they represent you?

Sample Design Reflection:

For this Blog Header, I chose purple because it is a royal and regal color.  The complimentary green dots along the bottom go from light to dark because I wanted to get at the idea that the more you read and use this blog, the more certain (i.e. deeper and powerful) you will feel about using your blog.  I used the Little Bird font to represent a hand-drawn sketch of the title.  I thought this was more of a personal and artist touch which is exactly what I think the Blog Header should portray.


Want to see what else I was considering for Blog Headers?  Check them out.  Which one do you like best?

Images from:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/8750293235/
• http://colorschemedesigner.com/