Blog Design For Beginners
Design is perhaps the main condition (after the text content, of course) for a successful blog. When you start making money with it, good web design should be of great benefit. Strange, but many believe that it is not. I think this is due to the fact that someone initially did not understand the meaning of the word “design”. A typical opinion: "The site can be ugly, the main thing - its content." But after all, a good design has never disturbed anyone! Agree, a blog with interesting content and good design will attract a lot more visitors than just with interesting texts.
Before continuing, I have to destroy one common myth: design is not pretty little trinkets on your blog. Design is the thing that makes a blog convenient for visitors. Allow a quote from wikipedia.org : " Design in the sense of a reasonable device site is much more important than its visual beauty ."
So, finish smearing porridge on a plate, let's "design" our blog. Here's what we need: a pencil, paper, and a graphics editor (something like Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, or Gimp).
')
Let's start with the collection of information. I understand that you want to immediately open the image editor and start creating, but this is not the best solution. And you will soon understand.
So, we will create a design for a fictional blogger. Suppose he (let's call him Lesha) will be verbose about the clock.
Step number 1: determine the purpose of the blog (What are you trying to achieve with it? How to do it?)
We will create such a design that will increase the profits of Lesha. The easiest way to make a flexible framework that allows you to experiment with advertising. To attract more attention of visitors who visit the site for the first time. Make the blog visually memorable and give visitors a better chance to see the kind of advertising they want to click on, which they need.
Step 2: define your audience (What is it? Where does it come from?)
The audience of the blog is made up of two groups of people: notorious watch maniacs who read Leshina notes in search of new products in the world of watches and other events of parties; and ordinary people who just want to buy a watch and went to the site to find out the opinions of experts on different models.
Step number 3: determine the specific features (What functions are necessary for the site to quickly achieve the goal?)
Reduce the amount of fuss. It is best to Lesha messing with the code as little as possible, especially when placing advertising. The same goes for the ability to quickly change the look of your blog, again without having to dig into the insides of the engine.
It is also necessary to increase the "memorability" of the site for visitors. To do this, create a list of "favorite messages", and at the bottom of each message "useful links."
Do not forget to create categories for your posts, because it will allow users to explore your blog more intuitively. Well, for those who are lost, a search is definitely needed, especially if the visitor is looking for some specific watch model. Of course, you should provide the opportunity to leave comments to each post, regular visitors Leshy blog will lead cute squabbles.
Step 4: draw a draft (rough draft to experiment with the layout of the various elements on the page)
Finally, the fun begins! For example, I use the wonderful OmniGraffle program for this, rejoice - it only works on Macs. As soon as a strong desire to insert as many graphic elements as possible into my design wakes up, I try to stay away from the graphic editor. It is necessary to suppress such desires. Of course, a blog should be attractive, but it should be achieved with little blood.
What are we doing? We create the basis on which all the elements of Leshy Blog will be strung on in the future. The biggest mistake of novice designers is to skip this step.
On a piece of paper (transferring it later to a graphic editor) we draw the optimal arrangement of various blocks for our blog. We rank them in importance, deciding what is more and what is less important; what our visitors will see first, and what second.
In fact, this is a separate big topic for discussion. I will try to highlight the main thing. In essence, we perform only two actions when we get to the site: search and detailed view. Search implies an element on the page that stops our wandering eyes and makes you look more closely at yourself. These elements are located according to the degree of attraction of attention:
If we decide, WHERE we can begin to read, then we can decide WHAT we will read, just looking at the page in more detail. We draw attention to the group of objects, their relevance to the subject - to determine what is more important to read first.
Knowing all this, we can arrange the information on your blog as profitable as possible, so that nothing important is hidden from the visitors' view.
Step 5: do a mood archive (collections of images, colors, fonts — everything you like)
We always look through magazines (especially fashion magazines - goldmine), books, the Internet in search of new colors, textures, images. We literally shred the magazines with scissors or scan them if we see some unusual combination of colors or an original picture. Thus, we have a collection, from which it is then easy to get ideas for design.
For small sites, we do this: create a new document in Photoshop and copy there all the images that we like at this moment. The resulting collage is the starting point for creating a design.
Perhaps the idea seems crazy, but still I recommend you to try it. You will be surprised how this helps in the work on the design.
Step 6: Visual Design
Having completed all of the above, creating a visual embodiment is done by a very simple and understandable task. We can only concentrate on balancing the site, its energy and style.
The biggest mistake of novice designers is not to leave enough space around design elements. This is called the “white space”. But it doesn’t have to be white, it just has to be free of other elements.
That is why you should be very careful when creating your own design. And I will leave you - I will go to do the design for Lesha blog about the clock.
Translation by Alexei KHALETSKY
crazyhamster.livejournal.com/176771.html
Before continuing, I have to destroy one common myth: design is not pretty little trinkets on your blog. Design is the thing that makes a blog convenient for visitors. Allow a quote from wikipedia.org : " Design in the sense of a reasonable device site is much more important than its visual beauty ."
So, finish smearing porridge on a plate, let's "design" our blog. Here's what we need: a pencil, paper, and a graphics editor (something like Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, or Gimp).
')
Let's start with the collection of information. I understand that you want to immediately open the image editor and start creating, but this is not the best solution. And you will soon understand.
So, we will create a design for a fictional blogger. Suppose he (let's call him Lesha) will be verbose about the clock.
Step number 1: determine the purpose of the blog (What are you trying to achieve with it? How to do it?)
We will create such a design that will increase the profits of Lesha. The easiest way to make a flexible framework that allows you to experiment with advertising. To attract more attention of visitors who visit the site for the first time. Make the blog visually memorable and give visitors a better chance to see the kind of advertising they want to click on, which they need.
Step 2: define your audience (What is it? Where does it come from?)
The audience of the blog is made up of two groups of people: notorious watch maniacs who read Leshina notes in search of new products in the world of watches and other events of parties; and ordinary people who just want to buy a watch and went to the site to find out the opinions of experts on different models.
Step number 3: determine the specific features (What functions are necessary for the site to quickly achieve the goal?)
Reduce the amount of fuss. It is best to Lesha messing with the code as little as possible, especially when placing advertising. The same goes for the ability to quickly change the look of your blog, again without having to dig into the insides of the engine.
It is also necessary to increase the "memorability" of the site for visitors. To do this, create a list of "favorite messages", and at the bottom of each message "useful links."
Do not forget to create categories for your posts, because it will allow users to explore your blog more intuitively. Well, for those who are lost, a search is definitely needed, especially if the visitor is looking for some specific watch model. Of course, you should provide the opportunity to leave comments to each post, regular visitors Leshy blog will lead cute squabbles.
Step 4: draw a draft (rough draft to experiment with the layout of the various elements on the page)
Finally, the fun begins! For example, I use the wonderful OmniGraffle program for this, rejoice - it only works on Macs. As soon as a strong desire to insert as many graphic elements as possible into my design wakes up, I try to stay away from the graphic editor. It is necessary to suppress such desires. Of course, a blog should be attractive, but it should be achieved with little blood.
What are we doing? We create the basis on which all the elements of Leshy Blog will be strung on in the future. The biggest mistake of novice designers is to skip this step.
On a piece of paper (transferring it later to a graphic editor) we draw the optimal arrangement of various blocks for our blog. We rank them in importance, deciding what is more and what is less important; what our visitors will see first, and what second.
In fact, this is a separate big topic for discussion. I will try to highlight the main thing. In essence, we perform only two actions when we get to the site: search and detailed view. Search implies an element on the page that stops our wandering eyes and makes you look more closely at yourself. These elements are located according to the degree of attraction of attention:
- Movement, action.
- The size.
- Picture.
- Colour.
- Text style (font and its size).
- Location
If we decide, WHERE we can begin to read, then we can decide WHAT we will read, just looking at the page in more detail. We draw attention to the group of objects, their relevance to the subject - to determine what is more important to read first.
Knowing all this, we can arrange the information on your blog as profitable as possible, so that nothing important is hidden from the visitors' view.
Step 5: do a mood archive (collections of images, colors, fonts — everything you like)
We always look through magazines (especially fashion magazines - goldmine), books, the Internet in search of new colors, textures, images. We literally shred the magazines with scissors or scan them if we see some unusual combination of colors or an original picture. Thus, we have a collection, from which it is then easy to get ideas for design.
For small sites, we do this: create a new document in Photoshop and copy there all the images that we like at this moment. The resulting collage is the starting point for creating a design.
Perhaps the idea seems crazy, but still I recommend you to try it. You will be surprised how this helps in the work on the design.
Step 6: Visual Design
Having completed all of the above, creating a visual embodiment is done by a very simple and understandable task. We can only concentrate on balancing the site, its energy and style.
The biggest mistake of novice designers is not to leave enough space around design elements. This is called the “white space”. But it doesn’t have to be white, it just has to be free of other elements.
That is why you should be very careful when creating your own design. And I will leave you - I will go to do the design for Lesha blog about the clock.
Translation by Alexei KHALETSKY
crazyhamster.livejournal.com/176771.html
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/30912/
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