Jumping on the blogging bandwagon (Part II)

In Part II, I am going to share with you on the various elements of design that you should consider when designing your blog. A good design can be achieved in many ways, including the content selection, visual elements, images, typography and triptych as well as placement as stated by Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) and Schriver (1997).

As a result, the design of your blog plays a huge role in creating an engaging and interactive environment for the readers.

Here are three simple steps:-

(i) Theme

Essentially, with a clear notion of the audience, purpose and context of the genre, document designer can then proceed to determine the design principles and elements. Parker (1990, p. 2) said, "The design process is simply an extension of the organizing process that began as you developed the concept for your project." So, as a blogger, to develop the concept (theme) of your blog, you should start by outlining the audience, purpose and context of your blog. In this way, you will be sure to capture the attention of the right audience.

(ii) Visuals (Images/Colours)

Landa (2001, p. 5) describes colour as a powerful and highly provocative design element. Colours are capable to heighten the emotional and psychological dimensions of any visual image (Evans and Thomas, 2004, p. 26). Moreover, different colour carries a whole different meaning when in different cultural context. This article by Vandelaydesign provides an extensive range of resources online that can assist you in choosing the right colours for your blog.

(iii) Hyperlinks (Inbound/Outbound)

Whether your blog is easy to read or not depends a lot on the navigation. For print publication, the 'Z-shaped' pattern in the Gutenberg's diagram is applied in the document design (Wieldon 1990, p. 8). Relatively, for online publication, the eye tracking visualisation is in the 'F-shaped' pattern, meaning two horizontal strips followed by a vertical stripe (Nielson 2006).

Always remember that readers read about 25% slower on screen than on print. As such, it is advisable that information on the online publication is 50% less text than print (Nielsen 1997). This can be solved by using inbound links (links pointing to your blog) and/or outbound links (links pointing to other sites) to avoid clutter, increase scanability, ease navigation and create interactivity.

Conclusion

All in all, always keep in mind that there are millions of blog out there. If you want to be noticed and remembered, having a unique and memorable blog design is the way to go!

The design of your blog can either make or break you.

(Source: http://bokardo.com)

References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images, Blackwell, Oxford.

Nielsen, J 1997, Be succinct! (writing for the web), Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, viewed on 4 November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html>.

Nielsen, J 2006, F-shaped patter for reading web content, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, viewed on 4 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_patern.html>.

Parker, RC 2003, Designing documents for web distribution, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale Ariz.

Wheildon, c 1990, 'Communicating or just making pretty shapes', 3rd end., Newspaper bureau of Australia Ltd, North Sydney, pp 4-8.