The Personal Side of Personal Blog Design
September 10th 2007
In the hubbub of blogging advice and tips, personal blogs often get overlooked. Business blogs seem to take all the attention, even though there are a good deal more personal blogs than business ones online. This seems to have extended into design advice as well but let's change that.
What makes personal blog design unique?
To answer this, ask yourself: what makes a blog a personal blog? The answer: anything and everything! Your personal blog can be whatever you want it to be. It's yours. The level of freedom you have with your content is unparalleled and that same level of freedom extends into your blog's design.
That is what makes personal blog design unique.
Your Blog's Purpose
All good designs start with a clear knowledge of the site's goals. What is the purpose of the web site? What is the purpose of its design? What sections of the site are you trying to highlight?
The long standing problem with personal blog design is that this fundamental aspect of design is left out. "It's a personal blog, it doesn't have a purpose." But it does.
Your blog's purpose is to be you. When a person reads your personal blog, they are reading it to hear your words, and your thoughts. It's less about solving a problem or learning something useful, as it is about hearing what you have to say on whatever topic you happen to be writing on.
In the same way that a reader can learn about you from what you say, they should be able to learn about you from your blog's design.
Creative License - Do What You Will
The great thing about designing a personal blog is that there are no boundaries. You are free to do whatever you want! In fact, it's actually better to just do whatever you feel like in most cases because in doing so, you are showing off more of your personality and who you are.
Business blogs tend to be tied down by various rules. They must maintain a "professional" image, match the company colors or and ensure that no aspect of the design is ever allowed to undermine the goal of clicking on adverts/making sales etc. Personal blogs are not held back by these restraints. You have complete creative license. Take advantage of it!
In tomorrow's post I'll go through a number of different ways of doing just that. You'll see some of the best ways of putting your personality into design.
We've all read personal blogs before. Which one captured your attention best? Whose blog was the most strikingly creative?
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Find other posts tagged with: Customization, Personal Blogs, Personality, Purpose, Uniqueness
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September 10th at 2:12 pm GMT
Comment #1
It's one of the great attractions of blogging, you can express whatever you want in terms of content and design.
September 10th at 3:59 pm GMT
Comment #2
One thing i like on personal blogs are signatures. I think it adds a touch, but would not use it on my other kinds of blogs. I tried so hard to limit down my focus on Mommy Zabs, but couldn't because really it is the clearest representative of me on the net... and I'm not compromised of just cooking, just mothering, just shopping, just an american, just.... I'm a lot of things, so my blog is a lot of things... When I put it out there to my readers about narrowing my focus on MZ and stop discussing china, politics, and other things not parent related, the overwhelming response was "NO!".
However my China blog is very focused.
And other projects I'm developing right now are as well.
-mommy zabs
September 10th at 10:02 pm GMT
Comment #3
I've written about this here: Personal Blogging|Blogging for the love of it, and continue to explore it in a few subsequent posts.
Perhaps this issue is finally getting the attention it deserves.
September 10th at 11:51 pm GMT
Comment #4
My blog's purpose is to possibly help others through the sharing of my experiences and spiritual growth. My reader stats are slowing growing so I hope that I am accomplishing what I set out to do.
September 10th at 11:58 pm GMT
Comment #5
Tejvan - That's true. It's an extremely flexible platform. You really can do whatever you want with a blog.
Mommy Zabs - Thanks for sharing your experiences on MZ. That actually demonstrates one of the key points here. For money making blogs, one of the core pieces of advice given is to focus on a niche. For a personal blog though, that's not always the case, as you've demonstrated.
(And I remembered the signature! You'll spot it mentioned in tomorrow's post. 
)
sbpoet - I remember reading that article. It is timeless advice that will always be relevant to the blogosphere.
Patricia - Just by knowing your blog's purpose, and being able to say it so clearly, you are a good step ahead of many. Focus on that purpose, and those stats will continue to climb.
September 11th at 9:21 am GMT
Comment #6
I hadn't really thought about this very much, although I have noticed myself reading alot more niche blogs lately and realising that things don't apply to me as much as some other blogs. I don't really make money from my blog, I'm not a graphic designer, I don't only blog about blogging (funny how there's so many good blogs that talk about blogging itself). However, I like to talk about those things (graphics, blogging) sometimes. Mine is a personal blog and I'm bound to talk about things that I'm interested in. Perhaps that reduces my readership because people reading for personal stuff might not care about graphics and vice versa.
Personality in a blog can be difficult. I've seen so many blogs that use backgrounds that look like '70s wallpaper and sidebar trinkets that look like my grandma's ornament collection (i.e. cluttered, mismatching). I prefer a more minimal tack.
One personal blog that sticks in my memory is My Life in the Kid Zoo, the template is unique and very well suited. A previously well kept secret was Ms Maggie Moo Talks 2 U, Mags writes some lovely things. Not a well kept secret any more because she has heaps of readers, while the template isn't necessarily unique it's pleasant enough and her personality comes through in everything she writes.
September 11th at 2:13 pm GMT
Comment #7
Hehe, I have just put my new design live and making it more personal was one of the things I kept in mind continuously when creating it so I basically threw all standards aside (except for taking up a header, content, sidebar and footer since it simply keeps it easier for the reader) and came up with something which I like and definitely fits me more than the greenish with a little shade of pink.
The blog's purpose is a fundamental issue which even if it was a personal blog has been lacking quite a lot in the past couple of months though, but I'm definitely going to pick that up again since the slacking off on my blog does affect my overall writing skills as well, it simply makes me lazy on all points :P.
September 11th at 7:43 pm GMT
Comment #8
The new design looks great Slevi. I'm glad you're put some thought into it. It shows! The new design is much nicer than the original, and the tagline you've added is perfect.
Good luck with it!
September 11th at 8:02 pm GMT
Comment #9
Kristarella - I love the My Life in the Zoo design! Looks great.
And I wouldn't worry about covering quite a few different topics either. All personal blogs do that. It's still great content, and if you like the person writing, there's a good chance you'll share a few of the same interests as well.
September 11th at 8:03 pm GMT
Comment #10
Thanks :), always nice to hear someone likes it, hehe. And I agree, it definitely looks better than the previous. Last time I was too much focusing on what would be okay by the current standards, how the bigger blogs looked like and such. In the mean time I've learned a lot though and one important lesson is that with copying the looks of others, no matter from how many places you go for, it'll always end up being less.
At least I can go ahead for quite some time again now :), this design should go for at least a year again ^^.
September 11th at 8:12 pm GMT
Comment #11
Here's the trick (for me)... I don't know HTML. I try to learn things and I read blogs like this one for ideas and tricks and such but the end result is usually I can't do too much tweaking because I only know the most basic of html commands.
I can make things bold lol. And change the color and size of things in my stylesheet... sometimes.
I'd like to pretty up my blog, make it flow better from a sight perspective, but mostly, I just think about content and generating content people want to read because my html skills are not going to be attracting any readers.
I love your blog keep up the great work
September 11th at 9:33 pm GMT
Comment #12
Slevi - Good. A long lasting design is certainly a worthwhile trait. Your work will have been well worth the effort. (That's not to say that a few tweaks every now and then might not be needed as time goes by.
)
paidtwice - Don't worry. Many (most?) bloggers are in a similar situation. Learning the basics of HTML and CSS is extremely useful, but even if you don't, all that you need to implement a lot of the advice you find online is a bit of common sense (And patience! xD ).
And thanks - Glad you're enjoying it!
September 11th at 10:45 pm GMT
Comment #13
@paidtwice: there are also friendly bloggers who are willing to give advices on HTML/CSS if necessary. Of course you could also have a look at my HTML tutorials, they hopefully help you to have a first step into the world of HTML. If you have any questions, leave a comment there or email me
on topic:
interesting article which leaves me one question: Does my blog design give you a first impression on what it is about and do you think it falls under a personal blog or under a business blog? I myself believe it is a personal blog...well, I did add something about "you can hire me" but right now I have not enough time due to school nor am I that pro (not yet) to really hope of getting anyone to hire me...
September 11th at 11:17 pm GMT
Comment #14
Marco - Your blog's header gives the obvious impression that it's a blog about coding (Web technologies in particular). The deep blue also reinforces that to some extent (It's a color that I at least would associate with technology).
I always knew it was a personal blog (At the very least, the lack of adverts would indicate that). If you felt you needed to further clarify its purpose, you could add a tagline? Or even move the category list above the page list?
September 11th at 11:36 pm GMT
Comment #15
I used to have "Randomness at its finest" as tagline, but after I revised the site I decided to drop it. So far I had no real good idea for a tagline
Moving the Categories list above the Page list...I think it is worth trying. Actually I'm still wondering how I could improve my sidebar a little bit. Maybe this is a first step into a direction which gives me another great idea for my design. I will try it out later, thanks for the advice
September 12th at 12:26 am GMT
Comment #16
Ack, if you can't think of a tagline, don't force yourself. For a personal blog, it's usually just a line that describes yourself (For instance, one of my fav's is "Australian grad student trying to save the turtles. And the environment. And humanity.Heh." - It doesn't have to be short and sweet like a business one, but if it can sum up your blog quite well, then go for it.
). Eventually, one will just come to ya. 
If you can jazz up the sidebar a little, then by all means, go for it! At the minute, it is probably the weakest part of your design, just because it's very plain. Experimenting never hurts, so good luck!
September 13th at 2:23 pm GMT
Comment #17
Thanks for your feedback... someday I'll try my hand at learning some html, it just isn't really high on the priority list at the moment. Blogging as a hobby and not a business has its limitations on time
I may try the comment color changing tutortial from today on my sandbox though and see if I manage not to crash anything