Blog Design Trends and Examples (Plus More)

There is no better way to build a new site design other than using prime examples within the marketplace to re-create your own site or blog.  Aesthetics and design are important factors in the value of your blog, whether you choose to learn the basics and fundamentals; designing your theme/layout from scratch or having an experienced professional code and build a design for you (which is quite expensive for first-time bloggers).

There is so much information out there to help build your firs theme starting with nothing.  So, here are a few more articles recently published that focus on design of your site/blog to help you create a blog that reflects upon your own personality and what you want your blog to look like.  Be sure to bookmark/share/save them for future reference.

Blog Design That Works [ThemeShaper] — This post takes a look at four popular designs from blogs that are among the top – Lifehacker, PSD Tuts, Smashing Magazine, and Canada’s National Post.  Ian provides a wireframe of the main sections for reference as to where you should be theoretically placing your content and sidebars as well as his personal thoughts on each design.  Useful if you need to place a lot of content in your sidebars, thus opting for the “magazine” look for your blog.

Newspaper Website Design: Trends and Examples [Smashing Magazine] — Although this is another review of how to build magazine-oriented sites, rather than blogs specifically, it can again help with multi-column themes.  The author takes a look at the following: Common Trends, Notable Differences Between News Websites and Blogs, and then A Look at 20 Leading Newspaper Websites.  Even if you only take one thing from this article, it should be the way that these major sites accomplish displaying all of their content (non-full articles) on one page, while balancing advertisements, subscription options, and other content within the confines of a two- to three-scroll area.

Complete WordPress Theme Guide [Web Designer Wall] — Serving as the introduction post for an upcoming series, Nick La, a popular designer running several blogs will be publishing a series of tutorials, which aim at providing a way to 1) Install WordPress on a Local computer, 2) Build a Custom WordPress Theme, and 3) Move and Export the Theme/WordPress.  You may think that there are hundreds of posts/tutorials much like this one, although there can never be enough help for those who have never ventured into creating their own theme – this will immensely help that group of people.

How I learned to Build WordPress Themes [Design Reviver] — A link post directing you to a collection of resources which will help you code and design a WordPress theme.  Never designed a theme before?  This post will show you first-hand the resources needed to do so from someone who has used them previously.

50+ Gorgeous Navigation Menus [Vandelay Website Design] — From the same writer/compiler as the Smashing Magazine article (Steven Snell), you’ll find additional inspiration if you’re focusing on designing a more functional and better designed navigation menu – one of the most important areas of any site.

Conclusion

Please recommend any additional articles to readers in the comments section below or comment on the ones listed above.