The Secret of Great Blog Designs

What is the purpose of a blog design ? There are no blog designs that doesn’t have any effect on its blog, its message, and its goals. A blog design is either helping you move forward with your blog or it is not only hindering you from moving forward, but actually pushing you backwards. There exists no stand still between the two, because a blog’s design acts as the frame that a reader uses to decide on what the message you are trying to say actually means.

So what is the purpose of a blog design? The purpose of a blog design is to support your goals, communicate your message, and make your branding memorable.

How does a blog design have so much purpose ? It has a lot to do with the ability of a blog design to evoke emotions, which in turn wakes up the thoughts and beliefs that are tied to it within our mind. These emotions, thoughts, and beliefs are all interconnected in our mind from previous experiences where we learned to connect them together. In psychology, they call this a schema. An example of an everyday schema is when people are driving and they see a police officer, the first thing everyone does is slow down, because the police officer brings up thoughts, emotions, and experiences that relate to getting a ticket. Schemas are very powerful and there is a way to prime a certain schema, by presenting a person with the correct stimulus.

Another reason blog designs have such a powerful effect is explained well by Barry Schwartz in his book “The Paradox of Choice,”

“Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues have shown that what we remember about the pleasurable quality of our past experience is almost entirely determined by two things: how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (best or worst), and how they felt when they ended. This “peak-end” rule of Kahneman’s is what we use to summarize the experience, and then we rely on that summary later to remind ourselves of how the experience felt.” (1)

The “peak-end” rule has a few important implications to blog designs. The main one is that it can help to create a pleasurable experience that is memorable, which helps your branding a lot and makes your message last longer in your reader’s mind. The other one is that it can also have the same effect in the reverse direction, and make displeasing blog designs more memorable as well, which will hurt your message and reputation. It is a double-sword effect, but if you learn to wield it, it will be an important arsenal in your collection of weapons.

The next article in this series will focus on how to use schemas to your advantage. Subscribe today for free and get updated when new articles are posted.

Previous article in the Blog Design 101 Series:

Now You Can Have a Blog and Quit Your Job

What Everybody Ought to Know About Usability and Web Design

Even people who have no idea about usability feel the need to write articles about it to tell other people what they themselves should be doing. Usability has become a hot topic and everyone wants a piece of it by writing their own list of guidelines. Most of which end up just repeating what the other guy said. Yet even with the endless amount of articles on usability, there are still a lot of web designs that overlook easy ways to improve the usability of their design.

While there are many worthwhile guidelines to follow about usability, it really boils down to only two rule of thumbs. Those two are to make it easy to read and make it easy to find stuff. No matter what you do with your design, as long as you follow those two rule of thumbs then your design will be usable. Don’t stop there though and be satisfied. Take it to the next step and make it as aesthetic as possible and make it better all while still making sure your design follows the two guidelines.

Make it easy to read

1. Keep distractions to a minimal. This is especially important in the content area as that is where your readers will spend most of their time when they are on your blog. But that doesn’t mean you should neglect taking out anything in other areas that doesn’t really serve a purpose in your blog design as well.

2. Build a hierarchy that establishes a flow where there is less emphasis as it goes down in the list. For example, headings should pop more than links and bold texts. The sidebar should be capable of attracting attention, but not too much that it overpowers the content. You get the idea.

3. Keep the design of each area consistent. This lets the reader know that they are reading information that are closely related to each other due to their similarity. This also lets people block off different areas in their mind that they don’t need at the moment so they can focus on reading a specific section without their eyes wandering around trying to figure where a specific area begins or ends.

Make it easy to find stuff

1. Identify what people are looking for or what you want them to find. Then make it ridiculously easy to find if it is that important to you or them. Don’t just have one pathway/entry for a reader to be able to find it. Make multiple pathways/entries to it so if they miss one there are other ways for them to find the important stuff.

For example, if getting more subscribers is important to you then make a rss button that pops, ask people to sign up at the bottom of a post and make a cool design so people will see it, and create a special subscribe page.

2. Take away anything unimportant and be ruthless about it. So what makes something important or unimportant anyways? In blog design, if you take away something and it decreases your blog’s ability to achieve your goal whatever that may be, then that something would be pretty important.

But if you take it out and it doesn’t hurt your blog’s performance, then by all means rip the sucker out. It will improve your blog design by decreasing the amount of unimportant stuff that can get in the way of a reader who should be looking at your most important stuff.

3. Label everything or at least make it clear what they are looking at. Don’t assume that people will be able to tell what they are looking at or that they will draw the same conclusion as you. A thousand people can look at the same thing and come up with different descriptions of what they saw so save them the trouble and just tell them what it is.

Conclusion

Don’t stop at following these two guidelines and being satisfied. Take your blog design to the next level by making it better.

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Creating a Graphic Design PDF Portfolio

These days, it seems like every designer has a website to showcase their work. While online portfolios certainly are effective, they are expensive to develop, require technical knowledge, and can be extremely time consuming to create and maintain. Additionally, they are not always the best option to showcase print work, and they may display differently from browser to browser and computer to computer.

An excellent alternative is a graphic design PDF portfolio. Many graphic software programs, such as InDesign and Illustrator, have the option of exporting a design as a PDF. This allows the designer to create a custom brochure-style piece showcasing their best work, which can be emailed to prospective clients or employers.

Selecting Work

As with any portfolio, perhaps the most important decision is what design work to include. Think about what types of projects you are looking for. If you have a specific focus, such as book design, select your best work in that area. If you are early in your career and don’t have a focus (or don’t want one), choose your best work across the board. It is ok if you only have design school projects or personal projects to showcase. The work itself, and not necessarily a client or publication name, can impress just as well. However, if you do have some “real-world” design experience you are proud of, include that as part of your portfolio.

Remember that the goal here is not to show everything you have ever done. Stick with a “less is more” philosophy, choosing a small selection of your favorite work. Each piece should serve a purpose, showcasing a particular style, technique or industry.

Content to Include

Before getting into the design, create an outline of what to include in your PDF portfolio. For each piece of design you have chosen, consider adding:

• Client name and industry
• A project description
• Your role in the project, such as designer or art director
• Where the work appeared
• Any awards, publications or recognition related to the project

Along with the project features, the portfolio can include:

• A cover letter, bio, mission statement or other background information
• Contact information
• Client or industry list
• Services offered by the designer or firm

Consider hiring or teaming up with a professional writer to help prepare your content, as it will be the voice of your portfolio. If you need your pieces photographed, also consider a professional. Once you have prepared the content, it is time to move on to the design phase.

The Design

Treat the design like you would any project for a client. Come up with several designs and tweak them until you are happy with the result. Create a consistent layout and style throughout. Using the may be helpful here. Remember that the design of the PDF itself is just as much a showcase of your talent as the work within it.

You can use your favorite graphics software to create the initial design, and turn it into a PDF later. InDesign and Quark are great options for creating a multi-page layout, and Illustrator would work well for graphic and text-heavy freeform layouts. Think of the flow of content…start with a quick overview, and then go into project examples with all of the content you came up with earlier. Try using several images per project, and be sure your contact info is very easy to find.

Creating the PDF

Once your design is complete, you can export it to PDF out of many programs. Be sure to save the original file so you can add and edit projects later. One thing to think about here is file size, as you will be emailing this often. Play around with the compression options in your software until you reach a happy medium between quality and file size. You can also use Adobe Acrobat Professional to piece together several pages of design (in many formats) and to reduce the size of the final PDF.

Using the PDF

Now that you have a portfolio in PDF format, use it! Potential employers and clients will want to see your work and you can email the PDF directly to them, skipping the need for them to visit a website. Since it is a standard supported file format, you don’t need to worry about people not being able to view it. You can also print the PDF and bring it to meetings, especially when you won’t have computer access. As long as you keep it up-to-date with your strongest work, a graphic design PDF portfolio is sure to be a powerful marketing tool for your design business and goals.