Blog Design Tutorial: Getting Started

Blog Design Tutorial: Getting Started

Getting Started

1. Design in mind
2. Websites
3. Photos, Clip Art, and Font
4. Templates
5. Layouts

Let's get started with your blog design. In this section, you will explore some blog designs, useful photo websites, various fonts and clip art, different templates to choose from, as well as blog layouts.

 

 

 

1. Design in Mind

 

Before you can even start a blog, think about the type of designs you want. If you already have a TpT store with a logo, start from there. Think about the colors you want to see. Think hard! You may not be able to change it again so easily. When I first started my logo only had my name and apple. The colors were red, green, and black. White goes with everything so I decided gray/silver would be my third color. Red and green represent the apple from my first logo. The gray/silver represents the technology where majority of my products work on.

Here are some TPTers who can create logos for you:

Maria DiCesare - $6
EduClips  - $12+
Melonheadz - Contact her for price
Surfer Kids Clip Art (Provided Free Computer Clip Art in my logo) -  $27

If you're wondering about my new logo, I made it with Microsoft Word. =P
 

 

2. Websites

 

Once you have a design in mind, there are some websites you may need to complete you own blog design. First, you will need a photo website where you can get photo links. Photobucket is the website I use. You can upload numerous pictures and create different albums. There are other website too like Flickr. You need to make sure that the website you use can create urls for your photos.

 

Another great suggestion would be to get a second blog and label it your "Test Blog" so that you don't mess up a blog you have already. Believe me when I saw I messed up my original blogs so many times, I didn't want anyone to see it. As you complete various parts, I saved the blog design and added to my original blog.

 

3. Photos, Clip Art, and Font

 

Next, you'll need to create the different sections for your website (such as headers and dividers). I used Microsoft Powerpoint and Paint to create all my designs. I used KG Fonts for my website (with a paid commercial license). There are other fonts that are available without a commercial license. Check out Fontspace or Dafonts for wonderful fonts. For clips art, mycutegraphics has free educational clip art. TeacherspayTeachers has numerous free and paid clip art. The computer clip art and banners in my header were all free from TeacherspayTeachers.

For the 2 side designs, I downloaded free Digital Paper (Digipaper)  from TPT. I will go more in depth on creating that 2 sided design latet. For now, think about what designs would like. Here are some Digipapers I tested out before I finally decided:

KristyBear Designs - Digital Paper
Red Pepper - Digital Paper
Jamie Carey - Backgrounds
Emily Wean - Digital Paper

Here are some other helpful clipart if you plan to make your own designs:

Free Push Pin Graphics / Clip Art - The 3AM Teacher
Curvy Rainbow Square Frames Clip Art - The Enlightened Elephant
Sweet Round Label Digital Clip Art - Lockless Creations

Another great website to help make your pictures have a transparent background is Lunapic.com. You can make any picture have a transparent background with only a few clicks. Simply upload a picture, choose the color you want to be transparent, and save that picture! I love it! I wonder how I lived without it.

 

4. Templates

 

As far as templates are considered, Blogger has a few templates to choose from. I used a "Simple Template" for my blog. Easy and straightforward. "Picture View" is great for emphasizing your header/logo. My advice would be to go through each one and click the type to see what you blog would look like if you chose that style.

 

5. Layout

 

After choosing your template, you layout comes next. This maybe one of the bigger decisions you'll make about your blog. This is how your organize the different parts of your blog including where each section goes to. You can choose your "Body" Layout (the main part of your blog) and the "Footer" layout (the bottom section of your blog). Basically, think about where you want your posts to be and where you want your other clickable sections to be.

To Choose you layout:

Template >> Customize>>Layout.

Choose your favorite layout and click "Apply to Blogger" to see what it looks like. Once you're back on the main page, you can click "Layout" and move around various parts of your blog layout.

 

Click For the Blog Design Tutorial Overview.

Test out a few things and see what you come up with. Let me know if you have any questions in comments below!
Class Dimissed!