Illustration by OrangeCrush

A blog can be a great window into who you are as a brand or person and what your passion is. Your blog can also encourage people to follow and share your content on social media or sign up for an email newsletter.

So, what’s the difference between designing a blog and a digital news site or magazine publication? While news and magazines sites are mainly informative, authoritative, and matter-of-fact, blogs are your chance to connect with your audience by using your own tone of voice, passion and personality. Rather than just stating the facts of a news story like on a news site or adding quotes and color like in an online magazine article, your blog is the chance to show your own opinion and feelings about your subject of interest.

Your blog design needs to express all of this in a visual way. So, let’s dive in.

Define your blogging brand with these creative blog design ideas
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1. Be sophisticated with full-screen photos

You want to appeal to a sophisticated fashion or lifestyle audience, but don’t know where to start? You can’t go wrong with taking some tips from the blog design example below. Note how it uses a full-screen slider with a stylish, sultry fashion photo as the backdrop.

Blog design by Tomasz Mazurczak via Dribbble

The sophisticated colors and design scream high-end fashion, while the titles of the latest articles, in white, leap off the page. The placement of the social media icons in the top left is one of the first elements you see and this encourages the visitor to connect and start a discussion.

2. Keep it minimalist

Ok, so you’re a no-nonsense kind of person and you just want to get the message across clearly and succinctly without the clutter. A minimalist, clean-cut approach, could well be for you. Using one or two colors and bold headers with lots of white space can get your valuable points across efficiently. This style is often preferred by tech blogs or companies such as Apple who want to emphasize the images of their products or illustrate a process or feature.

Blog design by Surya Wiguna via Behance

3. Get serious with a corporate style

If your blog is more centered around providing valuable content about professional services then you’ll want to take a serious, trustworthy approach. This is often expressed via dark headers, clean photography and office/business-based imagery, like below.

Blog design by aarsita

4. Create an OMG moment

Do you want to create an energetic and lively experience for your hip, youthful audience? Then you could use unusual and fun imagery like in this blog. Bright colors and imaginative imagery will really get your audience excited.

Blog design by sandy#ogma

Imagery and visuals to make your blog design pop
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5. Illustrated hero images express creativity

This is an exciting image that could be used as the hero on a healthy food recipe blog. This type of image is bound to catch the eye of visitors to your site and get them intrigued and want to find out more about what you cover.

Illustrated imagery by Zahidul via Dribbble

6.  Tonal, perceptual illustrations for tech

Sometimes less is more and for modern tech companies these days it’s certainly a trend. Take this blog design hero image example. The line-drawn shape is set back in light grey so that the title carries some punch. It’s great for focusing users on the titles.

Header design by Designs Divine TM

7.  Cartoon elements add personality

Unusual hero images like the cartoon in this example show readers your brand personality. It introduces readers to your persona and invites them to connect and consume more content.

In all cases of using images in your blog ensure that you use ALT tags, titles and descriptions when inserting your images. This enables screen-readers and search engines to read your content and make it more accessible.

Blog design by Tubik via Dribbble

8. Combine photos with graphics to add depth

It’s just you, you, you! Maybe you’re a speaker or consultant and you want to put a major focus on yourself. If this is the case, then why not make yourself prominent on the homepage? This hero image pumps out personality along with contemporary graphics and a block-color background. Along with the highlighted text, this hero image really leaps out of the page.

Blog design by Dmitrij

9. Choose striking photos to show your brand or theme

If you’re trying to connect with an audience who are dreamers then why not place an inspiring idyllic photo on the front page like in this travel blog? Using this type of imagery throughout your blog will also entice your audience to spend longer on your page, meaning they are less likely to ‘bounce’ away from it.

Blog design by Armin Braunsberger

10. Spend time over texture

The featured images used on this blog really make it stand out from the tech crowd. The gradient color shapes appear to float on top of a color gradient background, giving a smooth and attention-grabbing look.

Blog design by Saikat Kumar via Dribbble