I’m just kidding, don’t quit. While a great blog design won’t allow you to quit your job right away, it will set a solid foundation for any plans you have with your blog; whether that plan is to outright quit your job in the future, establish yourself as an authority in your area, or to make more money.

What is Blog Design? Blog design is one of the most important elements of a blog, yet it is the most overlooked as well. This can be seen by just taking a casual look at the majority of blogs that are being published today. In a rush to to create quality content, a lot of bloggers have neglected their blog design. While the quality of your content will determine a large part of your success as a blogger, by making the mistake of neglecting your blog design you lose one of your most powerful weapons to your blog’s success.

In one sentence, the art and science of blog design is a careful balance of many different factors that include usability, aesthetics, typography, images, readability, contrast, and color.

Your message does not exist in a vacuum. If it did, then all you have to focus on is your content. But it doesn’t, because messages exists within frames that have a large effect on the message that you send. A frame in psychology, is a point of reference that a person uses to determine what a message means to them.

“In recent studies on web design, they found out that users make an almost instantaneous judgment about a website based on nothing more than the site’s “look and feel.” This judgment happens in about one-twentieth of a second and the initial impression is pretty persistent.” (1)

This is great news if your blog design is up to par, but if it isn’t then that is bad news for you as it is hard to change people’s first impressions. Use this to your advantage and instead of being one of the bloggers with tunnel vision who only focus on content and marketing, you can utilize your blog design in your arsenal to achieve your plans. Whether you are still set on quitting your job, establishing yourself online, or selling something, blog design is not something you can neglect anymore if you plan to compete.

This article kicks off a series of articles that fall under “Blog Design 101″ that will focus on setting the foundations for building a better blog design. Here are some of the following benefits a blog design can do for you:

• get more traffic
• gain more subscribers
• communicate your message better
• sell something
• and do all of it while looking good

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References

1. “The New Rules of Web Design” - Wisniewski, Jeff