Blog Design Inspiration | 12 Best Blogger Examples for 2023

If you want to have the best possible chance to draw people onto your blog and keep them on your site, in addition to having compelling content, great blog design is something that can actually be done quite easily these days even if you are not a graphic designer.

There are some great free and paid tools out there for designing blogs and there are some very good techniques that you can use to greatly improve the look of your own blog.

As you will see, all of the best-designed blogs have certain things in common!

So let me explain what tools you can use and then let me give you 12 examples of blogs that might help to give you some creative ideas. Well, let’s get started!

Blog Design Tools

1. Color Scheme Generator Tool

One of the hardest things, when you are designing anything as someone who is completely new to the game of graphic design, is to know and understand what colours work well together. Well, it was hard for me anyway 🙂

There are some brilliant tools out there though for FREE that can help you easily understand what colors can be used together:

• Coolors.co – is a colour scheme generator that will help you choose what colours to use on your site.
• Color Palette Generator – the colour generator from Canva enables you to upload a photo and to then easily match colours that work well with that photo.
• Vis.me – also has a great post about colour combos

ACTION: Spend 5 minutes to look and get used to the different colour combos that work well together by visiting Canva palette above.

2. Designing Banners for Free For Your Blog

One of the visuals that will be on every page of your blog will be the banner at the top of your blog.

This image, of course, will be important given its prominence so it is worth the effort to design something classy.

How do you design a blog banner within 5 minutes and do it for free?

You will need to forgive me if I mention Canva.com a few times in this post but this is a FREE tool and one that you can design just about any graphic on, including with their free banner templates.

Canva has dozens of free templates that you can use and the software requires no design skills because you simply drag, drop and type over the text to change these elements to make your own design.

It is all designed for those of us who are NOT designers by nature.

3. Logo Design for Free

Next, I recommend designing a logo and I want to tell you something!

Once again you do NOT need any design skills and furthermore, you do NOT need to spend anything at all to create a logo. You can do it for free and within minutes and without any design skills.

If you haven’t already read what I wrote all about creating a free logo, let me just recap and explain.

There are two very quick, free, and easy ways to design a blog logo that I recommend, and these are:

• If you really have 0% design skills then just use, yes, you’ve guessed it. Canva. Just use the Canva Logo Maker!
• If you have any experience at all of a package such as Photoshop you can create a logo that is just words like I have done for the ‘ProMarketing’ logo. Design text with colours and a font you personally like.

4. Using Great Quality Images on Your Blog and For Free

How to find great quality images and for free is also something I mentioned in the post on how to set up your own online business for less than $100 (or £100).

I also though covered it in much greater detail in the post “7 Best Stock Free Images Sites for Bloggers to Use Photos Commercially” so please check that out:

7 Best Stock Free Images Sites for Bloggers to Use Photos Commercially in 2020

5. Making Use of Headings, Images, and Space in Your Blog Posts

The other thing to think about for blog design is how you use:

• headings
• images (within the post)
• and how you make use of white space.

Headings and Lists

What makes headings great is that they break up text and help to make a logical structure that makes it easier for your readers.

Furthermore, from an SEO (search engine optimization) point of view, headings are really important because they help to inform search engines what each of your blog posts is about.

Using bullet point lists is also a great example of how you can also diversify how your content looks on a page.

Images in Your Post

Using some small images (I say small so that you do not have pages that take too long to load) can further help to break up the text on your blog posts and make them more readable visually.

White Space

The cleaner the design the easier a blog tends to be for readers to read and to enjoy. One of the simplest things to do to make a site cleaner is to think in terms of white space. White space helps to produce the clean look that you will see in the blog design examples below!

Designing for All Devices

It is important to remember when designing blog posts, that a lot of your readers, these days, will be reading on small devices such as cellphones and iPads.

So you need to think about how your content will look on these devices. A simple rule is that you will want to break up text into small chunks.

The easiest way to do this is to have 2 sentences maximum per paragraph.

Blog Design Examples

1. The Londoner

The Londoner is a lifestyle blog by Rosie from London who is a lifestyle blogger who writes about travel, food, style, and her lifestyle. We LOVE her blog because of:

• Beautiful and alluring graphics and photos
• Lovely overall design especially with the use of white space, so a very clean design
• Very professional images and definite a very professional set-up all round.
• Very easy to use the menu at the top.

2. Grovemade Journal Blog

Grovemade focuses on things made from Linoleum (very niche) and what we love about the actual design of the site is similar to the appeal of ‘The Londoner’ site we listed above, in that we love the:

• High-quality images
• Very clean and tidy layout of the pages
• Great use of white space
• and in terms of content a very clear niche focusing on one clear service.

3. My Wife Quit Her Job

We are big fans of mywifequitherjob.com both from a design and content point of view. We especially like the fact that:

• Even though there is a lot of information, it is easy to find and choose what you want because of the clear menu
• Once again great use of white space

4. Symonds Training Blog

Why do we like the blog design used on Symonds Training? We love the fact that:

• There is a top menu that is clear and logical
• I think the colours match nicely
• The intent of the site is clear.

5. A Cup of Jo

Something we can all learn from Joanna Goddard’s blog ‘A Cop of Jo’ is that simplicity can be the best way to think in terms of good blog design. Jo’s site is:

• Very simple and, sorry to mention this once again, but with masses of white space. This makes the site look incredibly clean and so easy to read.
• It is very nicely branded with a photo of Jo clearly visible and the intention of the site is instantly clear with the blog design used.
• A simple and soft colour scheme that is easy on the eye.

6. Studio DIY

Studio DIY is a site we think is a great blog design example when it comes to:

• Soft palette colours for images and graphics. Take a look at studiodiy.com and you will see a real mix of very soft colours. In terms of the use of colours, this is our favourite.

7. The Blond Abroad

• The ‘Blond Abroad’ blog uses very soft colours and once again great use of white space.
• This is perhaps the very best blog design, in our opinion, in respect of the various and interesting layouts of the content.

8. Salt In Our Hair

‘Salt in Our Hair’ is a travel blog by Hannah and Nick that we love because of:

• Amazing photography that really makes you want to travel
• Very nice the way they have integrated videos into the design
• Very easy to navigate and great use of colours and white space

9. Pinch of Yum

Pinch of Yum is a blog that is designed with:

• a very heavy focus on alluring photos so it is very image-based and works especially well given it is food and given the quality of the photos.
• also once again there is a great use of white space.

10. Gimme Some Oven

Much like ‘Pinch of Yum’, ‘Gimme Some Oven’ is another food blogging site and is particularly attractive and well-designed because of the photos. Worthy of note:

• The photos are mostly done as close-ups and this works really well as it gives you a clear view of the foods.
• Once again, there is a great variety of colours in the photos and there is a lot of white space on the sides of the pages. This makes it easy to focus on the photos.

11. Twenty-First Century Gent

On the Twenty-first gent:

• The design is very classic with a focus on browns and suede style colours that compliment the colours one might associate with menswear and so this works really well.
• Once again, the photos used are outstanding (so great quality)
• Very simple blog menu showing clear focus i.e. fashion, lifestyle and travel and the key topic areas. This is a lifestyle blog for men and it seems very clear.

12. Barefoot Blonde

Barefoot Blonde is a lifestyle blog by Amber Fillerup Clark. If images can be used to tell a story, then Amber achieves this perfectly as you will see if you visit her blog.

The design of her blog is very simple but effective.

18. The Blog Abroad

Written and designed by Gloria Atanmo, ‘The Blog Abroad’ is great because of very professional-looking photos and then a clear brand, the brand being Gloria herself and her travels.

This is another example of a blog that is simple but that uses the blog design techniques that I summarize below.

Overall Thoughts on the Blog Design Examples Given

There were many common elements that all or most of the blog design examples included above have. The key features were:

• Great photos and use of images
• Lots of white space on the page so that the design looks clean and fresh
• Clear and easy-to-use blog menus
• A clear identity in that it is easy to see who the person or people are who are the blogger/s behind the site in question.