Blog design is a very large subject and while some concepts are simple others are more complex. This means for both beginners and more advanced users there will be many questions needing to be answered. As an experienced blog designer, I myself often have questions. I will do my best to answer the many questions that arise as simply as possible. If the list below is missing your question let me know in the comments.
1. Which Fonts are the Easiest to Read Online?
The easiest fonts to read online are typically ‘sans-serif’ fonts. This means the fonts do not have embellishments. For some people, the embellishments can be distracting and while some ‘serif’ fonts keep the embellishments simple, others can be quite ornate.
Some of the most popular easy to read sans-serif fonts include:
- Open Sans – This super popular Google font is stated by Google to be “optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces, and has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms.”
- Roboto – This is another popular Google Font known to be easy to read.
- Georgia – Georgia is a popular serif font that does not overdo the embellishments.
- Ubuntu – Ubuntu is named after a South African Nguni Bantu term meaning “humanity.” It also has a philosophical meaning, “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.” The Ubuntu font is seen as a modern humanist-style typeface and is well known for its great readability.
There are of course many other great fonts that can be used in combination to give your readers a sublime reading experience but more on this in future articles.
2. How Can I Make My Blog Layout as Reader-Friendly as Possible?
Blog Layout can be interpreted in two ways.
- The overall layout of your blog’s design
- The layout of an individual blog post
As the main question here is related to being Reader-Friendly and is thus more suggestive of how you structure an individual blog post, I will only deal with the second point here.
In the following blog design question a little further down the page, I will cover the overall blog layout. Blog layout too plays a part in readability as you will learn later.
When it comes to the layout of individual blog posts there are a few things you need to be aware of and I will list them briefly here without a detailed discussion.
- Choose an easy to read font that has good spacing and is not overly fancy or busy.
- Keep your paragraphs short, two to three sentences are usually just about right.
- Keep your sentences short too. Overly long sentences can be difficult to follow.
- Break your paragraphs into topics using headings.
- Use bullet points to list items for easier reading and skimming.
- Use bold and italics to emphasize points but do not overuse them or you will lose the effect.
- Use images and graphics periodically to add interest and break up your text. Make sure the images are relevant to your message.
- Ensure any links you insert stand out from the regular text so as to be visible and clickable.
3. How Do I Keep My Blog Uncluttered and Make it Look More Professional?
This is where the overall layout of your blog comes into play.
While it is important to layout the content of your individual blog posts ensure good readability, the blog design that surrounds these posts must also aid readability.
If you surround your posts with too much additional info like lots of links to other pages, advert banners, multiple sidebars, etc. you will make the user experience and overall reading experience less pleasant.
It is important to give your content ‘room to breathe’. Having a little whitespace around different parts of content provides this ‘room to breathe’. It also helps to focus the reader’s attention to where it should be, on your content.
With the rise in mobile viewing of websites, many blogs have opted to use simple single-column layouts on both desktop and mobile. Using a two-column layout where one column is a narrow sidebar also works well provided the sidebar is not overly cluttered. The sidebar column should also show beneath the main column when viewed on a mobile device.
Unless you know a good bit about blog and website design it is also worth hiring a blog design professional to help you with your blog layout and design.
4. How Can I Make a Mobile-Friendly Blog/Website Layout?
If you are using WordPress, which happens to be the world’s most popular platform for building websites and blogs, then more than likely the WordPress theme you install will be mobile-friendly out the box.
That said, being mobile-friendly does not necessarily mean the same as being optimized for mobile devices. Mobile-friendly is good enough for most basic websites and blogs but for more complex websites and blogs it is important to also ensure your web pages are optimized for mobile.
How much optimization is needed will usually depend on the theme you have installed, whether or not you are using a Page Builder plugin and also your own website design experience.
So to recap, if you are setting up a basic website or new blog, then most if not all good quality WordPress Themes will already be mobile-friendly and you won’t actually have to do anything further.
5. Is it Worth Paying a Blog/Website Designer to Help with My Site?
Yes, it is if you can find a good designer.
If you have time but not much money then you should learn a bit about web and blog design so you can do it yourself.
If you have money but not a lot of time then definitely hire a web designer to help you.
Also, look at what your most important tasks are. If you are blogging then the more time you put into creating awesome content the better. In this case, having a blog designer take some of the work off your hands can free you up to be a lot more productive.
If you are running a business website and you need to spend your time promoting then it is also a good idea to hire a good website designer to help you. They may even be able to help you automate a lot of your promotions and free up some more time for you.
A good designer can add a lot of value by designing a user-friendly site and optimizing it for conversions and mobile devices.
