In my first post in my blog improvement series, I recommended 10 ways to improve your blog. So far I’ve discussed how to improve your blog’s photography, and today I’ll tackle blog and graphic design. Design is an area in which I am entirely self-taught, and thus I feel like I have a lot of room for improvement. Earlier this year I started living with my friend Karla, who has taught PhotoShop classes, and I learned the value of having help from someone who actually knows what she’s doing when it comes to graphic design. In seconds she can tell me how to do things that would take me hours to figure out on my own. So while it’s great to mess around and experiment, if you can afford it I’m sure taking design classes (even just online), would be worthwhile. That said, here are some free resources to help point you in the right direction.
(I use WordPress, so some of these resources will be slanted toward that platform. But many of them are applicable for whatever site you use to host your blog.)
Blog and Graphic Design Resources
- Pugly Pixel has many, many great tutorials and tips on blog and graphic design. Katrina of Pugly Pixel also wrote the very helpful 10 Blog Layout Tips and Tips for Laying Out Blog Posts at A Beautiful Mess.
- When I started self-hosting my blog and tried to edit my theme, I didn’t really know the terminology or where to start. I wish I’d been able to refer to this post and infographic, The anatomy of a WordPress theme.
- Check out 12 Beginner Tutorials for Getting Started with Photoshop and 40 Great Webgraphic Design Resources.
- CSS for beginners, part I (general) and part II (specific for WordPress self-hosted blogs), are really helpful for when you’re ready to edit some CSS.
- Ready for free font overload? Check out the 100 Greatest Free Fonts Collection for 2012, The League of Moveable Type, Lost Type Co-Op, Font Fabric, and Da Font for some awesome options.
- I like the understated patterns on Subtle Patterns so much that I use one as my background (Worn Dots). There are tons more to choose from.
- There are some great free downloads on I Rock So What.
- Read this post for some free photo-editing tools.
As I find more resources, I’ll be sure to update this post to include them. Do you have any great design resources to recommend?
