Now More Than Ever: 50 More Excellent Blog Designs
Designing blogs is easy. Designing blogs in a unique way is hard. Whatever blog engine you are using, there are literally thousands of templates available which you can apply directly, without any significant code modifications. That’s efficient, but it’s not creative, because using a default blog-template you risk to end up with some wide-spread look which has actually nothing to do with you. To convey your personality effectively, you need a design which reflects who you are and what you are doing. That’s why important is not just what you post, but also how you post it.
In fact, beyond the template-design-culture exists a field of creative, individual and impressive blog designs. And the good thing about it is that this field has been rapidly growing over the last years. To celebrate the creativity of blog designers we regularly present reviews of excellent blog designs we have stumbled upon recently. This post is no exception. Below you’ll find 50 further examples of excellent, unique and impressive blog designs.
Apart from “usual” minimal designs, one can observe more rather complex graphic works. If earlier only blog headers had striking visual elements, now whole web-layouts seem to have become more vibrant: paper clips, mp3-players, coffee cups and further objects are used extensively. Apparently, they are used as metaphors for the environment of site designers. Such designs are just impossible to copy and they unite the visual design with the author’s content in a unique and very personal layout.
You can also have a look at our previous showcases:
- 45 More Excellent Blog Designs (February 2008)
- 30 More Excellent Blog Designs (November 2007)
- 45 Excellent Blog Designs (August 2007)
Excellent Blog Designs
Narfstuff
Perfect integration of visual elements in a standard 2-column blog structure. Artwork.
Viget Labs
A pretty, clean, light and fresh blog design.
Dollarshort
Informal yet looking professional, with moderate use of white space and light colors.
coda.coza
The sixth version of Damien du Toit’s blog. Grid in use.
Brad Frost’s Blog
A truly creative blog design. This blog contains “words that would otherwise be coming out of designer’s mouth”. Literally.
Missy
Trendy stripes gone wild. The colors just fit together.
Popstalin.com
Beautiful visual composition which includes date stamps with a bird, search box with a bird and a navigation with birds. The RSS-bird is orange, of course.
Nzrn.com
Sometimes less colors is more. A very nice grid-based site layout which is easy to scan and to read.
tehCpeng
Wood, coffee, ear phones. This blog reflects the habits of its owner.
Antiphrasis.com
A blog with a very intuitive structure; nothing can really confuse a visitor and the date stamps are pretty sweet!
Lucy Blackmore
An artistic blog design for a blogger-artist.
Design Reviver
A magazine style blog with its own way of presenting the overview of recent articles.
Clemente
Blog design meets vintage style. If you will ever need to design a blog in the vintage style, here is how you could do it.
Viget Labs
Sometimes background image is everything you really need for a distinctive design. However, this blog offers more. Notice how well design elements are executed — e.g. article headings.
Freelenz
Achieving an intuitive design in complex layout isn’t easy. Ewald Natter manages to get it right. Although the layout isn’t simple, it manages to remain scannable and readable.
Bits & Pixels
Vivid colors on dark background look sexy. Can you find a space invader?
creative briefing
Simplicity at its best. This design emphasizes the importance of typography. Visual elements aren’t really necessary.
Ollie Kavanagh
Here the content seems to “hang” in the air which is unusual and attractive. The design is remarkable.
The Superest
A blog doesn’t have to contain posts. Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter present their illustrations in their blog.
Distortion
The level of detail in this design is remarkable. Every single detail is taken care of. The layout may seem a little bit complex, but it is not. Very impressive.
Mike Poss’ Rock Guitar
Simple, clean and stylish.
Mancub
“Thin” blog design. The navigation menu at the top is pretty funky.
woork
Antonio Lupetti impresses with a very clean design and keen attention to details. Calm, clean and very user-friendly.
Four Labs
A 3-column-based blog design which is really distinctive from usual blog designs.
Sketchblog
Interesting combination of illustrations and navigation in a blog design.
Spadewerk
Unusual blog design solution: both the left and the right column of the blog have the same width. This looks unusual but somehow attractive.
Internet Zillionaire
Creative blog design in the old-magazine-look.
davor peic.gavran
A blog design in which everything perfectly fits together. Don’t miss the nice Flash-based language switcher at the top of the page.
Kristin Ascoop
A blog design with feminine touch from Holland.
Kohette Design Web
Quite unusual, rather experimental solution. The RSS-feed-icon at the top of the site is animated.
Guifx
Light and fresh design. The calendar seems to serve as the primary navigation.
Home Design Find
Photos, rulers and paper clips in use.
yo vivo en vigo
This header is really hard to forget.
GlassHills – Web Design by Jackson Howell
A blog design with many curves, swirls, clouds, sun and a rising RSS-feed-icon.
Caty’s Blog
Apparently, Caty likes cats and small colorful illustrations.
Vectips
Simplicity meets white space meets fresh colors.
Revota
Maybe, there is a little bit too much noise on the page, but the way blog posts are presented is quite unusual.
I Am Neato
We don’t know who Neato is, but he seems to be really happy. Emilio Cavazos combines portfolio and blog on one page.
Susay
A vertical navigation menu in use.
Neweracaptalk
Instead of displaying excerpts of the latest posts, this blog first presents the titles of the posts and the latest forum posts.
Lisa Bettany
What does Lisa like? Right, photography and music. And where does she come from? Right, Canada. You see it immediately. That’s an effective use of visuals.
Moderno Prometeo
Similar ideas as in the previous design.
Pop Culture Tees
A t-shirt-blog in a pop-art-style.
Phil’s Proof
Ok, that’s probably too many details at once. But Phil doesn’t care. A really different blog design.
Alyssa Tucker
Summer colors for the summer mood. Can you find the swimming duck in the layout?
Catalyst Studios
A group-weblog with dozens of hand-drawn elements.
Dandelion Path
Sweet site navigation and sections labeling. All sections of the site are visible at one glance.
Stitchify
A unique blog design with a personal note.
Joseph Maguire
May 8th, 2008 6:05 amI like the NZRN.com site and Mostly lisa i was familiar with. She’s pretty damned ballsy and a funny person to chat with too. I am mixed on a few of the more complicated ones. Some are too hard to read and too busy, but overall nice stuff.
SV
May 8th, 2008 6:11 amCool!
Iko
May 8th, 2008 6:21 ami love the Superest. i like the simpler ones, less colours, better.
Peter
May 8th, 2008 6:28 amHmmm … NRZN.com claims to be published by TextPattern … Need we check all ?
As for the rest : I know taste is very personal, but I find most of these heavy on design & low on substance. Is there a relation between the two ?
ncus
May 8th, 2008 6:30 amnice list
Marcelo F. S.
May 8th, 2008 6:38 amAwesome tips! One of the best lists from Smashing!
Xin
May 8th, 2008 7:36 amnow more than ever, blog design posts on smashingmagazine
Jack
May 8th, 2008 7:57 amThank you very much for featuring my site!
It’s great to feel appreciated and I feel honored to be along side some fantastic designs.
Jack (GlassHills)
Santiago Martinez
May 8th, 2008 7:59 amcool!!
I believe that our blog can belong to the list, what do you thinks?
thanks!
kailoon
May 8th, 2008 8:12 amsad ..mine not in the list …
Drupal Museum
May 8th, 2008 8:30 amBeautiful designs! I really like Kristin Ascoop. I added it to Drupal Museum.
Alejandro Urrutia
May 8th, 2008 8:48 amThanks to Smashing Magazine for considering yovivoenvigo as an excellent blog design!
Maybe you can take a look to my other blog: Asian Trip… I miss China a lot :’(
Jonas Pelzer
May 8th, 2008 9:05 amWow, really fascinating! Inspiration en mass. Thank you for this!
Rioni
May 8th, 2008 9:30 amGreat Post….. Excellent
André Gärtner
May 8th, 2008 9:56 amGreat designs, maybe my blog is on this site soon, too ;-)
Amanda Fazani
May 8th, 2008 10:43 amI’m thrilled to see you’ve finally included a couple of Blogger powered designs in this showcase :)
Woork is excellent, but I was amazed to notice that Sketchblog is powered by Blogger! This is truly the best Blogger powered design I’ve ever seen (and I do go hunting for them!).
Thank you guys (and please include some more in your next showcase to inspire those of us who do host with Blogspot!).
James
May 8th, 2008 10:54 amI think I’m already sick of the table top grunge look…
Davor Peić
May 8th, 2008 11:20 amVery good selection!! some of the blogs are very very good designed with awesome content!!
thanx for including me!
davor
Sam Valiquette
May 8th, 2008 11:54 amVery interesting! Perhaps The Big Noob should be included?
much love,
sam
Richard.H
May 8th, 2008 1:47 pmInspire me to think out of the box again. Some of them are really cool!
Ollie Kavanagh
May 8th, 2008 2:08 pmJust wanted to say thanks for the addition and being mentioned amongst all those great designs is an honor. I understand people’s opinion on ‘grunge’ being the in thing (or outdated already). I didn’t design it with grunge in mind, just a personal interest in graffiti and street art stemming from my print work.
Great post.
Pablo
May 8th, 2008 2:34 pmAmazing list as usual, my favorite personal is carlosleopoldo.com
Gregg
May 8th, 2008 3:26 pmIm so sick of that played out “sky and grass header then dirt for the body” ive seen so many sites like that its not funny.
otherwise some cool designs but there are some awful ones…
mundens
May 8th, 2008 5:15 pmBasically the majority of the designs shown are complete crap. They are unreadable, don’t support accessibility standards and break all the rules of good design. They might make good static art printed and hung on the wall, if thats the way your aesthetics go, but as designs for websites the majority of them suck.
Most of them waste far too much space at the top of the page with static art and non-useful text and graphics, and also waste all the space round the edges. I’d be willing to bet that the majority of them are also poorly and inefficiently implemented, though that’s a whole other gripe.
And many are not very original. Four Labs, for instance is only a minor modification to the default Drupal scheme.
Whats the betting most of those sites were produced by the sponsors you list on this page, annoyingly taking up most of the width of it? I can tell you i’m very unlike to commission any of those sponsors in case they are responsible for this rubbish
Divya
May 8th, 2008 5:42 pmWow, honored to be included in the list!
Greg Esres
May 8th, 2008 5:51 pmWhile all of the sites are visually attractive, in the end, most of them are hard to read. Style over substance.
Liz
May 8th, 2008 6:30 pmThanks for featuring Pop Culture Tees! Thrilled to be included next to some really great designs.
But also surprised at the level of lash-back against some pretty outstanding designs. If these were business sites then I could understand it, but the majority of these are personal, non-commercial ventures. Where else can you experiment and really push the boundaries of the status quo? I didn’t find too many of them hard to read, or unusable. And some of the best advances in web design have come from breaking old rules.
Dez Blanchfield
May 8th, 2008 7:07 pmIt is just me or are 99% of these designs so busy they break every fundamental design rule of what is essentially a print media? I’m all for snazzy design, but seriously, not one of these falls into what I’d call “readable” content or design. I feel a head ache coming on just looking at them, and I’ve had a decade or more of reading insanity like WIRED magazine!
Honestly, can we go back to the basics of print design and create readable content that doesn’t make me feel like I need to jump up and run screaming for the hills for fear my cranium is about to explode? Ten points on all fronts for nifty graphical design, no question there, but print / content design, bzzzt.. nadda!
Cheers,
Dez
—
Dez Blanchfield
Myke Cave
May 8th, 2008 8:09 pmkohette.com is amazing. Very attractive.
zonovo
May 8th, 2008 10:16 pmUh-huh, 3 Viget blogs were listed.
Lukas
May 8th, 2008 10:22 pmHey, i like some of this blog designs. I allready knew some before.
la lène
May 8th, 2008 11:20 pmThank you very much for mentionning my website !
Allexiel
May 8th, 2008 11:33 pmNice design… makes me want to redesign. Thanks for the ideas!
Ivan
May 9th, 2008 12:29 amOK, all these designs are great. BUT. These cant compare to those you listed from several months ago.
Shaun
May 9th, 2008 12:40 amI really liked Brad Frost’s Blog, it’s very different. All of these designs make my default themed blog look really nasty though : (
Thanks :D
Davy Van Den Bremt
May 9th, 2008 1:23 amCool to find one of my sites in the list :
vanessa
May 9th, 2008 3:43 ami really like the ok one!
Eric Brown
May 9th, 2008 4:01 amWow, some great designs there! It’s nice to see designers that do a good job of incorporating the background with the foreground in templates. Something I need to do!
Kevin May
May 9th, 2008 4:03 amI went to coda.coza with firefox 2.0, and his site doesn’t display the same as it does in Internet Explorer. Everything kinda goes to 1 column instead of the 3.
Borne Bornesson
May 9th, 2008 4:19 amI am the only one who thinks personal blags are a waste of bandwidth/hdd space/time/life?
Blags are the new version of Geocities/Angelfire webpages of the 90′s.
Raju
May 9th, 2008 4:21 amI love coda.coza. I like simple (to look at), I like dark, and I like grids. And I love his home page. Very nice list. Thank you
Fran
May 9th, 2008 5:20 amHello! Very proud to see my site (narfstuff) featured on the list alongside so many unique and creative designs, what an honour!
I do see where valid criticism lies in terms of the overcomplicated nature of some designs (my own included), and the fact that the grunge/distressed look is getting to be a little dated. Having said that though, It’s great to see the intent in the community to breathe some imagination and individuality into their work!
Cheers,
Fran
Stuart
May 9th, 2008 7:43 amNarfstuff and Lucy Blackmore are complete rip offs of http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
Same visual ID and matching Header styles and tabs….come on people let not just copy
Geekster
May 9th, 2008 8:09 amtehCpeng.net
You wrote: “Wood, coffee, ear phones. This blog reflects the habits of its owner.”
That drink at the top of the blog is a form of Iced Milk Tea, specifically a very interesting blend; you can read about tehCpeng here. I would have thought that Smashing would have read the blog a little before commenting on it. :/
Sue
May 9th, 2008 10:49 amI’m sorry to say you have some very nasty readers here. Yet I notice none have the courage to post their own site URLs, which smacks of jealousy. Pathetic really.
It’s another good selection of designers who are not afraid to be different.
Lisa Bettany
May 9th, 2008 12:57 pmThanks for featuring me amongst all these uber designs. nice butt shot screen grab! my mum was not impressed.
Glacia
May 9th, 2008 5:01 pmI admit, I actually liked the earlier showcases more, because some of these just don’t seem to be as cool when it comes to functionality. Most just have pretty cool ideas for how to integrate layout graphics into their blogs. But not really innovative in some cases.
I was wondering if y’all would ever do other blog site layouts – like on livejournal, blogspot, myspace:
Just a suggestion!
firman
May 9th, 2008 7:52 pmthere’s so much grunge design on the list…
skoumas
May 10th, 2008 5:54 amniiiice….
James Abney-Hastings
May 10th, 2008 9:11 amHi,
There are some exceptional sites here, thanks so much for including my site (mancub.net) in your list, I’m truly honoured to be amongst such great company!
Kesepian
May 10th, 2008 1:47 pmIndeed, some great designs!
___________
Kesepian.
philippine web designs
May 11th, 2008 7:59 pmI like the blog design that looks like a mouth, It’s just so hilarious
Rishat Muhametshin
May 11th, 2008 11:03 pmWhy does Smashing Magazine cut screenshots and put ordinary text hyperlinks?
Crimson Fox
May 13th, 2008 6:35 amFantastic List.
I’d love to know how you find all these great sites.
Anton Shevchuk
May 14th, 2008 4:51 amMany Russian blogs have great design, please don’t forgot about it ;(
bloggersmosaic
May 17th, 2008 6:07 pmreally kool collection
Mark Cavill
May 18th, 2008 7:40 amI like all of the designs here, but I’m not much of a designer. I eventually ended up building something with the pressbox theme (http://www.creativesynthesis.net/blog/projects/web-commodities/press-box/). It’s a premium theme but it has a free version to try as well. I like how simple and customizable it is. Adding complex design elements is difficult for me and I think that focusing on simplicity is a good design approach.
Rocco
May 30th, 2008 6:33 pmI have to say, Coda’s blog is freaking beautiful.
victoire
June 6th, 2008 6:03 amIt takes time to design such exellent blogs. the collection is really kool!
Nancy
July 29th, 2008 12:44 amAwesome tips and good suggestions for creating blogs.
Jehzeel Laurente
August 29th, 2008 4:05 amwow I hope I can create something like this some day… *astounded*
drlovecat
September 21st, 2008 1:49 amDid you forget webdesignerwall.com ?
Mei
March 16th, 2009 8:14 pmi love this coda.coza templates so much, do this hv the xml free for download ?
unknown
April 16th, 2009 9:51 pmarent those designs downloadable? argh
Nards
May 28th, 2009 8:13 pmHuge collections! I love them all!
kim
July 13th, 2009 8:26 pmcool design
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PLaYeR
October 10th, 2009 7:21 pmmalaysia-asia
October 27th, 2009 10:54 amWow, some lovely templates featured here. I came across your site looking for a new template to suit me design. Thank you.
Regards,
David
Mr. herretøj
January 8th, 2010 3:14 amWow there are some very very good ones here, very creative and funny as well… Thank you very much :-)
Nothing compared to my Blog, even though I think I’ve done quite well :-)
Mistyukevych Serge
January 23rd, 2010 5:52 amGood examples of design!
But I just wondering why some of those great design was not converted to more interesting flexible or adaptive layout. They all made boring fixed width. (Almost 95% of blogs are fixed width). It looks like they are all Templates just with nice design. As for me it’s unuseful usage of free space at user monitors (we all know that a lot of users use wide screen monitors with big resolution).
Banner Stands
January 28th, 2010 11:47 pmArtistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.
Suvarna
February 3rd, 2010 11:15 pmIt looks like they are all Templates just with nice design. As for me it’s unuseful usage of free space at user monitors (we all know that a lot of users use wide screen monitors with big resolution).
Phil
April 7th, 2010 6:39 am> But I just wondering why some of those great design was
> not converted to more interesting flexible or adaptive layout.
> They all made boring fixed width.
Bringhurst (of The Elements of Typographic Style) recommends 45-70 characters per line for optimum readability. This is the principal reason why I (and I would believe, many others) tied the blog design to a fixed width.
Just because monitors are wider now doesn’t mean we like to read lines spanning all 19 inches or more. We don’t.
Phil (of philsproof.com above)
Pipas Carancha
April 8th, 2010 6:57 amHey! My blog is not here! Damn…
I’m a poor misfit.
Anne
July 19th, 2010 10:51 pmWow! great design.. but I like the Kristin Scoop design, the color very cool…
Adriana
September 21st, 2010 10:26 pmHola, estoy muy interesada en crear un blog pero quisiera saber si me puede orientar para saber como crearlo y como decorarlo o diseñarlo, ademas de como subirle la info.
Saludos