Were you a fan of the old, dark Blogussion skin? You know, the one with a beautiful, red navigation bar, the amazingly organized content area and big, bold headlines? Yeah, that one. That exact one.

If you didn’t know, my main business of selling Thesis skins at Kolakube.com has been going under some big changes lately, and the latest change to the site is the release of the new Blogussion Inspired Skin.

It’s basically a replica of the previous design we had here, but with some pretty neat options that makes it pretty special for a premium Thesis skin.

I won’t do much writing, as I have done something I’ve never done online before: make a video! I created a video that is about 3 minutes long, and it goes over all of the cool stuff about this skin.

Check out the video now

Win the Skin for FREE

I feel that the price tag on a skin this awesome (it’s only $37) is more than reasonable, but I decided to loosen up a bit and am going to give this skin away to one person at no charge.

All you have to do is like Kolakube on Facebook, and one lucky person will be randomly selected to win the skin free of charge.

Like Kolakube on Facebook.

Keep in mind: this is a major update from the previous versions. The skin was designed and coded 100% by me this time around, and not outsourced. There is a monitored support forum over at Kolakube and I will be waiting to help you if you have any issue(s) you have with the skin.

Related posts:

1. Blogussion Back in Action: Alex Returns & Other Exciting News

2. TeenProBlogger + KolaKube = Blogussion

3. How to Read a Blog Post Effectively

As blog design has evolved, getting a theme has become easier. Premium themes have become more advanced and allow for simpler customization to be done by the owner. However, just because you buy a theme and use it straight out of the box from a site like WooThemes doesn’t mean you have a design that “works.”

Custom themes are becoming more and more of a necessity rather than a luxury, and bloggers are becoming more involved in the coding and technical aspects of their design. More and more people are starting to do it themselves, and relying on their own skills rather than the skills of others.

Some just outsource the work to others. But still, more and more people understand the importance of a blog design, and are investing their time and money into getting one that works.

As someone who has always created a custom theme for his blogs, I can definitely tell you that it pays off. But, it’s not easy to just start designing.

As a minor continuation of an article I published last week which I revealed how I learned to design, I created a checklist of things you need to make sure your blog design has in order for it to be a success.

Now I have written a lot about design in the past few weeks. I suggest you go through the design category here and read over the articles in there. They are highly informative, and will help you make some important decisions about your blog design.

The Designers Checklist

For those of you who are diving into the world of custom blog designing, I suggest you make sure all the following elements are intact with any design you put out.

1. The “WOW” Factor

There should be something about your design that on first glance will amaze anyone who looks at it. The more aesthetically pleasing you can make your blog (without losing functionality), the better it will be for your “WOW” factor.

Your “WOW” factor can be anything really. It can be something simple like your logo, some nice typography, or even the colors you use. If you’re more advanced in graphics design, you can create cool illustrations and place them throughout your design. See: Tutorial9′s header.

2. Easy navigation

Every part of your blog needs to be easily accessible. From the navigation links in your header, to the archives page, navigation is one of the most important parts of your blog design. If no one can get anywhere, what’s the point of viewing your blog?

There are many forms of navigation. You can design how people travel through your site in any way you want. But, when it comes to navigating – you need to keep it simple. Being innovative is great, but getting too fancy in your navigation is risky.

Smashing Magazine has a giant list of some nice navigation trends, if you think seeing them will help you come up with some cool navigation elements.

3. Emphasis

This is an important element too, especially on a blog design. The one thing that should be emphasized the most on a blog is, without question, the content area.

All throughout Design Versus Week, I talked about two different elements of a blog design that had impact on how much your content stands out.

Since blogs are often packed full of information, it’s easy to create clutter and end up with less emphasis on the things you want to stand out. A lot of bloggers’ go wrong by filling their design with ads, and for that, well – you’re on your own.

4. Memorability

What’s so memorable about the blog design you have? When I visit a blog that has a premium theme I’ve seen dozens of times, it’s obviously not memorable for its own look, but for the look it shares with dozens, if not hundreds of other blogs.

Have some sort of element that is unique to your own blog. Even if it’s a custom theme that isn’t anything great, you still have a better chance of it being remembered because it’s unique to YOUR blog.

5. Minor Details

The smaller details of a blog design are often left uncared-for. I blame the name of it, it’s called minor details. Of course not many people know to take care of those things.

But the truth it, the minor details (such as the font used in the body, or an icon being placed in the sidebar) are just as important as anything else. I believe that you don’t need a design with flashy graphics or complex illustrations, so long as you take into account the smaller, finer details.

What’s on your list?

When you go to change your blog design, what are the things you look for? I told you five of the many things I look at when I design my blogs, so I’m interested in hearing some of the things you look at.

Contribute to 2.0!
I plan to write a checklist 2.0, and want to include your suggestions in it. I want this to get big guys (I’m talking a possible free, comprehensive eBook one day), so give me all of your suggestions for the next version of this list!

Related posts:

1. What Every Blogger Should Know About Design When Buying a Theme

2. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

3. Do You Have the Best Possible Chance to Conquer Design Versus Week?

Even with the conclusion of Design Versus Week, I still have something to say when it comes to designing a blog. With the latest redesign here, I have received many questions about the things I have done here. The question I have heard the most is “how did you learn to design?” And I thought I would dedicate an entire post to answering that question.

First of all, I just wanted to thank you for the great response about the new design. A lot of you love it, and that’s good because this is how I want Blogussion to look for a while. There are still some tweaks to be made, but this is how I want the blog to look for a while if you don’t mind!

I should just start off by making a few important points. I feel that most people who ask me how I learned to design don’t know much about designing and what it actually means.

1. It’s not as easy as pointing and clicking
   Tools like Photoshop make it easy to literally just point, click and design, but there’s so much more to creating a functional design than placing elements wherever. You need to know your audience and what they like (and more importantly DON’T like), design with different screen resolutions/browsers in mind, code with file size in mind, and just so much more.
2. It’s f***ing frustrating
   I can’t tell you how many times I just want to give up, or how many time’s I’ve sweared at my poor, innocent computer because something didn’t work. It’s amazing how frustrating designing can be, and no matter how much you love to do it – you will start hating it at some point (but love it again when things starts working).
3. You can’t please everyone
   No matter what, there are people out there who either don’t like something about your design, or don’t like your design at all. If you spend all of your time trying to please the people who don’t like something, you’ll be forgetting about everyone else on your blog. Just do what’s best for your blog, and don’t worry when two people say they “hate this design and want the old one back.”
4. You can never stop designing
   What I mean by this is that you can’t just come up with one design and then quit designing for your blog. In the one year and three months this blog has been around, I have updated the design four times. This just goes back to #1, and if you understand what your community wants and are always working to improve your blog, your design will need to be updated from time to time.

That’s just a little about what designing is. It’s not all fun and games, it’s something you actually have to practice and spend hours doing. I can still improve the way I do things, and I realize that. It’s important to know that.

If you can’t understand those four things I mentioned above, you’re probably not cut out to be much of a designer. Obviously there are more things you need to know (principles wise), but what I mentioned really ties into my answer for this question:

How did you learn to design?

People ask me this a lot, and when I really started to think about it – I haven’t been giving out the best answer I could. I have always given out the most cliché answers. “Check out tutorial blogs” or “Look through page source codes.” Yes, these are all things I suggest you do and are things I myself have done.

But when people ask me a question like that and I give them those answers, I’m not really helping them. Chances are, they have already heard that answer before, and maybe even tried those things already. I do actually like to help people, so once I figured out I wasn’t really helping anyone, I began to rethink my answer.

So how did I learn to design? It wasn’t from reading tutorials (which I didn’t read many of), it wasn’t from going to design galleries (which aren’t helpful nowadays as any site listed in one must have ridiculous illustrations which isn’t my field), and it certainly wasn’t a result of getting a teacher. I actually feel bad for the people who choose to hire an instructor to help them design, they miss out on an experience and often never find their own unique style.

The way I learned to design is by simply wanting to be able to learn.

Okay, I know that sounds lame, and maybe even less helpful than my usual answers. But I did warn you before you started reading this that I had an answer you wouldn’t expect. Let me clarify.

How do you discover your passion?

It would sound a bit snarky if I were to say “let me answer your question with a question of my own” but how do you discover your passion anyways? It doesn’t often just come from nowhere, usually you are willing to do research and spend time learning it.

Most designers would say that designing is actually their passion, and when someone is passionate about something – they go after it. Some people need more help than others, and some can just do it on their own. When it comes to my passion (designing, go figure), I like to think I did a lot of it myself. I won’t credit myself for everything of course, as I do/did need to do some reading and studying from various sources.

But designing is something that gets easier to pick up on as you progress. Once you figure out one thing, it creates more ideas in your brain and you just start learning how to do things better.

Now stop asking questions

I don’t mean to offend anyone, but it seems to me that anyone who has the need to ask somehow how they learned to design is completely missing the point. Sure, sharing some useful tutorials (if any) is always great. But for someone to ask me what I did to design is now ridiculous sounding to me.

Once you start designing without looking towards galleries, or looking at dozens of tutorials, you will find that answering the question “how did you learn to design?” will become harder to answer with anything other than “because I wanted to.” When you look back on the things you did, all of the cusses you shouted at your computer, you will realize that you learned to design because you actually wanted to.

So stop asking me what I, and other people did to learn how to design. You know the answer now, and it’s up to you whether or not you actually want to do it. The truth is, anyone can design. It’s just that not everyone wants to be able to enough.

Related posts:

1. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

2. What Every Blogger Should Know About Design When Buying a Theme

3. Light vs. Dark Blog Designs: Design Versus Week

With Design Versus Week ending tomorrow (how sad), it’s about time to announce the winners of the great blogging prizes. Just to make sure everyone has a fair shot at winning, I thought I would come up with a sort of checklist for you to go over and make sure you have the best shot at winning.

In case you forgot, these are the prizes up for grabs:

• First Place

  Value: $800+

  The first place winner of the Design Versus Week contest will win over $300 worth of blog design related prizes, and a custom design by Alex worth over $500+

  • 1 Developers License of the Thesis Theme for WordPress
  • 1 copy of the Blogussion Theme for Thesis
  • 1 custom Thesis design by Alex Fraiser [Blogussion designer]
  • 2 years free web hosting from WPWebHost
  • 1 copy of Rockable Press’s How to Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer eBook
  • 1 copy of Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr’s Digging into WordPress eBook

• Second Place

  Value: $345

  • 1 Developers License of the Thesis Theme for WordPress
  • 1 copy of the Blogussion Theme for Thesis
  • 1 year free web hosting from WPWebHost
  • 1 copy of Rockable Press’s How to Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer eBook
  • 1 copy of Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr’s Digging into WordPress eBook

• Third Place

  Value: $211

  • 1 Personal License of the Thesis Theme for WordPress
  • 1 copy of the Blogussion Theme for Thesis
  • 1 copy of How to Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer OR Digging into WordPress
  • $50 via PayPal

Checklist

The following are the things you need to have done in order to be eligible to win one of the prizes above. Be sure to read the rules before competing.

1. You have followed us on Twitter

It’s important that you have followed us on Twitter. We can’t track you unless you are following the Blogussion Twitter account.

2. You have tweeted about Design Versus Week

The whole idea of this competition is to spread the word about Design Versus Week. So, have you tweeted all of the articles that have been published as a part of Design Versus Week? The whole list is here.

Remember: The more articles you tweet gives you a better shot at winning the prize.

3. #blogussionvs

It’s important that every tweet you send out about Design Versus Week (within the rules) have the hashtag #blogussionvs in it. This is how the tweets will be tracked, and if you want any kind of chance to win – you need to include that text in your tweet about Design Versus Week!

If your tweet doesn’t have the number sign (#) in it, don’t worry about redoing it. Hashtag or not, as long as the text “blogussionvs” is in your tweet, it will count.

Tomorrow: Contest Winners & New Design

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty big Sunday here. I will be announcing the three lucky winners of Design Versus Week, as well as launching the redesigned Blogussion. I think you have a lot to be excited for as both events are really going to be remembered well by many of you (well, 3 people minimum).

See you tomorrow!

Photo by adesigna

Related posts:

1. Design Versus Week: Win A Custom Blog Design and $800+ in Great Blogging Prizes!

2. Minimal vs. Compact Blog Designs: Design Versus Week

3. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

Learn how simply retweeting this post can make you eligible to win $800+ in incredible blogging design prizes.

There are many different styles in blog design that have an impact on how well your blog structure will turn out. The layout and organization of your blog is undoubtedly one of the most important traits of a good blog design.

There are many different methods people use to style their blogs, and at the end of the design process – they can usually be categorized into a design type of their own. The two types of design that I want to look at today, the final day of Design Versus Week, are minimal and compact blog designs.

Today, I will be comparing some elements of the new Blogussion design to the elements of my more simply designed blog, Asnio.

Minimal vs. Compact Blog Design
Is keeping it really simple the best form or organization, or it it best to have elements that stand out in a more compact design? We’ll compare the two popular styles in the final day of Design Versus Week!

Minimal Designs

A minimal design is just as it sounds – simple. There isn’t much to this style, and it really focuses on two main design elements: whitespace and typography. It may seem bland and dull to some, but minimal designs can actually be quite beautiful.

1. 

   Focus on content

Because there are so few elements in a minimalistic design, there are little to no distractions. Generally, a blog design with minimalism in mind focuses the most on the content area, often with the inclusion of beautiful images and font styling.

2. No clutter

In a minimalistic design, you rarely see different design elements. Mostly everything looks the same, and the element that overtakes these designs is text (usually). Because these designs aren’t filled with images and different colored boxes, clutter really doesn’t form.

If there is clutter, then it’s most likely not a minimalistic design anyhow.

3. More unique design

Believe it or not, minimal designs actually don’t look the same all that often. They are more unique, because of one of those main elements they rely on as I mentioned above: typography. There are thousands and thousands of things you can do with your font styles, so the chances of a minimalistic design actually looking the same aren’t all that likely. Of course, if no innovation is put into the design – there will be plenty of minimalistic sites with similar looks.

4. Easier to load

Minimalistic designers are probably the smartest, because of the fewer resources they include in their design. A minimalistic design is more than just having a simple look, but it’s also about having a lightweight source code. So, don’t expect to find any good, minimalistic blog designs load too slowly!

1. Harder to make

Believe it or not, as crazy as it sounds, a minimalistic design is harder to make. Much harder actually, as it forces you to use the bare minimum of what you have to make it. This style of design forces you to work with no hacks, or quick fixes – you have to design with perfect logic. Yes, that means using a grid system if possible.

2. Not ideal for high-content blogs

I wouldn’t recommend you choose a minimalistic design for a blog you know will have a lot of content. If you like to expand your blog and add new things like services, affiliate pages, or maybe even a forum – a minimal design can’t always hold that much information. Plus, a good marketing practice that ties into design is making things stand out. Really, you don’t see all that much “stand out” when you have a minimal design.

3. May not have everything you want and need

Some minimalist designers want more, but know it wouldn’t work. Blogs that are simple often drop a lot of features that users would enjoy to have, and sometimes make things harder to do in the process.

Compact Designs

A more compact design, such as Blogussion, has a lot more going on that a minimalistic design. More elements stand out than others, and there are often very few things “simple” about this. I will use some screenshots from the new Blogussion design as a representative of compact designs, and a sneak peak for what you can expect Sunday!

1. Easier to make

It still takes some creativity and experience to make any design, but a compact design is generally easier to make than a minimalistic design. As crazy as it sounds, I think it’s true.

I feel that a “flow” is easier to find when making a compact design. There isn’t as much logic required when it comes to this style of design, but just like any form of design, it still requires some critical thinking at times. I expect some disagreement here, so let me know how you feel about this point.

2. 

   More information

It’s easier to have a lot of content on this kind of design because of the expandability of it. Because of the lack of whitespace, there is a lot more room for more information. This make sit easier to add new sidebar widgets, add banner ads, and really any kind of content you like.

3. Separation

Unlike minimalistic designs, there is more of a separation of different elements. For example, a sidebar and the content area will both be clearly different, and the header of a site will most likely have some contrast from the body background color. It is easier to distinguish two different elements from one another as there are fewer patterns in this form of design.

1. It’s harder to emphasize content

Even though different areas of your blog are easily separated, there is still a lot of other information that will compete for your readers eye. Content is closer together and different elements stand out more than others. Sometimes, you may have more interesting looking things in your sidebar than your content area, and that’s obviously not the most important part of your blog.

2. Larger load times

Compact blog designs are full of many different things, and the more that is on the page, means the more to load. There are a variety of things that could lead to a larger load time. More images, more content, different scripts, more CSS, etc. Many that aren’t much of a factor in minimalistic designs.

3. Clutter

You saw this one coming. Because there are so many different things in a compact design, a lot of clutter can form. Clutter can be considered excess images, text, links, boxes and anything that really isn’t absolutely necessary. All things that aren’t seen in a minimalistic design.

My Verdict: Compact Blog Designs
Unless you have an extreme interest in minimalism, have a portfolio, or a low-content blog, I think a compact blog design is the best choice. The more information you can add to your blog, the more your readers will love you anyhow, especially in a competitive niche. But as always, it really does depend on the type of blog you have.

Tomorrow on Design Versus

This is the last day of articles to be published as part of Design Versus Week. Kind of sad, isn’t it? Tomorrow, I will be publishing a checklist of things you need to be sure you have done in order to have the best chance possible of winning.

Yes, you can tweet that post too as well for another shot at winning.

Related posts:

1. Light vs. Dark Blog Designs: Design Versus Week

2. Large vs. Small Footers: Design Versus Week

3. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

Learn how simply retweeting this post can make you eligible to win $800+ in incredible blogging design prizes.

The footer of your blog is one of the most important areas of your blog. Even though it is located on the bottom of your page, it still acts as a reason for why people should stay on your blog and maybe even subscribe to it. That is, if the user even makes it that far down the page.

Footers have been receiving a lot more attention over the last few years, and two man styles have been created as a result. A footer can be in two different sizes: large (often behemoth sized) or small (sometimes as small as a navigation bar in your header). It is questionable as to which is more valuable to your site, but I have some very convincing reasons why one is better than the other in any situation.

Large vs. Small Footers
How does a large footer compare to a small footer? How can a simple vertical strip of space compare to a multi-column, miniature homepage? We’ll see how the two types of footers can benefit your site, and which one benefits the most.

Large Footers

A large footer has the space for as much information as you would want. Large footers come in all different sizes, and the way you organize that content is completely limitless. We’ll see what a larger footer has to offer your blog below.

1. It looks beautiful

There are countless examples of gorgeous footers on the web that truly look stunning. The best part about this is you don’t even need to have advanced illustrations or ingenious typography to make a large footer look good. A little sense of organization is all it takes to really make a large footer look great and complement the other elements of your gorgeous blog.

2. Holds more content…duh

The great thing about large footers is all of the space it creates for you to stuff it with content! Unlike smaller footers, you have room to add multiple columns, add beautiful images and throw in giant lists of links. Because you have so much room, you can be as creative as you want; make things as big as you want, or as small.

3. Great SEO benefits

Search engines don’t miss out on the important information you stuff into your footer. Just because it’s at the end of your page doesn’t mean it has to be valueless.

Footers are actually important to your SEO because search engines do find value in the content you add to the very bottom of your page. So, if you can throw in some keywords your blog is trying to rank for, and links to some other pages (sitemaps work great here), then you will be taking advantage of a fat footer. Don’t spam of course, but the room a larger footer gives you makes it easier to add links to more content.

4. Great call-to-action

If a visitor of your site manages to scroll to the bottom of your page and see your footer, it’s important that you try and take advantage of that unusual occurrence and get them clicking on something!

A huge footer will catch the eye of many people who visit the bottom of your blog. It’s a lot easier to get people clicking around on links and possibly subscribing to your blog with a larger footer.

5. Eases content load in sidebar(s)

Sidebars are meant to have important information in them, but they can’t hold it all. The use of a large footer really eases the load in the sidebar, and weakens the competition for the readers interest between the content area and your sidebar.

1. Readers can miss out

Since a footer is at the bottom of the page, and the amount of people who actually scroll to the bottom of your site is often very few, you run the danger of having few people seeing the important content in your footer.

2. Easy to clutter

A large footer has the potential to hold a ton of information, but it is also easy to fill it with a lot of clutter. Lists are most common in these types of footers, and lists can become very lengthy and take a lot of vertical space. If you have 3 or 4 length lists sitting next to each other, it will look pretty cluttered and hard to read.

Small Footers

Small footers obviously don’t hold much information, but they make for a simple and lightweight solution for your blog. How do they compare to large footers?

1. Easier to organize

Since you’re working with such a small area, it is much easier to organize. You won’t be working with long lists of links in a small footer, or worry about having multiple columns of text. So, adding content without worrying about creating clutter is what a small footer brings to the table here.

2. SEO benefits

Big or small, a footer will still bring in some SEO benefits. You could argue that a small footer has more value to search engines as it holds less, but more important information than a fat footer which has information all over the place.

3. Cuts down the amount of scrolling

A large scrollbar is very unappealing to many people, and at least you’ll know that your small footer won’t be the cause of it. Large footers take up tons of space and really decrease the size of your vertical scrollbar.

1. Easier to miss

If there is a chance that a large footer can be missed, what do you think the chance of a small footer being missed? Like I said, it’s unlikely many people will even get to the bottom of your blog, so it’s important to try and do whatever you can to make whatever is at the bottom as appealing as possible.

Unfortunately for small footer users, they will miss out on the call-to-action that large footers provide for cases like this.

2. Holds much less

Because the idea of a small footer is to keep it small, you miss out on adding a lot of useful information in it. You are generally restricted to copyright text and a few links without making your footer seem massive, so you don’t want to add too much to your footer if you want to keep it small.

My Verdict: Large Footers
No questions asked, larger footers are the best kinds of footers to have. Because they add so much extra space to your blog, you can spread content out and lessen the load of information you stick into your sidebars. Large footers also give you the opportunity to catch a visitor right before they leave and get them viewing other pages of your blog, and maybe even subscribe. Large footers take this one by a landslide.

Tomorrow on Design Versus

I will be talking about a trend that has been exploding amongst the design community tomorrow: minimalism vs. compact design. I will be comparing the new design of Blogussion to my other blog, Asnio. Stick around, you will really enjoy this one.

Related posts:

1. 2 Column vs. 3 Column Blog Layouts: Design Versus Week

2. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

3. Light vs. Dark Blog Designs: Design Versus Week

Learn how simply retweeting this post can make you eligible to win $800+ in incredible blogging design prizes.

One of the toughest decisions to make when it comes to laying out the structure of your blog is the amount of columns you want representing your content. The two most common layouts in modern blog design are two and three columns. And they each have their own benefits that make picking between the two very difficult.

Just like yesterday’s comparison, the outcome of this will really depend on the amount of content on your blog. However, I will have a recommendation at the end for which I think will be the best for your blog, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide of course!

2 vs. 3 Column Blog Layouts
What’s the best way to display your extra blog content? There have been many debates that each is better than the other, but which is really best for your blog? The two or three column layout?

2 Column Blog Layout

A 2 column blog layout has been deemed a less successful way of displaying content opposed to 3 columns, but has some things about it that will benefit your blog immensely. Is it the right one for you?

1. Thinner Site Layout

Horizontal scrollbars are a designer’s worst enemy. The less space you can take up in your overall site’s width is the only way to ensure no one will have to scroll horizontally to see your blog. While it isn’t guaranteed your site will be ultra-slim with a 2 column layout, there is still less of a chance you will see a horizontal scrollbar with it.

2. Leaves more room for your main content

Because there are only two columns, you will have more room to work with. Because the size of sidebars generally aren’t more than 300px in a 2 column layout, you have more space to increase the size of your main content area. This puts a lot more emphasis on your content, and makes reading lines of text much easier with more room.

3. 2 columns makes key content more visible

Since you work with less room in a 2 column layout, it forces you to save as much space as possible. The idea of saving space combined with your idea of “the best content,” you will not be wasting any space with information that a user doesn’t need. You will be more likely to put the most important piece of content up front rather than spreading it out all over your blog.

4. Less to load

A 2 column layout generally doesn’t contain a lot of information. That is, if there is a sensible designer behind the blog and there aren’t hundreds of widgets streaming down the sidebar. Since there is less information (usually), it will make loading your blog a lot quicker.

1. Bad for ads

Because of the limited amount of space, it makes putting advertisements in your sidebar tricker. As a general good practice, you want to put as much of your best content toward the top of your sidebar. But because of the small amount of space in your sidebar, putting ads and content together becomes nearly impossible without pushing one of the two below.

You should try living an ad-free lifestyle to avoid this problem.

2. Easy to become cluttered

Some bloggers go widget crazy and throw in as much information as possible into their lone sidebar. This creates a lot of problems, and makes the limited space you have in your only sidebar seem even smaller. Just be careful to limit the amount of information you place into your sidebar, and even your content area.

3. Can become larger than content area

A side effect of placing too much information in your sidebar is that you run the risk of it becoming larger than your content area. A sidebar that is longer than the actual content area of your blog is a really bad practice, and it looks really bad almost every time.

3 Column Blog Layout

3 column layouts are increasing in popularity fast, and are being implemented in more clever ways. By adding a second sidebar to your blog, you are open to many great benefits that come along with it.

1. More room

Because of the extra sidebar, you have so much more room in your sidebar area to add more content. There is much more horizontal space on a 3 column layout than there is on a 2 column layout, so the amount of information you can add basically doubles.

This also makes adding advertisements to your blog much easier, as you can dedicate one sidebar to an ad, and the other one for that content you want at the top.

2. Main content will almost always be longer

Because there is so much extra space in a 3 column layout, you can spread more information out between your two sidebars. This significantly decreases the chance of your sidebars spanning farther down the page than your content area, and makes for a more aesthetically pleasing experience.

3. Unique looks

A 3 column layout is almost always has more unique looks than a 2 column layout. With a 2 column layout, you are limited to having a sidebar on either the right or left side. With a 3 column layout, you have the choice of having them both to the left or right, as well as the choice of having a sidebar on both sides of your blog.

1. Horizontal scrolling

Unfortunately, adding an extra column to your blog will dramatically increase the width of your site if you choose to keep all three columns spacious. The more width you have, the higher the chance of having that damned horizontal scrollbar show up to readers with smaller screen resolutions.

2. Smaller content area

The main content area of your site will most likely need to be shortened in order to fit both sidebars into your layout without creating much of a horizontal scrollbar. With a smaller content area, text is squeezed in more which can often make reading more difficult.

3. Create distractions to your main content

Unfortunately, some 3 column sites (especially those that have a sidebar on each side of the blog) can distract the reader’s eye from the main content. Sidebars are usually filled with lists and images (sometimes animated ads), and these are all more appealing to the eye than paragraphs of text usually.

4. Possibility of becoming cluttered

Just like a 2 column layout, 3 column layouts run the risk of becoming too cluttered. Just because you have a lot of space doesn’t mean you need to use all of it! Unfortunately, that’s what many people try to do, and it makes their blog design look very messy and hard to read.

My Verdict: 3 Column Layouts
This was a tough one to determine, and even though I don’t use 3 column layouts on Blogussion – I still think it is the best choice. The extra sidebar you add to your blog allows you to add more important information to the top of your blog, and really gives you the opportunity to create as much as interest as possible in your reader’s mind to stay on your blog.

Tomorrow on Design Versus

I hope this debate was interesting enough for you! I think it is one of the most important comparisons I have done so far. Do you agree with the points I have made here today? Are 3 column layouts really the best?

Tomorrow I will be putting fat footers and small footers to the test. Which is best for your blog?

Related posts:

1. Light vs. Dark Blog Designs: Design Versus Week

2. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

3. Design Versus Week: Win A Custom Blog Design and $800+ in Great Blogging Prizes!

Learn how simply retweeting this post can make you eligible to win $800+ in incredible blogging design prizes.

There are two primary color schemes in design: light and dark. Each color scheme has its own design elements that work for one, but not always the other. It has been debated many times before as to which scheme was better.

I’ll tell you right now, that there is no real winner in that debate. The way you choose to color your blog depends on a lot of factors. The type of site you’re running, how you want to display your content, and it even can be determined based off of your own personal preference.

In today’s design versus, I want to put the two up to the test and list the advantages and disadvantages of both. There will not be a winner today, but I want the information in this post to help you decide if the scheme you chose for your blog is the best you could have picked.

Light vs. Dark Blog Designs
Is it best to brand your blog with a light color scheme, or a dark one? There is never an easy answer to that question, but maybe the below information will help you choose for your own blog.

Light Blog Designs

A lightly colored blog is perhaps the most commonly seen of the two color schemes. A light blog design usually uses some sort of white/light gray with one to three extra colors.

1. Often the easiest to read

Light colors in web design are easiest to read. If you have a white background with dark gray text, then you have perfect readability. With light designs, the issue of easy readability is almost never a problem. Unless of course, you have poor site structure (which probably means a color scheme is the least of your worries).

2. Easier to design

Almost always, it will be easier to come up with a light colored design. There are many elements of design that work easiest with this method of design, and it takes less creativity to make a light color scheme work (compared to darker designs).

3. Often more professional

A light colored design usually has a more professional look to it. Smooth colors combined with a gray or white almost never go wrong for making your site look as professional as you want it to.

4. The use of whitespace

Whitespace is easily achieved with light designs because of how flexible you can format the design. Minimalist designs have a lot of whitespace in them, and when combined with some creatively formatted text and images – can look very nice.

Since readability is simplest on a light design, you can focus on how well your text is displayed without worrying too much about complicated layouts and formatting.

1. Less emphasis on main content

Unless you combine a light design with some dark colors, there isn’t always an easy way to put emphasis on your main content area.

If you look on Blogussion, we are able to distinguish the main content area from the sidebar content by putting a white background on top of a dark colored background. Then, if you were to look at a site like Asnio, the contrast isn’t there, and less focus is put onto the main content of the site.

2. Designs aren’t always as unique

Because light designs are easy to make, designers are often less innovative when coming up with features for them. It’s not always because something is too hard to pull off, as many different elements work well in a light design. Because of that simplicity, I think many light designs can really come out with the same sort of structures.

3. Too bright

I have seen designs like this that use colors that are too bright. It could be the display of my computer that brightens them up, but that’s always a risk for anyone using a light colored theme for their site.

Dark Blog Designs

Dark blog designs aren’t as common as light ones and usually take more time and creativity to make. Some sort of black, or other dark colors are used to style this type of color scheme.

1. Create a more unique experience

Dark designs are generally more creative than a light colored one. Because there are fewer elements that work well together on a dark layout, it requires more creativity and time to really come out with an excellent dark design.

2. Easier to highlight content

A good dark design with lengthy content will be able to distinguish that from the rest of the site better.

As a best readability practice, a designer would have to figure out a way to incorporate a light background color onto a dark color background color so text could be the ideal black/dark gray color. Of course, this would create a huge amount of contrast between your content and the rest of the site, which is just what any blogger would want.

3. More creative typography

Light color schemes do allow for some very impressive typography, but when it comes to type on dark designs, I think it’s more creative.

I was personally more amazed with this list of typography on dark designs than this list of light typography. But this may just be a personal preference. What are your thoughts?

4. Whitespace

Just like a light design, dark designs can use whitespace quite efficiently. Whitespace doesn’t literally mean “space that is white,” but it’s just space that has nothing in it.

Believe it or not, whitespace designs can be a little tricky to come up with, and this is especially true with a dark design. However, the element still works and it looks pretty damn good.

1. Harder to read

Sometimes a dark design is a little harder to read than a light one. Trying to read text when there’s a lot of dark colors around can be straining on some of your readers, and this is probably one of the trickiest things a designer can work out when it comes to designing with dark colors.

2. Harder to design

Dark designs are harder to come up with than lighter ones. It usually requires a designer to think outside the box more, because there are a lot less things that work on darker designs that work with lighter ones.

3. Harder to market

A dark color scheme generally makes marketing your brand harder. It has been proven that a lighter color scheme is better than a dark color scheme in terms of click-through rates. That is why any sensible marketer will make their sales page a light color scheme, because it is just easier to market.

Unfortunately for Blogussion, the worst color scheme possible for marketing is in place. Dark gray and red aren’t the best choices for a marketer, but it’s important to try and make up for those poor color choices by having a good layout structure and good overall organization of content.

My Verdict: Undecided
As I said previously, the way you choose to color your blog is completely up to your niche and your own personality. If you can make a dark design work in a niche that is predominantly lightly colored blogs, than by all means – go for it! As long as you and your community are happy with the design, then it doesn’t matter if you choose to use light colors or dark colors. What are your opinions?

Tomorrow on Design versus

I hope you have enjoyed day two! Tomorrow, I am going to put 2 column and 3 column blog layouts to the test. That has been a long lasting debate between many bloggers, and I hope to share some of my own thoughts on it as well tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. Rebranding vs. Refreshing Your Blog Design: Design Versus Week

2. Design Versus Week: Win A Custom Blog Design and $800+ in Great Blogging Prizes!

3. What Every Blogger Should Know About Design When Buying a Theme

Learn how simply retweeting this post can make you eligible to win $800+ in incredible blogging design prizes.

When it comes to updating the look of your blog, there are a lot of decisions you need to make. One of the most important decisions you will make is how far you want to go in the redesign stage. That is, determining whether or not to completely rebrand your blog, or just refresh some of the current elements of your design.

The design of your blog is one of the top contributing factors to how viewers will judge your blog. It’s all about first impressions, and whatever you can do to make the best first impression, you might actually see some people sticking around.

The important thing about creating a great first impression with a design isn’t always about the beauty of the design, but the memorability. If you have flashy graphics, that may be what makes your design memorable. But there are so many different elements that can make a design memorable other than complex illustrations. Things as simple as color and structure can be just as important.

So when the time comes for your blog to get a little design tuneup, what is the best way to approach it? Should you go for a full-blown redesign (rebranding) or come up with some tweaks to your current design (refresh)?

Rebranding vs. Refreshing
Today, the advantages and disadvantages of rebranding and refreshing your blog design are gone over. What do you think is the best way to update the look of your blog?

Rebranding

To rebrand your blog, you are introducing an entirely new look and feel to your blog. There is really no limit to what you can do with a rebrand as your are changing the old brand entirely. Generally, there isn’t much left of your old design after you rebrand your blog.

1. Creates opportunity to fix your brand

Usually when first starting out as a novice blogger, you don’t have the best ideas in the world. After a few months of getting to know your niche, and what design elements work best for it, you may get some new ideas that could make your new brand better than your old one. Maybe a new color scheme will work better, or moving your sidebar to the other side of your blog will help. Completely changing the look of your blog gives you a plethora of opportunities to improve what didn’t work so well with your old brand.

2. Create buzz

The great thing about change is how much you can talk about it. If your regular readers hear how you have changed the entire look of your blog, some excitement will brew up inside of them and they will undoubtedly come to your blog and see what you have changed. Buzz isn’t just limited to your readers, many people out there are fascinated with design and will check out a site with a new design as a place for inspiration.

3. It’s nice to add something new

If you have kept that same design up for a few years, then it’s very likely there are people who are bored with it. With a total blog redesign, you are adding something entirely new to your blog. A blog that keeps pushing out articles is great, but it’s not as interactive as adding new features and showing that you are still committed to giving your readers a nice experience.

1. Causes confusion

This goes back to the idea of “memorability” I talked about earlier. If you change everything that people once recognized your blog by, you can cause confusion and other harmful effects on people’s perception of your blog. Changing the brand, the thing that people recognized your blog by, is a very risky move and doesn’t always work out in the best way.

2. It’s a lot of work

A rebrand takes a lot of time as literally every last piece of your blog is changed in some way. This time could be spent on working on improving other areas of your blog like the content aspects, and because a rebrand is so risky and not always successful – you may just end up wasting time.

3. Start from scratch

The new brand of design you are introducing to your community will need to take time to become recognized. You basically tear down your old brand in its entirety when you throw up a new design, so it will take a little time for people to be able to associate with your site with this new brand.

Refreshing

A refreshed blog design is a design that is mostly the same look and feel, just with some structural differences. The changes made are generally not as big as they would be with a total overhaul, and mostly retains the same brand after the design is completed.

1. Keeps your brand alive

A design refresh is all about modifying and improving your current design. Because changes are so minimal compared to a total redesign, the branding of your blog will remain almost completely intact. If the colors your blog started out with are blue and white, and you refresh your colors so they are now blue, white and gray, people will still remember that same color scheme.

2. It’s less work

Refreshing takes a lot less time to do as you have a current design to work off of already. Ideas could be easier to come by when you are working off of a design you are used to rather than starting from scratch.

3. It’s often easier

A refresh is easier in nearly every way. It’s easier to come up with great new features, easier to introduce to your community, and a lot easier to get used to once it’s actually out.

4. Ease confusion amongst readers

With a design refresh, often the biggest changes that are made are the ones that take the least amount of time to get used to. Design refreshes are often done periodically over time and any big changes made are usually broken down into smaller, more adaptable steps.

1. Changes may be too few

Sometimes, you may not have done enough to restructure your blog. Some features may not be as dynamic as they should have been to be considered a “refresh” or you may have simply not done enough.

2. Fixing things that aren’t broken:

Some designers like to try and make things better. Some things they try to “fix” oftentimes don’t need to be fixed, and what was supposed to be an upgrade actually devalues the feature of the design.

3. Need to do it more often

The excitement of a design refresh usually doesn’t last as long as it does with a full redesign. So, you will find yourself refreshing your design more than you would if you redesigned it. Generally, if you add a lot of new features to your blog and expand it more – you will need more refreshes to be able to cope with those changes.

When you completely change your blog, you are able to completely customize it to meet your needs now. The more and more you refresh, you have to keep adjusting your layout to make sure everything fits and looks right. Doing multiple design refreshes a year takes up some much needed time.

My Verdict: Refresh
I think a design refresh is the best choice here. One of the easiest ways to remember a blog is by its design. I feel that a complete redesign of it would confuse people about your brand, whereas a refresh would still keep most of your memorable elements intact.

Just take Blogussion for example. The design here has always had two columns, and have a dark gray and red color scheme. The colors are hard to work with at times, as together they make for a pretty bad color scheme for marketing. However, I opened the blog with them, and they have worked out. So, I have always kept the same colors even through all of the design refreshes I have made.

If I went and changed the colors to a blue and gray and added a third column, well that’s a totally different look for the blog. I believe that the reasons for refreshing your design outweigh those of rebranding. It just makes sense, usability wise to just refresh rather than redo your entire design.

But what do you think?

My opinions are there, now what do you think? Are you a person who would rather refresh their design, or come out with a totally new design? Share your opinions here.

Tomorrow on Design Versus

Tomorrow I will be comparing light color schemes and dark color schemes and give you some insight on which I think is the best for your blog.

I hope you enjoyed this comparison, and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Related posts:

1. Design Versus Week: Win A Custom Blog Design and $800+ in Great Blogging Prizes!

2. What Every Blogger Should Know About Design When Buying a Theme

3. King’s Ultimate Guide to Blog Design Perfection

Becoming a huge hit in the world of blogging is tough. Henri Junttila diagnoses the success of his favorite band, Iron Maiden and shows you what you can learn from that success. Want to write for us too?

Being a successful blogger depends entirely on what you want to get out of it and what your goals are.

When the English heavy metal band, Iron Maiden started, they were nobodies. They remained nobodies for quite a while, until of course their popularity exploded and became known all over the world. Now, the band is quite legendary.

I grew up listening to Iron Maiden. Partly because when I was 6, my brother, who was going through his rebellious teen phase, got me into them. He always had great taste in music: Skid Row, Iron Maiden, Metallica (the old albums) and Megadeth. All amazing bands.

The point I want to get across is that it doesn’t matter if you want to create a popular band, brand, product or blog, because a lot of the same concepts apply everywhere. They are universal.

When you learn these concepts, you will not only have learned how to take your blog to the next level, but also how to succeed in other areas of your life.

I noticed this myself as I went from a professional poker player to making a living online from my websites and blogs. I played online poker for almost 5 years, and during this time I learned many things that now translate over to blogging.

With all that said, let’s check out how exactly Iron Maiden can help take your blog to the next level. Don’t worry, even if you don’t like their music, they still have some things to teach you.

1. Start where you are

Iron Maiden didn’t become famous overnight. It took them years of hard work before anything happened.

For an outsider, it always seems like everyone’s an overnight success. But that observation couldn’t be farther from the truth. It took Iron Maiden around three years before they got around to recording their first demo in 1978. Most bloggers give up before even a year. Talk about perseverance.

You don’t have to have permission from the gods to start making a difference with your blog. Start with what you have and go from there.  Start writing a blog post. Start connecting and start having fun. If you’re not having fun then what are you doing? You’ve just created another 9-to-5 job.

If you don’t have a blog yet, the first step is to find your passion and then to start taking action. You will run into fear and resistance, but that is natural and something that I went through as well. There are plenty of ways you can overcome fear, so don’t worry!

Be different, and they will remember you.

2. Try Everything

Iron Maiden went through an incredible amount of line-up changes before they started releasing platinum and gold albums. It took a long time before they got their act together and found the right people who would eventually catapult them into fame.

When you’re first starting out blogging, or even if you’ve been blogging a while but aren’t reaching your goals, you simply have to work hard and try different things. It took me a long time and many ideas before I started making money blogging.

Sometimes it seems like people expect everything to happen faster just because it’s the internet. It would be great if things worked that way. But the harsh truth is that they don’t. At least, nothing quick happened for me.

Blogging is hard work. You also have to realize that blogging won’t automatically make you money. You have to have a plan. You have to know how you are going to monetize. I’m not talking about just hoping on making money from advertising and affiliate links.

While that may work, it isn’t as good as producing your own products, offering consulting or whatever you like. You may say to yourself “I can’t make my own products” or “No one would want to buy anything fro me.” That’s where many bloggers go wrong, they lack confidence.

If you are truly passionate about something, then you will always work as hard as you can to do it for the rest of your life. People will buy a product you make, or a service you offer if they can see you have that passion on your blog.

3. Produce Memorable Riffs

If you want to stand out and be remarkable, you have to create something unique. Don’t get the wrong idea – you don’t have to be a genius to create something unique, you just have to be yourself.

It is so easy to get caught up wondering what it takes to be remarkable, so I’m just going to come out and tell you right now: if you want to stand-out, be yourself, quirks and all.

Iron Maiden would never have made it if they didn’t produce music they loved. They became famous because they experimented with new styles and lyrics. They created songs that became memorable, just because of how different they were from the “regular music.” When I think of Iron Maiden, I instantly think of their song Fear of the Dark because it is so unique to me.

They didn’t try and go after a general audience. They did what they loved and it resonated with some people but not so much for others. If you want to succeed in blogging, you have to be yourself and target the group of people who most would benefit from what you have to share.

Remember: you can’t please everyone.

Listen to your community, and they will love you.

4. Keep Your Ears Open

Iron Maiden has always stayed true to their roots, which is one reason why they have been able to build such a large following. When you’re consistent in the message you send out, you will have a lot more success.

When you first start your blog, you will mostly be writing about whatever you want. But as your audience grows, you should listen to them and let them guide you.

There’s just one problem, however.

When I say that you should listen to your audience, I don’t mean you should only listen to the people who comment on posts, or email you all the time for example. Not only is that canceling out many opinions from other sources, but you’re sticking to the people who are on your blog the most frequently and probably enjoy your blog enough as is. There’s not as much innovation.

If you listen to people who have launched products, you’ll hear over and over again that the people who brought their products never commented on their blogs. Why do you think that is? And how does it change the way you think about things?

Listen to your audience, but don’t solely rely on certain sources. Go everywhere and anywhere and listen to everybody. Look through your most popular posts. Look at the e-mails you get from your readers and even join blogging communities and talk about your blog there.

5. Self-Sabotage

You can check your stats and earnings all you want, but don’t get addicted. By 1981, the Iron Maiden vocalist Paul Di’Anno had become increasingly unstable. It is believed that his self-destructive behavior was caused by drug use. But we’ll never know, will we?

The important thing to take away is that it is easy to sabotage yourself. Many bloggers have fallen prey to self-sabotage just as they are about to reach the next level. Maybe it’s because of laziness, maybe it’s because they weren’t passionate about their topic. You just can’t figure it out sometimes.

There’s something deep down in many that prevents them from achieving success. Before you are allowed to level up, you have to become aware of what this belief is. Shedding light on it alone will lessen its strangle-hold on you.

Just as Paul Di’Anno was replaced by Bruce Dickinson, so can you be replaced by someone else. The blogosphere is a living entity that does not have favorites.

If you mess up and don’t even try to recover, you will fail. But there’s something I have left out. If you mess up and fall off the bandwagon, you can always pick yourself up and learn from your mistakes.

No matter what, you just have to keep going. Right big guy?

6. Accept Change

Iron Maiden has been through a lot of change. They’ve gone through band members, drug abuse and what have you, but they’re still standing and producing great music.

The same applies to blogging and business. The only constant in the universe is change, as they say, and you have to be ready for it. You may be successful now, but that may change.

Something that doesn’t change is your inner drive and your motivation to share what you have to share with the world. It doesn’t matter if things fall apart, because we can always try again. That’s a part of life, and what fun would it be if everything were easy?

Facing your fears can be challenging, and of course: scary. But once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll knock out your next fear quicker. And your next fear even quicker, and so on until you start forming an addiction to combating fear and feeling accomplishment. They’re pretty important feelings for any blogger, right next to happiness.

Most bloggers are not willing to do these things unfortunately, which is why it is so refreshing to see an up and coming blogger hit so much success just because they were willing to get out there and face their fears.

Ask yourself, what are you afraid of when it comes to growing your blog? Then go out there and start doing it over and over again. It doesn’t matter if you fail. You will succeed if you keep learning and trying.

Related posts:

1. From Planning to Earning – A New Guide Proving it’s Never Too Late to Earn Money Blogging

2. King’s Ultimate Guide to Blog Design Perfection

3. Preparing Yourself For Blogging: Offline & Online Strategies