How to Get the Best Blog Design

How do you get the best blog design when you are working with a designer? Do you think your blog needs a makeover? Want to pretty up that blog but can’t do it without someone else’s help? Well, you may need a blog designer to help. As with any new venture, you want to make sure you do your research in order to get the best results you can buy. You want to have a delightful design experience and come out with something you can show off to your readers.

What can you do to make sure you get the best blog design? There are some questions you should consider before you even talk to a designer. The design process starts with you and there are things that you can do to ensure you get the blog design that you love.

Know Your Style 

What do you blog about? Is is a humorous or a serious topic, your color scheme should aid the reader in determining what your site is about. Do you write about healthy living then possible using greens, orange and yellow colors convey fresh ideas. Do you have

Find Your Inspiration

Take a look at other blogs and decide what style or elements that you like or dislike. Is it something that you would like to have in your design? We don’t want to copy anyone else’s design but we do want to use it as an inspiration for your own design. Bookmark those sites and send them along to your design or you can create a blog inspiration Pinterest board. This is a great visual tool to let your designer know exactly what kind of style and colors that you like. You can also pin your favorite blogs that you love as well.

Consider Your Budget

There’s no use drooling over that designer that costs thousands of dollars when you only have a couple hundred to spend. Designers range in price from $99 to several thousand dollars. How deep are you willing to dig into your pocket book to get that blog looking it’s best.

Find a Designer Whose Portfolio You Dig 

Take a look at their portfolio, designers usually have a set style if you don’t like it, you will clash with your designer. You can’t base your decision on price alone, if you are not compatible style wise, it could be a long and difficult design process where you may end up with something you don’t love.

Read Their Testimonials

You can get a wonderful sense of how it is to work with that designer. It’s great to hear from other people in your exact shoes who have gone through the same thing you are considering at this very moment.

Look at the Details

Other questions to ask if you’ve found a designer you love:

• What are their terms of service?
• How does the design process work?
• Is there a waitlist? How long is it? Will that work with your own timeframe?
• What is the primary method of communication?
• Does the design price include stock images? What sites do they use for images?
• Do you need a deposit? Is it refundable? When do you pay the final invoice?

Make Contact

If you’ve found a designer that you love, make contact, it doesn’t hurt to ask any questions that you may have. It will also give you a sense of how promptly emails are answered and how they communicate. Are they truly helpful or are they just trying to push another sale?

Be specific

You know what you want, and you’ve given your ideas to your designer. Please, oh, please be specific if you have special elements that you would like to see in your design. Even if you know for sure that you don’t want to use a certain color or polka dots, it just helps eliminate options early without having to go through a ton of revisions. When your designer has worked her heart out and come up with 3 or so designs, please specify what you like/dislike about each one. I hate that design, doesn’t really give them much to go by to make the changes that you’d like to see. Hopefully, you never have to utter those words to your designer.

Give Them Freedom for Their Creative Juices to Work

You know what you want but your designer does this for a living. They can be a great resource to bounce off your ideas and they have an eye for design and what will or won’t work.

After all of our work, this is the final concept that was conceived.

This is what we ended up with and you can head on over to Valley Girl Gone Country to see the full design.