Design Inspiration: Blog Design Showcase

While written content may be the most important element of a blog, the visual appearance is also important. The design and layout will not only impact the user experience, but it can also help for branding purposes and to make the blog more memorable.

If you’re working on a blog design or thinking about what you could do with your own blog, it helps to look at examples of well-designed blogs. Designing a blog can be a lot different than designing a corporate website, so it’s helpful to see examples specifically of other blogs.

Here, you’ll find a showcase of twenty-five blogs that are excellent examples of blog design. The blogs represent a wide variety of industries and niches, and a number of different design styles or approaches are used (although you will see some trends).

Beautiful Blog Designs

Here are some well-designed blogs for your own inspiration.

Lovely Bride

It makes sense that a site focused on brides and weddings would have a stylish design, and Lovely Bride certainly delivers. The blog layout features a nice slider to showcase featured content. Individual blog posts also look great, with heavy use of photos.

The Good Trade

The homepage of The Good Trade showcases a lot of content, including recent and trending posts. The individual blog posts feature a single column layout with no sidebar.

Elegant Themes

Since Elegant Themes is known for designing beautiful WordPress themes, it’s no surprise that their own site (and blog) is well designed. Blog posts use a wide content layout with no sidebar. Overall, the design and layout of the blog is more simple compared to the rest of the site.

The Blonde Abroad

The Blonde Abroad is a popular travel blog by Kiki. The design features some artistic elements as well as a lot of photos. Like most travel blogs, the posts are filled with a lot of beautiful photos.

Upstairs

Upstairs is the blog of WordPress theme shop Pixelgrade. The blog front page and individual posts feature large headers. Posts are shown in a single column with no sidebar.

Frieze

Frieze features a beautiful, clean layout and design. This is a great example of a content-heavy site that still manages to avoid clutter.

It’s Nice That

It’s Nice That is another example of a content-heavy site that features a clean and uncluttered layout.

Kisty

Kisty Mea’s travel blog features a beautiful design with some subtle illustrations in the background. Blog posts include huge photos that are sure to grab the attention of visitors.

The Outline

The Outline features one of the most unique and original blog designs that you’ll find. The site makes aggressive use of color and breaks away from simply following trends.

Kindlepreneur

Kindlepreneur has a great homepage design with a call-to-action for an email optin above the fold. The design does a great job of helping to brand the founder of the site, Dave Chesson, as a go-to source in the industry.

Contrastly

Contrastly is a photography blog that is beautifully designed. Individual posts have no sidebar and feature huge images that put the photos at center stage.

Copyblogger

Copyblogger doesn’t use a lot of photos or images. Instead, it relies on typography and excellent use of whitespace.

Just Creative

The bold pink color certainly helps to make Just Creative memorable. The splash of color is pretty significant on the front page because of the banner, but it’s used more sparingly and strategically on individual blog posts.

Think Save Retire

The homepage of Think Save Retire features some colorful illustrations that link to the main categories. One of the unique features of this design is the “tsr” logo that expands to “think save retire” on hover. Individual blog posts are nicely laid out.

Coda Story

While many news or magazine-style layouts tend to feel cluttered, Coda Story packs a lot of content onto the homepage while maintaining a clean layout. Individual blog posts use a single-column layout with no sidebar and beautiful typography can be seen throughout the site.

Grafill

Based in Norway, Grafill features a lot of content on the homepage. The design is relatively minimal, which helps the many photos and images used on the site to really stand out.

Help Scout

Help Scout’s blog uses a colorful but very clean design. Individual posts include a large, colorful header with a unique illustration for each post.

Illustrator’s Lounge

Ilustrator’s Lounge shows that blogs can effectively use a minimalist design. The site is mostly black and white (aside from images) with an extremely clean layout. Individual blog posts forego a sidebar in order to maintain that uncluttered look.

Ignant

Ignant is another minimalist blog layout. Even the navigation menu is tucked away until the visitor clicks. Individual posts feature a huge header with a photo and the title. Large photos and images are also used heavily throughout the content of posts.