I enjoy all kinds of design. I love a well-done web page, a tastefully-decorated room, or an amazing book cover. I also love words. I love to read, I love to write, and I love to edit (I know, I'm totally weird that way).
To give a little background on myself, I graduated with a Bachelors in Spanish Education, but my minor was in Journalism Education. I took a few design-related classes in order to fill my requirements and I worked for the university's newspaper to help make it through school. These two things got me in the world of design and it wasn't until after I graduated that I realized I should have gone for a Bachelors in Graphic Design. I would love to learn how to design on the computer more at least.
Anyways, that was a partial side-note to segway into my guest post today. When I worked for the university's newspaper I met Lindsay and we have kept in touch through blogs since school. She recently posted a few blogging tips and since I am shocked at how many people don't know how to use good design/format for their personal blogs, I asked her permission to share it. So without further ado, here are some tips on fonts and blogging from my good friend Lindsay!
I don't consider myself an expert on blogging. If I were, I'd be one of
those women who has thousands of followers and doesn't have a day job.
But after four years of blogging and reading more blogs than I'd care to
admit (let's just say that it takes me about an hour to get through all
of the blogs I read every day), I feel like I can share the following
tips with you if you're looking for ways to make your blog more readable
and user-friendly. Take them with a grain of salt. Your blog should be
personal and unique, like you are. These are just a few things I've
found helpful.
Fonts need to be legible and can make or break your blog. This
sounds like a no-brainer, but honestly, blogs that use a script font or
cutesy scrapbooky font for their main body text are an instant turn-off
for me. I love fun fonts just as much as the next girl, but if people
can't read what you have to say, they're not going to keep reading your
blog. Without getting too much into design principles, I will just
recommend that you follow these guidelines with fonts:
1. Choose a sans serif font for your blog's body text. A little graphic
design tutorial here: A serif is a stroke that extends from a letter.
For example, Times New Roman is a serif font because the letters all
have little platforms underneath them or above them. Arial is a sans
serif font, as are Century Gothic (one of my personal favorites) and
Helvetica. Why should you do this? Sans serif fonts are easier to read
-- and if you plan on using a fun font as an accent, you need to have
the contrast between the two for a pleasing design.
2. Use a maximum of three fonts on your blog. This sounds limiting, but
honestly, it's not. You can take one font (Century Gothic, for example)
and bold it, italicize it, enlarge it or shrink it and make it look
different. When you have more than three fonts on your blog, it looks
cluttered and distracts from the most important thing -- what you're
writing. Also, only one of your fonts should be artsy. The trick is to
use the bold font as an accent, not as the main font, so that it stands
out.
3. Don't get too crazy with the colors. Pay attention to how the color
of your text looks against your blog background. If you have a dark
background, you need to have light text and vice versa. Neon-colored
text is always hard to read, and white can look neon on a really bright
blog background. When in doubt, stick with black and a lighter colored
background. It's usually easier to read.
4. Strive for a happy medium in font size. Text that's too tiny is
impossible to read, and paragraphs written in size 20 font are just
obnoxious. The end.
5. Never use Comic Sans MS. This is just my rule. I absolutely detest
that font -- and several others. But that is the main one. It just looks
tacky and brings people back to 1994 in a bad way.
Break your text into bite-size paragraphs. When you're writing for the web, it's so important
to keep your text in small chunks so that it's easy to read. A high
school friend of mine (and aspiring writer) once wanted me to read his
blog and give me his opinion on it, and I confess, I was only able to
read one post of his. He didn't break his text into paragraphs at all,
so it was impossible to keep your place. It felt like I was reading a
stream of consciousness -- in the worst possible way. When in doubt,
keep your paragraphs to no more than five sentences.
Always open links in a new tab. I cannot tell you how annoying it
is when bloggers post a link but don't set it to open in a new tab or
window. When you don't, it hurts you because a) it sends people away
from your blog and makes it frustrating to try to navigate your way back
and b) it doesn't allow people to finish reading your post.
Provide visual interest with pictures. This post is a bad
example, since it doesn't have a picture, but your blog is always more
appealing with at least one photo in it. Unless, of course, it's a
crappy photo.
Just my two cents about blogging! What are your blog pet peeves?
