Design is important to catch a readers attention and not bore them to death. I am really good at envisioning what I want things to look like, and much worse at making that happen.

So we all can see that design is an important part of how you present the facts, opinions and such that you post on in your blog. And I think we can all agree that it can make or break your readership, I mean who wants to waste a sunny day messing around trying to get information from your blog and being so confused that they just leave? I hate it when I get sent to a page or blog and end up going down a rabbit hole, it instantly makes me angry, and I go find the info elsewhere.

 I am a little frustrated with designing my own blog. I am not sure if it is me or blogger, but I feel like all I can do is make it look ordinary. Customize is hardly customizable. It is just templates. I want to add my own pictures and flair. If anyone has any tips I would love to hear about them!

 The 45 excellent blog designs article said this "it also has to be able to build some kind of a bridge between the content and its presentation." So this is a big deal to me about the blogs I liked that I saw. There was some type of photo or obvious eye catcher that brought you to the content, much like tasting wine at the winery, it sets the tone and changes the romance level of the information you are going to be taking in. It really "ties the room together", and puts your mind in the right place to bring in the content. To me it also seems important to brand yourself somehow. If only with a logo, you must make yours stand out somehow, and appeal to the desired audience. Are you writing about gardening? You should probably have a color scheme that makes sense there, like earthy browns and greens rather than red. Like the 5 Key's article said, you have 5 seconds to make a visual impression!

 He also gives you this handy table:

 red – increases the heart rate; draws attention orange – communicates youthfulness and action yellow – increases energy and inspires cheerfulness green – easiest color for the eye to process; encourages relaxation and growth blue – associated with trustworthiness and authority black – elegance, style, strength white – balance, cleanliness, and purity

 I have to talk myself out of this all the time, personally red is my favorite color, so I have to talk my self out of using it for everything. I also agree about the fonts, people use them like they are the only ones that know about them. There are a bunch of places you can download cooler fonts from.

That is good advise about underlining things, I had not ever thought about that. But he is correct, I would certainly assume something underlined was a link. Most of the website building platforms looked similar in what they could do. The ones that stood out to me for different reasons were WordPress, if nothing else, they do have a shocking amount of sites built through them. So that alone leads me to the logic that they will always be improving and changing things. They also seem to be very versatile, anything from a little old blog to an eCommerce site. Weebly seems good if you are intending to sell things from your site, you get some free Google ad space, but they take 3% of your profits, but they do offer lots of tools like inventory for free. Cargo was cool, I did not know about it before. It is an artist site maker that you have to apply for or be invited to. That is an interesting way to keep the mainstream at bay. Wix to me seems like the most user friendly and flexible. The pay part had 8 different package options, so it seemed easiest to get what you needed from the service at a price that worked for you.

 Social media wise, I have had accounts with most of these. I do appreciate how they are all different. Facebook has become the one you have to be "good" on, because your parents and boss and aunts and uncles are all on there these days. But I do have to say I enjoy the layout the most. I like that I can customize the settings so easily. I also enjoy instagram, because it is simple, just pictures with a bit of text, less complaining and the like. Twitter is also pretty quick and too the point, just a sentence or two and a link shared. I have to say that google plus is far and away my least favorite thing. It is so clunky and confusing, I just can't stand it. I am trying to find peace though.