Blog Archive

45 Excellent Blog Designs


Designing a blog is easy. Whatever engine you are using and whatever style you prefer, you’ll always find a number of templates you can apply to your weblog in seconds. No styling is necessary, no playing with colors is needed and no mind jogging about content presentation is required. However, not every weblog should look like a typical blog. After all, not every blogger wants his or her site to look exactly like hundreds of other ones. In fact, there is a small bunch of creative, outstanding and individually designed from scratch blogs.
In this post we didn’t try to showcase some eye-candy (although sometimes eye-candy is indeed offered); the designs listed below were selected for their attention to small details. Pretty and colourful header-graphics doesn’t make a good blog. The blog needs a solid visual structure, a profound hierarchy of site elements; it also has to be able to build some kind of a bridge between the content and its presentation. To do this, you need to think about precision, minimalism and sound use of illustration. These criteria were the ones we’ve used to select the designs listed below. All these aspects make the designs we’ve selected look… well, not always beautiful, but outstanding, almost excellent in their own kind. Mostly it’s the idea the designers used to make the weblog as usable as possible – not the implementation of this idea – which we’ve been after.
Below you’ll find 45 excellent blog designs which impress with creative approaches and attention to details; hopefully you’ll find new ideas you can develop further in your own designs.
Notice that the screenshots we’ve provided may give you a wrong impression about the whole design of the sites; in doubt you should take a closer look at headers, footers, comment-areas, site structure and further site elements. Please also notice that you can click on screenshots to get to the sites from which the screenshots have been taken.
We’ve missed something? Definitely! Let us know in the comments!

Weblogs powered by Django

Ryan Berg (Django)
Ryanberg in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Derek Featherstone (Django)
Derek in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Jeff Croft (Django)
Jeffcroft in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Andy Hume (Django)
Usabletype in 45 Excellent Blog Designs

Weblogs powered by ExpressionEngine

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain (Expression Engine)
Whitespace in use. The categories and popular entries are listed at the top of the page, not in the sidebar as they usually are.
31three in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Veerle Pieters
An almost “classic”, well-known design, but still incredibly beautiful. Veerle makes use of a dark layout with quite colourful scheme. The result is impressive – and the position of site elements extremely well thought-out.
Veerle in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Emanuel Blagonic (Expression Engine WordPress)
Blagonic in 45 Excellent Blog Designs

Weblogs powered by MovableType

Kevin Kornell (Movable Type)
A typical weblog doesn’t look like an illustrated magazine. Kevin Kornell’s blog does. This one makes use of an “oldie”-style.
Bearskinrug2 in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Cameron Moll
Cameron in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Dave Shea (Movable Type)
Mezzoblue in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Dan Cederholm (Movable Type)
Simplebits in 45 Excellent Blog Designs

Weblogs powered by Textpattern

Praegnanz.de (Textpattern)
A minimalistic approach with clean web-typography.
Praegnanz in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Hicksdesign (Textpattern)
Hicksdesign in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Geniant (Textpattern)
Geniant in 45 Excellent Blog Designs

Blogs powered by WordPress

Circle Six (WordPress)
Circlesix in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Pedro Lamin (WordPress)
Fresh and clean design, lacking almost everything – there is even no navigation in blog categories.
Lamin in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Design Disease (WordPress)
Designdisease in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Surfgarden (WordPress)
Surfgarden in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Dan Rubin (WordPress)
Superflousbanter in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
NorthxEast (WordPress)
Northxeast in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Larissa Meek (WordPress)
Larissameek in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Matt (WordPress)
A Business-Design. Look at the information sections on the left side of the layout.
Webrevu in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Agenturblog (WordPress)
Agenturblog in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Ben Gillbanks (WordPress)
Binary in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Rik Catlow (WordPress)
Rikcatlow in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
FreelanceSwitch (WordPress)
Freelance in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
John Boardley (WordPress)
Typo in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Shaun Inman (WordPress custom PHP-Framework. Thanks, Shaun)
Shaun in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Mstefan.com (WordPress)
Mstefan in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Screenz (WordPress)
Screenz in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Screencasting (WordPress)
Screencasting in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Blog.Critical (WordPress)
Critical in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Wan Zafran (WordPress)
Idiot in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Viki (WordPress)
Extensive use of visual elements prevails; it might be a nice idea, but the content should prevail.
Vikiworks in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Nick La (WordPress)
Playful design with dozens of swirls, curves and artistic elements.
Wall in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Laura Alter (WordPress)
Laura in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Markus Zeeh (WordPress)
Playful flower-images and ornaments seem to be trends.
Meerblickzimmer in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Sidney Collins (WordPress)
Bubbles in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Roman Leinwather (WordPress)
Lewro in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Bottled Sky (WordPress)
Probably not the most gorgeous layout ever made, but well-structured. The use of colors communicates the idea of the site.
Bottledsky in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Johanna Hallin (WordPress)
Hallin in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Johanna in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Cabana (WordPress)
Sometimes it is an interesting approach to use a “thin” layout, although it should rather be an exception.
Cabanadigital in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Reflections (WordPress)
Reflections in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Enderson2 in 45 Excellent Blog Designs

Further Weblogs

Abduzeedo (Drupal)
Stylish, readable and clean. The site doesn’t look like blog at all – at least at the first glance.
Abduzeedo in 45 Excellent Blog Designs
Jonathan Snook (CakePHP)
Snook in 45 Excellent Blog Designs