Getting Started: Creating a Blog Design

Choosing a Template and Color Palette

The first thing we're going to cover is choosing your blogger template to modify and then deciding on a color palette or finding one that you like for your blog's design. This walk through is fairly image heavy, to best demonstrate what's being discussed.


My blog is an edited version of blogger's Simple Layout. Therefore, my DIY Blog Design series will be based off the options offered by that template. I'm not familiar with the others.



It looked something like this in the beginning.



And, at the time this post is being written, is at about this stage:



I used Pinterest to find a color palette that I like a lot. I modified it a little to suit my tastes and then was ready to start modifying the blog look.

Modifying the Template with Blogger Template Designer

In order to modify your template (without touching the HTML or adding CSS), go to the Template tab in your blogger dashboard and then click customize.

Once you're in blogger template designer, you need to click the advanced tab in order to access options such as link colors, background colors, etc. However, if you want to change your whole blog, sidebar, or content widths or change the basic layout of your...well, layout, you should do that first.



In the advanced tab, I advise you to plug in your background color first. Then you might want to go ahead and change your links, date header, and post title colors, as well. You can change all your other stuff now or later, as needed. You can change a lot from the blogger template designer. Don't forget to click "apply to blog" at the top right when you're happy.

This is a super basic tutorial, here to help you in the very beginning of your journey through a DIY blog design. Stay tuned, because next I'll teach you about making a simple header in your photo editing program.