I have used blogging before to illustrate the progress of projects I worked on during my undergraduate degree in Journalism with Media & Cultural Studies. I was already familiar with the Blogger.com. I started by adopting my existing template. With its black background and white texts, it looked simple and amateurish. But this time I was to create a blog suited for designers so I needed to improve it.
I started by searching for a suitable template on Btemplates. I chose the Magazeen template created by the WeFunction Design Agency. This bold magazine 2-col-theme was designed with the main focus being on typography, grids and magazine-look. It is very functional, attractive and modern.
After downloading, I worked on the template’s html code to customize it. I included the following elements:
- Blog title – I used the research I carried for the Business for Design module and called my blog Coverline Design.
- Strapline – “Where Design Meets the Editorial” – which reflects my prime interests in editorial design and visual journalism.
- Navigation bar – buttons allowing user to view the blog’s home page, posts RSS, all comments and edit the blog.
- Motto – “Design is a behavior/Not a department”.
- Image showcase – it was design to show thumbnails of images from posts, which could take the viewer to the original posts. However, I used it to show the examples of work of other designers that I find particularly inspiring.
- Widgets – About Me, Blog archive, Followers, Labels (which are very useful while searching for a particular post, topic or trend) and Blogroll.
- Categories (in the Footer) – an extremely useful tool for a viewer interested only in postings related to a particular academic module (Design Project A (RSA), Business for Design and Design Research Methods).
- About this blog - a short introduction to the purpose of the blog.
