Graphic design is very popular nowadays and so many graphic design blogs born from day to day. In this article, i will summarize about 15 important factors to consider to make high quality graphic design blog based on several famous graphic design blogs around the blogging world. I wrote these tips based on my blogging experiences.

I’m not telling you to do all of these advice, but some of them may be handy for you consider & apply them on your blog, so that your blog will be better on visual and non-visual functions.

1. Images on Every Post

Consider adding images on every article Remember, you have graphic design blog, right? The main difference between graphic design blog & the others are images. Even if you write article which doesn’t require any images, just add at least one image related with current article. Without images, visitors will surely be bored with your article. Images will makes visitors stay on your blog & get to know what content they are reading about.

2. Buysellads

Almost all graphic design blogs signed up at Buysellads as one method of money making. Buysellads limit their ads selling to several categories include graphic design. By signing up at Buysellads, you can easily make money if you have enough traffic. Consider to lower your CPM on any banner advertisement. Most of famous graphic design blogs set their CPM below 0.5 which makes their ad spaces sold out. When you are still new, don’t expect to get much from Buysellads. Wait until you get some constant traffic to your blog.

3. Advertisement Banner Position

Most famous graphic design blogs use 125 x 125px banner on their top sidebar. Most of sidebar width is about slightly more than 250px which makes two 125 x 125px banners on a row.  The number of their ads varies from six to ten spaces. Consider not placing too many ads because almost all visitors don’t really like to see ads everywhere they scroll on your blog, right? Place your banner advertisement spaces wisely, which doesn’t reduce visibility of your main content.

4. Unique Logo Design

Most famous graphic design blogs have their own logo design. If you are competent on using graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator, consider to make your own logo design. It will increase your brand image among other bloggers & visitors, especially if you managed to design a very unique logo which represents your blogs perfectly.

5. Better Buttons Design

Buttons are one of the most important elements on graphic design blogs nowadays. Most famous graphic design blogs have their own unique button design. Consider to design your own RSS subscription button, Email subscription button, twitter button, and even all of your social media buttons. This will also increase your brand image among blogger & visitors.

6. Image Usage

If you have colored background on you blog, try to use .png image format with transparent background. Png is the only format that enables you to make transparent background, so that you can do more creativity than just using .jpg images which is less flexible. I love to use .png image type when making icons with rounded corner. With .png image type, there shouldn’t be placing them anywhere despite the background color.

One more thing – consider to set all of your image with small amount of padding and border, just to make sure your images looks nicer. Do you see nice image on this post?

7. User links/Community News

Community news or user links are very popular nowadays in graphic design & web design blogs. By placing community news submission form, you will get more traffic from other bloggers who wants to promote their articles for free. But my main concern is that you get more information from other bloggers so you can learn from another blogs, even get new information & knowledge. Consider to put community news on your blog. You can use TDO Mini Form or Contact Form 7 which are very popular.

8. Social Media Buttons

Social Media is one of the most important things on blogging nowadays. They enable you to promote your articles to others people quickly.  Place social media buttons correctly, so that visitors can easily find them & share your articles without any effort. The best place for placing social media buttons is right after the end of article. So visitors can instantly share your article after reading the content. Speckyboy did great job on placing his social media buttons correctly.

9. Width of Your Single Post Articles

Consider to make your width of single post articles at least 500px or wide enough for your single post width.  With wide enough space for your image, you can provide better image to explain your articles better. Consider to have a fixed standard image width for your blog. Some blogs use their whole width for their image, while some blogs don’t. I prefer to use both method for better result depending on what I’m going to share.

10. Author Box or Info

Consider to place author box or info after the content of your blog. This will make visitors know who you are and your competence, whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, web designer or anything that related with your current job. Make sure that visitors will know who you are by reading author profile.

11. About Page

Consider to have a good about page that explains about you more detail. Basically, it’s the same as author box. But you can write more detail about you and your team (If you have one). Consider to place your photo on this page. If you don’t want to place your photo, just place your icon or something unique representing your blog just like I did.

12. Contact Page

This page is very important! Sometimes visitors want to say hi and it will be better if you give them your contact information. Make it at least give your email address, but if you want, give all of your social media contact information such as digg, stumble upon, mixx, etc.

13. Only Show Excerpt on Homepage

Consider to show only excerpt with only one or two paragraph of your article on your homepage. This will raise your page view and also make visitors curious about your complete article. Also try to add interesting image to make visitors click on your article!

14. Search Box

Place your search box on the top of your homepage. Sometimes visitors want to search something on your blog without wasting their time. Don’t make tour visitors look for your search box that place on the bottom of your homepage. This will waste their time and very annoying. If your template doesn’t have its default search box, you can place it on your sidebar with default wordpress widget, or simply use adsense for search. You can also use wibiya toolbars to show search box at the bottom of your monitor just like what I use now.

15. Footer

This is very optional, but most famous graphic design blogs make a good use of their footer. They often place categories, contact info, tags, and evenadvertisement space! As you can see on my footer, there is Facebook Fan widget there. You can do anything with footer, but make sure it will be useful enough.