Basics for designing your Original Blog Header

Designing a logo for your blog is something like a very mountain big task. You can't decide on colors. You can't decide on fonts and then even if you manage to come to a decision on both these on an online website that offers you a chance to create a blog banner, - well you find out after making one that you actually have to PAY to download your created flash banner.

That was annoying and drove me nearly mad. So here comes in a blogging neighbor, khanum over wordpress.com. She designed this very neat and clean  header. Many thanks for that.

  

The colors are very basic. Black and white. It gives it a minimalist and sophisticated look. Simple and easy on the eyes. But I was thinking its too simple so why not add in some colors next time or maybe a bit of black metallic designing on the borders.  And just right then it clicked me to post basics to keep in mind when you're designing your blog header. 

1- Know your Blog Motto

If your blog is about giving dancing tips to all young dancers out there , you probably wouldntput a library picture over your banner. Would you? Unless you're giving classes on "How to dance in a library". Lol

So be clear as to what is the motto of your blog. You don't have to be specific but just be on the point or near it.
For example this blog is about life. The idea is that Life above zero is always going to be productive. So you're going to see a variety of themes and topics, from food to shopping, books to fashion and science etc. But the direction would be one. LIFE in a positive way.What it teaches you. The knowledge , the experience the wonders you gain. Everything. So designing a logo for this blog projecting just food wouldn't be justified.would it be? No. Therefore we decided to have the focus of the header on the title rather than on its content, second, to have the focus on two basic colors rather than having a rainbow over there. Although adding a bit of yellow or blue is something which I wouldn't mind. 

2- Show creativity

What I like and admire about simple headers is they offer you a chance to stand out with your logo and font techniques. The font used here is neither too bold nor too rocky. It decent. Secondly, Life above Zero is showing exactly life above zero. I like the way word Life is placed on top of Zero!Its catchy! My advise to you. Dont keep plain straight texts on headers. Be unique. Create your own logo. Design.Try out new angles. Just hang your words in the air. Dont put them there straight to die and look boring.

3- It shouldn't be congested

Some of the headers I come across, oh my God they are so jammed and packed with millions of colors and words and angles that you can hardly look at it and say , hmmm! Its not disturbing.

Because THEY ARE disturbing to be honest. Please, add only what matters and leave the rest of the information for "about me" page.

4-Readability

Having a perfect header but ruining it with fonts and text color that is literally unpleasant or hard to read is a big no-no. Make sure your title and everything on the blog in fact is readable. Having small texts below 12 is going to be very difficult to read. Having text written with bizarre font style is again to make the reading painful. And then having white text over black is very unpleasant I must tell you. 

If there's anything you want to add in to these tips/basics. Feel free to inform me. If you ever have designed a blog header I'm sure you have a word or two to drop in here. 

Be original. is the 5th basic.