Bookish Thoughts / General Books

Let’s Talk Bookish: Maintaining Blog Aesthetics

Dini @ dinipandareads26 Comments

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Rukky @Eternity Books  & Dani @ Literary Lion, where we get to discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! You can check out these pages for March 2022 prompts & a full list of the past prompts!

Now without further ado… The topic asks us about:

MAINTAINING A BLOG AESTHETIC

(SUGGESTED BY HAYLEY @ ON THIS I PONDER)
Prompts: How much time do you spend on making your blog look nice? Is it more about making it functional? Did it take a long time to set it up? Are you still changing it around? Do you ever feel like your blog design is not properly appreciated (for example, are most people reading your posts via the Reader and not actually visiting your blog)? What are the best tools you use to customize the look of your blog?

One of the things that got me very excited about starting a book blog was getting to play around with the aesthetic! Sadly, I signed up for the dot com version of WordPress so I’m pretty limited in what I can do but I also don’t consider myself web savvy enough to play around with the self hosted version—although the number of amazing templates available for self-hosting makes switching over very tempting! But I digress…

working on that blog aesthetic

When I first started my blog looked very different to how it looks now. For starters, I didn’t have this blog header, my “customised” post headers or the dividers that I use now. I wasn’t even sure what exactly I’d be posting aside from reviews, so I dove in without much of a plan! 😅 When I did figure things out, I have to admit, I spent quite a bit of time playing around with fonts, graphics, etc., before I felt ‘happy’ with how things looked. Doing this is something I enjoyed though so I didn’t find it burdensome and the only thing that bugged me was the limit to what I could do because of the platform. I’m happy with the pastel colour palette, the fonts I’ve chosen for my graphics and I think that, overall, my set-up is still functional while looking nice-ish.

THE TOOLS I USE

Free
  • Canva – great place for ready made social media graphics and templates
  • Freepik – cool place to find free vectors/graphics/pictures (for personal use)
  • Flaticon – another cool place to find loads of free graphics/icons!
  • Creative Market – you get six free goods each week and it ranges from free fonts, graphics, photo filters, etc.
Paid
  • Adobe Illustrator – this is mainly where I make my blog headers and dividers!
  • Creative Market – I found two fonts that I really like for my blog and purchased them on CM for a great deal! You can find some really great and affordable stuff on this site.

NEW CHANGES ON THE HORIZON

With all that being said, I do want to make one ‘final’ aesthetic shift at some point this year to coincide with upgrading to my own domain. It’s a big step (for me) but I think I’ll be sticking around for a while to come, so I want to make my blog more ‘me’ and more accessible—I think right now I might even be blacklisted on FB/IG and I’m not sure why cos I don’t think I’ve posted inappropriate content, lol? I’ve commissioned one of my besties who’s an artist to create some art for me, including this new PFP and I’m very excited for what’s to come! 😍

If you’ve been following my blog, you might notice that I’m already using a different header for my blog tour posts and I’m hoping to eventually change them all to this new style. I think it’s still cute but looks slightly more ‘elevated’?

(If it doesn’t, let’s not burst my bubble please, LOL! 😂)

AESTHETIC FEEDBACK

I’ve had a few comments about how ‘cute’ my blog looks with its colorful headers and graphics and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me happy to hear that and I really appreciate the comments! 🥰 But if you do have any feedback about what I can do to make it better I’d be more than happy to hear your thoughts so let me know in the comments below!

Did you or do you still spend a lot of time on your blog aesthetic? Do you have plans to change it up or do you like it as is? Do you feel your aesthetic is appreciated? What tools do you use for your blog?

26 thoughts on “Let’s Talk Bookish: Maintaining Blog Aesthetics”

  3. I love your graphics (cute is my aesthetic), but if that picture near the bottom is a preview of what’s to come, it’s amazing. I have no artistic talent. Sometimes my daughter will help me, but sometimes she won’t. That’s when you see the sad stuff I came up with.

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    • Aw, thanks, Sam! I have no artistic skill either but seem to have surrounded myself with lots of artsy friends lol… ALSO, your stuff is so far from sad—no, nope, not at all! I love your blog aesthetic and your graphics are seriously so great! You have an awesome blog to be so proud of hehe 😍

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  4. Hi! Thanks for joining the discussion! I’m going to join others by saying your blog really is very cute! 😍 Seeing how cute your blog is makes me want to build on mine more. As you have said though, there are limits to the templates available. Looking for the right pictures to use is also quite a struggle for me as I like to review TV shows that I’ve watched, but I’m not sure if I can use images from them, due to copyright 😔

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    • Thanks for suggesting such a great prompt! I had a lot of fun answering it. I had a lot of fun making this blog cute but I think the reason why it took so long for me is cos I’m quite picky and a bit of a perfectionist so I go over things constantly! 😂 I tend not to use pictures (except for book covers) for my reviews but other times if I take a picture from a google search or somewhere else on the internet, I make sure to credit or link back to it. For the sources that I shared, they usually say that you have to credit the work and it can be used freely for personal use, which is great!

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    • Aww, thank you Lindsey! Your blog graphics and layout are goals so that means so much coming from you! 😍 I am excited to be upgrading my domain and even though I’ve been told I should just move to self-hosted, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet 😂

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    • Aww, thanks, Suzanne! That means a lot cos your blog is awesome and I always love stopping by there! 😍 Fixing up the blog always takes a lot of time but if you’re happy with what you’ve got now (and I think your blog looks great!) then that’s what matters, right? 😃

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  11. I have ZERO clue how to operate Abode and would love to learn. I bought the Creative suite, intending to keep it for only a few months to teach myself and for the life of me, I cannot figure it out. 😉 I tend to stick with paying for things like Canva which mostly suits personal needs but if you work in social media for design or something, lots of requirements use Adobe. Guess I’ll have to double down someday and try to figure it out. Your site is always so fun and cute! 🙂

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  12. Heyy! I’m Diya. Just found you and I’m also going to agree with all – you’re blog is super cute!! I mean, look at those Pandas!🥺🤍 Thanks a ton for these useful tips. I’m also gonna check out those apps/websites you suggested for graphics. Great post!

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    • Hi, Diya! Thanks so much for this sweet message, you’ve brought a big smile to my face on what has been a fairly stressful day! 🥰 I’m glad to hear that these tips were useful for you and I hope that the websites will also be helpful! Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my post 💜

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