Redesigned: The Salty Pineapple

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During Chris’s two and a half weeks of Christmas vacation, we spent our time redesigning a few blogs. We had a grand time working together & making the interwebs a tiny bit prettier. I’ll be sharing a finished project each week along with a design tip (or two) for a better blog.

Nikki is another girl who I knew before designing for her. We met when she took one of my calligraphy classes a while back & gave me the most adorable bow necklace ever (here’s her tutorial). She’s creative, sweet, unique & fun (in fact, I can’t wait to be her roommate for Alt next weekend!). I wanted her blog to reflect just that.

After seeing Nikki’s Neon Christmas post, I knew that I wanted to go for a grown-up dayglo theme. I also went for a more untraditional rendering of the pineapple: a circle. I kept the white space, unified graphics & justified the sidebar items. Her blog was so fun to work on! Head over to thesaltypineapple.com to see the design in action & check out all of Nikki’s fantastic ideas!

• Design tip #2: BE CONSISTENT! •

It’s a great idea to hire a professional designer to work on your branding, but you can make your blog look instantly more professional by just staying consistent in your content (and by doing that you make the designer’s job even easier)! Here are some great ways to achieve visual consistency:

  • take & use photos of similar quality (avoid photoshop effects)
  • take as many photos as possible in natural light
  • edit all of your photos to be the same width as your content (it will look nice & your blog will load faster, too)
  • justify all of your post text the same way: I prever left justified, but center is fine if you write more poetically
  • use bold, italics, ALL CAPS and large text sparingly

See the video below on how to make your images consistent width with your post content (for blogger, but applies for other platforms).

What would you add to this list of being visually consistent? For me, that means taking photos in roughly the same place (which has changed every time we’ve moved) at roughly the same time of day.

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    1. Love it! I like the use of white space. I often think blogs get a bit too cluttered when they have a million photographs and an overly colorful design. I don’t know where to look because of the visual overload. This design is just perfect – very cute, has personality, and doesn’t take the attention away from the writing and photographs. Awesome job!

    2. Slip says:

      Awesome! This came at just the right time for me since I’m trying to spruce up my own blog. It’s a work in progress, and probably always will be!

    3. Katie says:

      One thing I love about the blog designs you’ve been featuring is that the headers are so much more of an appropriate size than a lot of people have these days. I do some work on our nice big computer, but since I’ve been sick for the past week I’ve been doing all my work from my tiny little net book. It is so ridiculous when I click on over to somebody’s blog and then their header takes up my entire screen! Anyway, I guess that’s a little ranty of me, but it’s all by way of saying that I think you have great taste and a great handle on balancing space.

    4. Kiki says:

      I am once again in love with your latest blog design and so grateful that you’re taking the time to share some blogging tips along the way. I’m looking forward to the next post!

    5. Anna says:

      Not sure if this is a problem on my end (but am on a few diff websites/blogs tonight and yours is the only one with any problem) but your pictures aren’t showing up. This includes buttons and the header. Some (the love hearts under the blog title for instance) do appear, but most don’t.

      Anyway, am on a Mac using Safari 5.0.5. I wasn’t having any issues the last time I was on here (a few days ago). Just thought I’d point out a potential problem if you’ve made any changes recently!

    6. Aubrey says:

      I am wondering how to make all the photos the same size as the text?? I have done a few internet searches but /i can’t seem to make it happen. I use blogger. Thanks for all your fun posts! I check your blog all the time!

    7. Kate says:

      This post is great! I have all my photos the same width as my content, but it’s kind of involved. I’ll have to watch the video to see if there is an easier way. Thanks!

    8. Kira says:

      I’m always torn on whether or not to adjust my photo width – I want my blog to load quickly but I also want to give my readers a chance to enlarge and look closer if they want to. I guess if I make sure my photos are clear and varied enough with full pictures as well as close ups, they won’t need to – what do you think?

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