Let’s Talk Bookish – Maintaining a Blog Aesthetic

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion, where they discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and spread the love by visiting each others’ posts.

MARCH 4: MAINTAINING A BLOG AESTHETIC (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?

Welcome to the first Friday of March everyone! As spring is just peeking around the corner (I hope), hopefully everyone is waking from their winter hibernations. The topic today is actually something we’ve recently talked about behind the scenes here at DTRH, and I’d love to hear what you all think of blog aesthetics. And without further ado, let’s go!

In general, I don’t spend that much time trying to make the blog look nice. I think there’s a base level of efforts for maintaining a certain aesthetic. And of course I try to make everything look neat and orderly, and fit in with the rest of the blog. But I wouldn’t say that the aesthetic of each individual post is of paramount importance. Perhaps if I had the time though, I would put in the effort to really up our aesthetic game.

Functionality is definitely the most important, in my opinion. Although on the surface aesthetics are really important for catching the eye, if your site isn’t functional, it’s unlikely that people will come back or read through your articles. If you can manage the aesthetics though, of course I recommend it. No one says no to a beautiful blog!

For us here at DTRH, we had some help getting started with some of the illustrations (thank you talented artist friends!). But for the most part, the upkeep and new stuff is all on us! One serendipitous but convenient thing is that Andge mostly works off mobile, while I do my work on a laptop, so that tends to help cover the gamut of things when it comes to desktop vs. mobile view. If either of us notice anything wonky on each other’s views, we can immediately inform the other to fix it.

Lately we’ve been talking about fonts here at DTRH. Should we be using something more casual and inviting? Or perhaps something more professional looking. These are questions that we’ve been having, and I find it hard to predict which way would be better. I’m sure either way it’s a mix; some people will enjoy one type over the other, and in the end, we should probably just pick what looks nice to us so that we at least enjoy it.

What do you all think about blog aesthetics? How important is it on a scale of 1-10? Does it overpower any functionality/utility? Or is it negligible, or somewhere in between? Let me know in the comments below!

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