Why Bloggers need to invest in design

We all do it. We all think we can cobble together a design element for our blogs to save paying a “real” designer to do so.

When I launched my very first product, The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter, I was already several hundred Euros in the red on this blog. So when it came to designing the image to represent it, there was no way I was going to pay someone to do so.

I found some instructions on another website, that explained how to create an E Book image using photo shop. It took me about three hours and involved a great deal of cursing. I thought it looked OK at the time, but in fact, it was so bad that I don’t have a single copy saved anywhere to show you. I do have this, which I also created at around the same time, using the same technique:

Dreadful, isn’t it? This was for my book Living in Lanzarote.

The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter was and is a $12 product. But even at $12, any image needs to give it some perceived value. And the image I used gave it a value of about 50 cents.

Add to that the fact that it probably cost me $100 of my time to produce it!

It was my wife’s silence when she spotted it that convinced me I should give up self-design! I tweeted for some help, and found someone who was prepared to take on the role. Using a designer was an absolute joy. I simply sent him the book, with a brief outline of what I wanted, and got on with my work. A few hours later a proof arrived, and I sent back a quick email with some changes, which were made in minutes.

From start to finish, the whole process took about four hours, with around 15 minutes of my time used. In return for $100, I had a whole folder of images in different sizes, and different levels of transparency that looked like this:

Suddenly my product looked like it might be worth $12!

I used the same designer to produce a lot of stuff over the ensuing few months – each time the quality and turn around time was great.

And then it was time for Nathan and I to look at design for Beyond Blogging. We decided we needed something really special for the book, and after looking at various options, we settled on Jana Rade, who is the creative director at Impact Studios. Her designs for Beyond Blogging have been praised by everybody – she did a fantastic job, and we were able to carry her theme through the book cover, the design of the actual book, the website and even the back end of the purchasing process.

Here are some examples:

Use a designer – it’s worth it! And may be less expensive than you think!

And here’s the message of this post. Unless you are a rock star designer yourself, don’t waste your time and effort trying to do stuff like this. It will end up costing you more than you think in terms of your time, and you could devalue anything you are trying to sell.

Find yourself a good designer!