Designing blogs is easy. Designing blogs in a unique way is hard. Whatever blog engine you are using, there are literally thousands of templates available which you can apply directly, without any significant code modifications. That's efficient, but it's not creative, because using a default blog-template you risk to end up with some wide-spread look which has actually nothing to do with you. To convey your personality effectively, you need a design which reflects who you are and what you are doing. That's why important is not just what you post, but also how you post it.

In fact, beyond the template-design-culture exists a field of creative, individual and impressive blog designs. And the good thing about it is that this field has been rapidly growing over the last years. To celebrate the creativity of blog designers we regularly present reviews of excellent blog designs we have stumbled upon recently. This post is no exception. Below you'll find 50 further examples of excellent, unique and impressive blog designs.

Apart from "usual" minimal designs, one can observe more rather complex graphic works. If earlier only blog headers had striking visual elements, now whole web-layouts seem to have become more vibrant: paper clips, mp3-players, coffee cups and further objects are used extensively. Apparently, they are used as metaphors for the environment of site designers. Such designs are just impossible to copy and they unite the visual design with the author's content in a unique and very personal layout.

You can also have a look at our previous showcases:

• 45 More Excellent Blog Designs (February 2008)
• 30 More Excellent Blog Designs (November 2007)
• 45 Excellent Blog Designs (August 2007)

Excellent Blog Designs

Narfstuff
Perfect integration of visual elements in a standard 2-column blog structure. Artwork.

Viget Labs
A pretty, clean, light and fresh blog design.

Dollarshort
Informal yet looking professional, with moderate use of white space and light colors.

coda.coza
The sixth version of Damien du Toit's blog. Grid in use.

Brad Frost's Blog
A truly creative blog design. This blog contains "words that would otherwise be coming out of designer's mouth". Literally.

Missy
Trendy stripes gone wild. The colors just fit together.

Popstalin.com
Beautiful visual composition which includes date stamps with a bird, search box with a bird and a navigation with birds. The RSS-bird is orange, of course.

tehCpeng
Wood, coffee, ear phones. This blog reflects the habits of its owner.

Antiphrasis.com
A blog with a very intuitive structure; nothing can really confuse a visitor and the date stamps are pretty sweet!

Lucy Blackmore
An artistic blog design for a blogger-artist.

Design Reviver
A magazine style blog with its own way of presenting the overview of recent articles.

Clemente
Blog design meets vintage style. If you will ever need to design a blog in the vintage style, here is how you could do it.

Viget Labs
Sometimes background image is everything you really need for a distinctive design. However, this blog offers more. Notice how well design elements are executed — e.g. article headings.

Freelenz
Achieving an intuitive design in complex layout isn't easy. Ewald Natter manages to get it right. Although the layout isn't simple, it manages to remain scannable and readable.

Bits and Pixels
Vivid colors on dark background look sexy. Can you find a space invader?

creative briefing
Simplicity at its best. This design emphasizes the importance of typography. Visual elements aren't really necessary.

Ollie Kavanagh
Here the content seems to "hang" in the air which is unusual and attractive. The design is remarkable.

The Superest
A blog doesn't have to contain posts. Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter present their illustrations in their blog.

Mancub
"Thin" blog design. The navigation menu at the top is pretty funky.

woork
Antonio Lupetti impresses with a very clean design and keen attention to details. Calm, clean and very user-friendly.

Four Labs
A 3-column-based blog design which is really distinctive from usual blog designs.

Sketchblog
Interesting combination of illustrations and navigation in a blog design.

Internet Zillionaire
Creative blog design in the old-magazine-look.

davor peic.gavran
A blog design in which everything perfectly fits together. Don't miss the nice Flash-based language switcher at the top of the page.

Kristin Ascoop
A blog design with feminine touch from Holland.

Kohette Design Web
Quite unusual, rather experimental solution. The RSS-feed-icon at the top of the site is animated.

Guifx
Light and fresh design. The calendar seems to serve as the primary navigation.

Home Design Find
Photos, rulers and paper clips in use.

yo vivo en vigo
This header is really hard to forget.

GlassHills - Web Design by Jackson Howell
A blog design with many curves, swirls, clouds, sun and a rising RSS-feed-icon.

Caty's Blog
Apparently, Caty likes cats and small colorful illustrations.

Vectips
Simplicity meets white space meets fresh colors.

Revota
Maybe, there is a little bit too much noise on the page, but the way blog posts are presented is quite unusual.

Susay
A vertical navigation menu in use.

Neweracaptalk
Instead of displaying excerpts of the latest posts, this blog first presents the titles of the posts and the latest forum posts.

Lisa Bettany
What does Lisa like? Right, photography and music. And where does she come from? Right, Canada. You see it immediately. That's an effective use of visuals.

Moderno Prometeo
Similar ideas as in the previous design.

Pop Culture Tees
A t-shirt-blog in a pop-art-style.

Phil's Proof
Ok, that's probably too many details at once. But Phil doesn't care. A really different blog design.

Alyssa Tucker
Summer colors for the summer mood. Can you find the swimming duck in the layout?

Catalyst Studios
A group-weblog with dozens of hand-drawn elements.

Dandelion Path
Sweet site navigation and sections labeling. All sections of the site are visible at one glance.