This is a question I get asked a lot: “who designed your blog?” To make a long story short, I designed everything on my blog, from the layout to the sidebar icons to the header, and Courtney Talbot designed my mason jar logo. I’ve been blogging for (oh my gosh, 2 years today!), but also had a blog way back when I lived in Australia to chronicle my travels and living abroad, so I’ve learned the ins and outs through the years as I’ve gone along. Oh, and to answer your other question, I use Illustrator for most of my design work. I started out using Blogger back in the day, but with the help of a handy programmer friend, transitioned to a Blue Host/Wordpress site this past January. I do prefer Blogger as far as ease of design is concerned, but have gotten used to wordpress so I’m OK with it now :)

I do dabble in blog design on the side (I designed Radiant Republic, Jennie Fresa Beauty Library, Nola Belle Soirees, Strawberry Milk Events and Bella Bridesmaid‘s blogs, to name a few), and have a few tricks I’ve learned that I think could be helpful to you. Note, these are for Blogger, not WordPress (though some tricks work for both). Here goes:

How to remove the Blogger Banner

You know, the header at the top of your blog that has a search box, the blogger logo, etc? If you get rid of it, your blog can look a little less like Blogger and more like your own. Why bother having Blogger advertise all over your blog? It’s your content! Let it shine.

1. Log in to blogger
2. On your Dashboard, select Design, then Edit HTML. Once in HTML, click the “Expand Widget Templates” box and search for this:

———————————————-
Blogger Template Style
Name: Simple
Designer: Josh Peterson
URL: www.noaesthetic.com
———————————————- */

3. Just under the  ———————————————- */, copy and insert this code:

#navbar-iframe {
 display: none !important;
}

Your finished code should look like this:

-----------------------------------------------
Blogger Template Style
Name: Simple
Designer: Josh Peterson
URL: www.noaesthetic.com
----------------------------------------------- */
#navbar-iframe {
 display: none !important;
}

4. Press “Save Template” and you should be good to go. Note: Do not change the blogger template style to match what I have above - that is what I was using for my old template. Leave yours as-is and only add the navbar code I provided you with.

How to Add a Favicon

A favicon can make your blog look less like a blog and more like your own website - in fact, there are many websites that run off of blogger who do this very simple trick. Tip: save your image file as a .png rather than a .jpg, so you can get rid of the white box around your picture (if you want your image to stand alone, like my jar example above).

If you’re using the new blogger:

1. Log in to blogger
2. On your Dashboard, select Design, then click the Edit button in the Favicon box. 
3. Follow instructions to upload your new image.

If you’re on the older version of blogger, and the favicon box doesn’t exist, click here for detailed instructions. This seems to be the most user friendly set I’ve found. 

A few more of my favorite trick links:

Want your menu pages to be centered, and not justified to the left? Click here for my favorite tutorial.

Want to know how you can make your google friend connect a bit customized to the colors in your blog? Click here.

How about a “grab my button” box with the text link underneath? Here’s a simple trick!

And you can find some pretty Free Social Media Icons here.

Happy blogging!