There are many design related blogs at the moment and every day new players show up. The main strategy for the vast majority of design related blogs is to publish many articles with great content to attract readers, quantity seams more important than quality. Some of them have a creative and unique design but it is static and remain the same on the many posts and pages put online. Don’t get me wrong – I think this is OK but we could all learn a lot from a few design blogs that have chosen a completely different strategy. These few blogs provide a unique design on each post with excellent use of typography, backgrounds and colors to support the theme of the individual post. This is raw inspiration that you simply need to pick up!
Nocturnal Monkey
Jasper (a reader) shared this unique post style blog in a comment and I simply had to add it! The posts are truly unique and worth investigating to be inspired.
Gregory Wood
Great thanks to 555 for dropping a comment about Gregory Woods site. Gregory really puts a lot of effort in creating a unique design for each post. Typography on the site is excellent. For example check out the “Shaun of the dead” text and how it works well with the image and the text just below it.
navigation is handled using a top bar where it seams like you can only jump from post to post that is quite usual for this type of blog.
72ave.com
Thanks the Mercy (a reader) leaving a comment I was made aware of 72ave.com, thankd a lot Mercy! This site really takes this concept to the extreme with complete redesigns for each post. The navigation is located in the bottom with an interesting calendar feature to navigate faster.
Avoid Contact With Eyes
Cool name (even though I think your eyes will like this site!!!) and awesome unique designs on each post. Great thanks to Renduh for sharing this blog in a comment.
David Desandro
David have published few posts but each of them are unique and quite different. On some posts David create very interesting typography art implemented in html.
Jack Cheng
This blog have a unusual but rally cool time line navigation at the top. Not all posts are completely unique but Jack makes use of typography and backgrounds to create unique post designs and it works really well and supports the theme covered in the posts.
Trent Walton
Trent Waltons blog is very clean and every post have a unique and very solid design. Browsing around here will be a pure injection of web design inspiration. Even the blog archive list include the unique designs – really awesome idea and a great showcase of the work and creativity of the author.
I am Paddy
Paddy have created very unique articles designs and really simple and clean navigation and share buttons. The articles make use of columns making them have true magazine look and feel.
Kyle Fiedler
I believe Kyle like color a lot. Every post have their own and very different color scheme. The articles are set up with advanced typography and in some cases nicely aligned with elements in the background.
If you like this kind of inspiration you should take a look here.
- 20 Extraordinary Blogs With Unique Post Designs (excellent post by Jad at Design Informer on same subject)
- Tips for Designing Unique and Attractive Blog Posts (great post by Chris at line25.com also covering this subject)
How to do this in WordPress?
Is you have said to yourself several time already…I want to do this as well starting from my next post it may not be that hard. If you use wordpress you could consider using one of the plugins below…all you need is time time time because great and unique design on each post will not be something you ship out the door multiple times a day! Great respect to the designers/bloggers featured above.
WP Post Styling
This plugin simply provides a custom field on your WordPress interface where you can add custom styles to be applied only on that page or post. Useful for being able to publish articles with a unique look.
Art Direction
This WordPress plugin allows you to have global archive and single page per-post styles.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t care what anybody says, this is a trend that I really enjoy. Nothing wrong with creativity.
@Matt, me too! These bloggers endorse quality of design and not quantity of posts – great inspiration.
amazing concept you sharing, really beautiful article.
Inspiring. Definitely inspiring and evokes creativity. What about doing it on other blogging platforms ? Could you post some more on this ?
Check nocturnalmonkey.com. I love the designs on that site – it was the first blog of this kind I saw like that.
@Jasper, what a great tip, thanks. I’m going to add this site ASAP!
I love the trend of having individual designs on your various blog posts, it’s something I’ve started doing on my blog http://www.acwe.co.uk
It’s great to see web design taking a leaf out of print design’s book so to speak. Great selection of sites here.
@renduh, wow and thanks for sharing your blog with us! I have added it to the post immediately…
Another website I’ve seen that does this is 72ave.com, and I would love to see this becoming a trend because it shows a lot of creativity.
@Mercy, Thanks thanks thanks. I really appreciate comments like this adding real value to the post. I have added 72ave.com – a truly stunning website!
Blogs with unique designs make me more likely to read the content inside. Pretty weird to think that’s how it is, but that’s one determining factor for me. I also think the color and typeface used makes a world of difference too. Can anyone who has done some analytics testing on typeface changes chime in?
Fabulous creations! Very inspiring.
@Arjun, indeed you’re so right!
Great article. I have been toying with the idea of starting my own blog recently and a definitely going to take inspiration form this article.
I’ve only just come across this!
Thanks for adding my site to the list and thanks to Jasper for the props
The Chaplin screengrab is missing the big photo of the man himself down the left 
Great article tw. You’ve just got to mention Greg Wood though, each and every one of his post’s are nothing short of stunning: http://gregorywood.co.uk/
@555, thanks a lot for the feedback and tip! I have added Gregory and really like his site.
Nice one @555 – Gregory Wood’s site is excellent.
I can’t see how a single blogger / designer could sustain great content and great design with any level of consistency. I like the idea though of a “special feature” post once in a while. While creativity and crazy layouts are great, predictability is also something that repeat readers, by default, tend to prefer.
That said, one-off designs for posts like this are GREAT portfolio pieces. I think with the right subject matter and goal, they could be very strategic and successful.
@Douglas, Good points. I think you’re right that time work against being too ambitious with creating both great content and fresh unique design for each post. It would be completely impossible for a site like tripwire magazine where new posts ship out daily. If you want to give readers regular content (and that is actually quite important) making special design on posts could be something you did every week or bi-weekly. The concept would still be strong and the posts could belong to a special category to be easy to find.
Very nice find, thank you for sharing.
Only just noticed you included my site in the list.
Thank you very much, it’s amazing to be included with all these wonderful sites
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