Tag Archives: imagery

BRANDING WITHOUT COLOR

Let’s say you’re a starving artist.  You’re so poor you can’t even afford a background color for your blog.  (Yah, I know color is free, just play along.  Please.)

You’re stuck with plain ‘ol white, and you need to distinguish you & your art from aaaaaaall the other artists out there.  What do you do?

You kick ass, if you’re one of these people:

Marc Johns. Never have I seen so much done with…well, post-it notes and a few scribbles.  Great choice of words.  Quirky, laugh-out-loud funny drawings.

Tara Whitney.  Often emulated, never duplicated.  Tara recently went from a super-colorful,  popping with polka dots layout to this little ditty.  Brilliant.

Bonnie Tsang.  Two columns — an increasingly rare choice for professional photographers.  Simple simple design  and utterly stunning imagery.

Sweet Fine Day. Another two-column layout, this time with marshmallows.  (Really — caramel ones and some meant to be eaten with beer…)  I can’t put my finger on what, exactly, I adore about this blog design, but I’m firmly in heart, and on my way to heart heart hearting.

That Unreliable Girl.  Thinking there’s no way to distinguish your text from other’s text? (Not the actual words you’re writing, but the text itself…) Check out the way that unreliable girl formats a typical blogpost.  Sheer genius.

There ya go: five examples of branding without color.  Layout choices, blockquote choices, consistent use of one’s own handwriting, ridiculously stunning imagery, and one-of-a-kind products distinguish each of these blogs without the use of poppy, punchy, over-the-top design elements.

If your blog went color-less, how would it stand out?

SHOW COMMENTS HIDE COMMENTS 2 comments

MsUnreliable - September 6, 2009 - 12:50 am

Why thank you for including me in amongst such fine company! I’m currently finishing off a completely new blog layout, so fingers crossed it will match up to its current incarnation!

xx Kit

wrecklessgirl - June 12, 2009 - 9:21 pm

i am a huge fan of REALLY simple blog designs. i love the clean look. especially for artists, i think it’s so important to go light-on-the-design so that their work is the main focus. love your freshy list.