Starting A Blog Part 2: Creating Your Blog Name & Brand

Now it's time for the real fun to begin! It's time to be creative and choose your blog name and its look and feel. Defining the focus for your blog, and figuring out your audience and blog topics are important prerequisites for this step. If you haven't done that yet, you can check out my post Starting A Blog Part 1: Choosing Your Blog Focus.

I'm not a blog expert. Nor am I a design expert, but I'd like to share what I've learned during my time as a blogger and also from the research I've done for my blog. In fact, in this post, I'm sharing some of my favorite posts from other bloggers on creating a blog name and its look and feel.

(This post includes some affiliate links. Should you click an affiliate link and make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

Coming up with a blog name

The name of your blog is important. It draws people in. It gives readers a sense of what your blog is about.

Choosing a blog name can be a lengthy process or it can be an easy one. It will vary from person to person and blog to blog. After figuring out what you want your blog to be about, who your audience is, and what value you want to bring them, a great place to start when choosing a name is to brainstorm.

To do this start jotting down a list of words, names, and phrases that relate to your blog focus. Yes, whatever comes to mind. In brainstorming, there's no wrong idea.

Next, you'll want to start whittling the list down. You can go through the list you generated and start weeding out words, names, and phrases that

• You don't like
• Aren't that closely associated with your blog focus, audience, or topics

Next start putting the words, names, and phrases together. Now to be completely honest, I didn't really go through the brainstorming exercise for my new blog name A Relaxed Gal. It just came to me one day. I jotted it down and sat it on for a few weeks. I then played around with it and created a few different iterations. I also asked myself these nine questions:

• Does this name represent me?
• Does it convey what I want my blog to achieve?
• Is it easy to remember?
• Is it easy to pronounce?
• Is the name already trademarked?
• Is the domain name available?
• Are other sites or blogs using the name?
• Are the social media accounts available?
• Is it a name that can grow with me?

If you aren't sure of the name you selected or still have several to choose from you can get input from others. You can run your name ideas by friends, family, or other bloggers to see what they think. If you're going through a rebrand you could do some primary research and poll your followers.

Creating your blog brand

The key visual components to creating a brand for any site or blog are colors, fonts, a logo, images, and graphics. Individually and together they set the mood for your blog and play a very important role in attracting followers.

When I rebranded I wanted a look and feel that was bright, memorable, fun, and authentic. To help put my look and feel together I created a brand board. This helped me play around with colors and see how they looked and worked with each other. It also helped me play around with fonts and see how they looked alongside my colors.

In addition to helping create my blog's visual brand, the brand board helps me stay consistent. Now, whenever I'm creating blog graphics I refer back to my brand board. It's been a lifesaver and I recommend creating one if you're serious about creating consistency with your blog's branding.

Related read: 30 Free Resources For Blogging On A Budget

Colors

A great way to set the mood for your blog, speak to your targeted readers and convey your blog focus is through color. Colors can say a lot - both negatively and positively. In fact, each color has emotional and psychological meanings attached to it.

For example

• Yellow is associated with optimism, clarity, and warmth
• Orange is associated with friendliness, confidence, and cheerfulness
• Blue is associated with dependability, strength, and trust
• Green is associated with health, peace, and growth

As you can see yellow is the main color used for A Relaxed Gal. I selected yellow as the main color mostly because I like it, it's bright, fun, and cheerful.

If you'd like to learn more about the importance of color you can visit these sites

• Fast Company's "What Your Logo's Color Says About Your Company"
• Spruce Rd's "Psychology of Color for Your Brand"
• CoSchedule's "Color Psychology in Marketing"

The combination of colors is also important. When putting your brand color palette together here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

• How do I want people to feel when they visit my blog?
• What are the color palettes of my favorite blogs and brands?
• Do these colors complement each other?

Fonts

Just like your color palette, fonts should help set the mood for your blog. They can make your blog attractive or unattractive to visitors.

Here are some tips for selecting fonts

• They should be readable. Scripts or fancy fonts can make large blocks of text hard to read
• They shouldn't compete with each other. Instead, they should work together and complement each other
• Don't choose too many. I chose three fonts that are used primarily in my blog graphics. One font is for my headlines, one for subheads, and the third for additional/body copy

Design Your Own Blog does a great job of breaking down the different types of fonts and how they can be paired together in the post Beginners Guide to Fonts For Your Blog: How to Choose Font Combinations.

Logo

Your logo is a key part of your brand identity. Here are some tips for designing a logo for your blog:

• Include your blog name
• Pull from your selected color palette
• Consider pulling from your selected fonts
• It should look good either large or small
• It looks good in color, white and black
• Consider getting help from a professional designer

I opted to keep my logo simple and to the point using my blog name, key brand color, and a handwritten font.

Imagery and graphics

Another great way to convey the feeling of your blog is through your imagery and graphics. They should consistently convey the tone and feel of your blog. I admit that having consistency in my imagery isn't something I feel I'm doing a good job of.

To help with my lack of imagery consistency I've been reading and learning more about the importance of blog photography and how to shoot better photos. Here are a few of my favorite reads:

• Jess Creatives "How to Take Better Pictures for Your Website with Your iPhone"
• Rebecca Jacobs "The Only Two Photography Tips You Need"
• PinkPot "5 Time-Saving Tips for Blog Photography"

When it comes to my blog graphics though I feel the consistency has gotten better. This is largely due to the templates I created in Canva. This is an online tool that allows you to create professional-looking graphics through easy drag-and-drop features. 

Related read: How To Use Canva To Create Gorgeous Blog Graphics

One final tip I have for choosing your blog's name and look and feel is to not rush it. Spend some time thinking through both and come up with multiple options. While you can change your blog name and look and feel, it can be hard and time-consuming. Especially if you've been blogging for a while or invested time and even money into the originals.

How did you create your blog name and brand?