Your blog may not seem hard to read to you, because you already know what it says. But if it makes your visitors’ eyes tired, they’ll leave. Using these 6 tips can make your blog easier to read and more appealing and can help turn casual visitors into loyal blog readers

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Graphic designers and web designers tend to be slaves to fashion. Seemingly unable to resist the latest design trends they often follow them without thinking, even when doing that makes ads and web sites difficult or uncomfortable to read

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Roger Black, the legendary designer of the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and other world-famous publications, said that black on white, with touches of red, was the best color combination if you want the largest readership. He could cite extensive (and expensive) research to prove that. When he moved to the Web, he found that the same thing was true.

But graphic designers and web designers are creatures of fashion. They can’t resist following the latest design trends order to look cool—even when those trends seriously impair readability. And those who imitate them blindly follow whatever they do.

Lately it seems that most new web sites and blogs are using gray type. Don’t they want people to read their content? Don’t they know that content is king? Apparently not.

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I decided to start this blog because I keep seeing blogs that are not only unreadable (annoyingly or even painfully difficult to read) but even illegible. What is the point of having a blog that looks pretty or fashionable—that most people won’t bother to read?

With a degree in journalism, a minor in graphic design, and years of experience in book design, publishing, and advertising, I know that the purpose of design is to communicate. When it comes to print advertising or even web design of HTML sites, I know how to do that. Working with PHP scripts is still a challenge.

The right blog design sets the right mood and can lend credibility to your message. (Right now this blog is a case in point, since the design is still primitive. But wait, and you’ll see it improve.)

To see a much simpler blog of mine, go see Talk Like a Texan. That was the first WordPress blog I ever tried. While minimalist (a slight modification of the default theme), it is easy to read and conveys the atmosphere I wanted.

I hope you will come back often and watch Blog Design Journal get better. The design of this blog will continually change as I learn how to control WordPress. Meanwhile, do as I say, not necessarily as I do, while I’m learning to make WordPress do what I want.