7 Effective Techniques for Blog/Article Graphics and Why

Keeping with the theme of the creative process and linkbait graphics it seems like a good time to see whats going on with blogs and some good uses of graphics and photography. Some bloggers don’t even use images, and this is fine because not everything needs it, but some do and here’s to the ones who do it really well!

There are lots of great resources being created everyday by bloggers in our industry and others. Aside from the obvious entertainment and Hollywood people watching sites like Perez and the like that have specific photos that are the pull, other bloggers, if they use images, have to get creative to a degree to give their content that edge.

This is sometimes supported by eye catching graphics or cool looking photography that draws the reader in further if they weren’t already sold by the title, idea or creator of the content alone.

Custom Graphics. OK, not everyone can afford a staff illustrator. Over at A List Apart they create and write top notch content. Yes, they are more of a web design web zine that come out less frequently with amazing contributors and a superstar like Jeffery Zeldman at the helm.

This may put them in another category altogether but their consistency with effective illustrations from their staff illustrator Kevin Cornell surely make them stand out in a big way. Look at this illustration he did for an article called Designing For Flow, it evokes that intuitiveness that they are describing with regards to getting in the zone and being able to move fluid like through a site:

Arrows and Pulls. At Closed Loop Marketing there is a good use of page highlighting with pull graphics and good photography. Check out this post on Evil Usability, it’s a good photo relaying the idea and some great screen shots with custom graphics highlighting the important information, as well as some nice big red arrows that remove any doubt that the reader will miss what you are referring to:

Thumbnails. Great use of thumbnails in this fitness health magazine roundup over at First Page Fitness with this post on Which Fitness Magazine Do YOU Like? They could have simply listed the magazines with the link, but they took it a step further and added the thumbnails:

Screen Shots. Li Evans’ (from Search Marketing Gurus) recent post about Wikia Search has some good screen shots too, which helps support the information written in the post:

Billy’s Blog has some great tips for creating quality landing page designs. With his 5 rules post here, he has some great examples with another example of highlighting specific information within screen shots:

Consistency. Skelliewag from Melbourne, Australia has some nice photography that is featured at the top of each post:

Manish Pandey from India is showing good consistency with blog photographs. Keeping with a standard size for his header graphic/photo he establishes a look. Check the appropriate photo he used for his post on 21 Blog Tips for the year 2008:

Another example here would be from Biznology Blog by Mike Moran. Every post that I came across from the preview page had a graphic that went with the text. Very simple, very effective:

Pull Quotes. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger has a nice use of pull quoting going for him on this post about the Blogging Experiment the graphic of the quote is nice and large:

Graphic Titles. Sometimes repeating yourself is a great way to get your point across. Sometimes repeating yourself is… OK just kidding!

But a graphic title works the same way. You have the title in text and also as a graphic with some image or font supporting it further pushing the idea. It can be very simply, just like this post, or it can be worked further like what was done with my last posts here: