Posted on June 01, 2008 by Katy

I’ve previously discussed some ways that you can build your brand online. But to get your brand started, you need to take a look at what it is that your content is providing, what you’ve named your website, and then develop a visually appealing site that goes with your entire brand statement.

In the near future, I’ll be talking more about branding but with today’s blog love, just one aspect.

As a personal opinion and a avid visitor of many blogs, I want to tell you that the first thing I notice about any website or blog is the design. What’s taking a site so long to load? What images are the first thing that caught my eye? And can I “oooh” and “awww” at your design to bookmark to my beloved “I love this design” folder in my bookmarks?

I realize that I may be beyond the norm of what most visitors see in regards to design. But this is simply because I design websites on a regular basis for a lot of bloggers.

If you’re considering hiring a web designer to design a new blog or redesign your blog. You may find it incredibly helpful to know what it is you want. For me, the hardest and most difficult custom designs are the ones where the person has no idea what they want and discover half way into a design that I have done something that don’t want and never stated it.

Because I realize this type of thing is an issue for me, I strongly encourage anyone, hiring any web designer, to get some inspiration to great design and to pay attention to elements they see on a site that they both love and hate.

Starting a quest for figuring out what you do and do not love about design is easier than just hitting up your favorite websites. And probably best that you look at fresh new sites to know what appeals to you as you’ll be setting out to find a design that you can be inspired by.

While I would never advocate for duplicating a blog’s design, there are more than just images to a good blog design. You need to focus in and find those elements so that you can see what is and isn’t standard and what does and doesn’t work with regard to navigation, typography, and links.

And now we arrive at the love…

CSS Galleries

If you don’t look at them for branding, you should! There’s nothing like a great site for showcasing CSS to get inspiration flowing.

Want to see what others are doing with their site? From the elaborate to the simplistic, a CSS gallery will showcase the finest in design. Have a look for yourself…

Best Web Gallery
CSS Beauty
CSS Bloom
CSS Clip
CSS Container
CSS Drive
CSS Elite
CSS Exchange
CSS Galleries
CSS Hazard
CSS Heaven
CSS Import
CSS Love
CSS Mania
CSS Princess
CSS Reboot
CSS Remix
CSS Tux
CSS Vault
CSS Website
Daily Slurp
Dark Eye
Design Snack
Genuine Style
Inspiration King
Net Cocktail
One Pixel Army
Refresh
Screenalicious
Screen Fluent
Style Boost
Style Crunch
Submit CSS
UnMatched Style
W3C Sites
Web Creme

As a side tip, if you think that you’ve got a rockin’ design, submit your site to these showcases. You never know which site will include your design and you may be able to generate some traffic from people wanting to gain some inspiration!