Designing for The Future

​This blog post is a part of Design Blogger Competition organized by CGTrader.
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Hello friends!
Today I'd like to talk a little bit about design.

As some of you might already know, I study visual communications at Sinclair. In visual communications, our focus is to design and create with the purpose of communicating something to an audience. From what I've noticed, the visual communications major focuses on graphic design and photography as key communication strategies. With this major, I can learn how to reach out to a large audience artistically and creatively.

The reason I chose this field to go into was because my main goal is to become a successful blogger. Blogging and vlogging is becoming more and more popular because it is becoming a full-time job for so many people.

There are so many successful online personalities like Zoe Sugg and Estee Lalonde who have built their brand through blogging, then by moving into vlogging. And now they have numerous companies who aspire to work with them! Zoe and Estee have become so successful from their branding that they've even written books! And there are so many other inspiring bloggers and vloggers who have achieved similar goals as well.

Every person who decided to create a blog had a purpose for making it. They had an idea in their mind when they went to create it, and another idea when they decided to share it with the public. My purpose? To shine a light on anxiety and depression. I started writing to calm my own nerves. And I made it public a year later to share my story with others who were just as afraid as I was (and still am). My blog isn't just lifestyle, though. I included fashion, hobbies, and beauty as ways to cope more creatively with my inner struggles and to encourage others to do the same. And that was what I always knew that I wanted Grins & Needles to be--a place to find happiness (grins) and a way to do it creatively (needles, the sewing kind).

So, yes, my blog is why I was inspired to study design in college. Because my goal, like I said, is to help an audience who feel the same way that I do, and to let them know that they are not alone. To reach an audience, I need to use the concepts that I learn in visual communications.

And this is why design is extremely important to me, and why, through the future, it will continue to be important to me and to so many others who are creators online. Because even if I'm satisfied with the look of my blog one day, modernization and re-branding will continue to get my foot through the door so I can truly become successful in the blogging community.

So what are some design trends we need to consider right now?

Some areas of focus when it comes to constantly modernizing Grins & Needles include my blog layout, my photography, and my own style.

For my blog's layout, I aim to make my content the main focus, not the background options that weebly kindly provides. Although a lot of their backgrounds are very aesthetically-pleasing, I like to have my photography and writing stand out. So that's why I chose such a simple layout. It's super simple and allows me to add to or to take away items as time goes on.

Another area that I focus on, photography, helps me to bring in an audience with visuals and allows them to look further into my content. My photography is usually the first impression for my audience. When I share my blog posts to Facebook and other social media, I chose which visually-pleasing photo I feel will advertise the post the best.

I feel that photography is an essential part of designing for the future, especially for creators on the internet. If you're a YouTuber, thumbnails and titles are the very first glimpse of your content people tend to see. So it's important to capture something clearly and to make it graphically interesting.

And with blogging, images help to more clearly illustrate your post's message. I know, whenever I see pictures on Pinterest by other bloggers, I click on it to see more about that particular post. It's essential to get that first impression out there for people.

And finally, a major factor that sets bloggers apart is their style. This determines what topics they include on their blog, what their photos look like, what they write like, so on and so forth.

This is huge for me. I know that a lot of the bloggers I admire struggle with mental illnesses also, so it definitely is tricky to set myself apart and even to get my name out there. But working hard, understanding important design areas, and having my own style and purpose will hopefully do that for me.

My goal is to continue to modernize my blog and hopefully to inspire others who come across my content.
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Thank you folks so much for reading! And thank you CG Trader for informing me about your competition.

How is design important to you? Let me know in the comments below.

Keep on grinning!
​Lydia