Good Morning and welcome to day 2 of Armchair BEA.
Today is all about aesthetics!
The Books: How often do you judge a book by its cover? How often are you surprised by what you find? Do you strategize and make sure every book in your series has the same cover design (as far as you are able to) and type? How important is it for the visual art on the outside of the book to match or coordinate with the literature art on the inside?
The Blog: As a book blogger, in whatever form that takes, branding is important. Your colors, your fonts, your style of review, all of these things come together to make the “brand” of your blog – something that makes your reviews and posts and websites, all your various content, immediately recognizable to the people looking for you. What do you do to create a brand on your site? Do you think about these things?
The Blog:
When I first started blogging back in August of 2008 I have to admit that I didn’t really put a lot of effort into my blog and branding and I went with what I thought was cute and fun at the time. During the time I think I went through blog themes and designs like it was tissue. I was constantly changing it. Fast forward a few years later and I realized that I really enjoyed blogging and sharing my thoughts about books etc so I invested in my blog and purchased my very first design which I am happy to say is still here. Then shortly after that with much poking and persuading from my old high school friend, he convinced me to make the leap into self hosting and I have to say I am so happy I made that leap.
I am so happy with the design and the way things look now. I don’t think there is anything I would change. Its made me who I am and its set me apart from everyone else. No one has a design like me and its unique to who I am.
I know what I like and what I don’t like when I visit other blogs and I try to reflect that here. A blog has to be fun, easy to read and engaging and I hope that you find that here.
The Books:
I have to admit that I don’t always base picking up books based on the cover but sometimes I do. Its so hard not to especially when you walk by a display that is showing casing a book that has a pretty cover or even a ugly cover.
Sometimes the cover can be a catch 22. It could have the worst cover but an incredible story and then you have this beautiful book and its got a crappy story. How many times has that happened to you? I have encountered it many times over the course of 8 years of blogging. So I try not to base it all on the cover alone.
When it comes to having books in my collection I am usually not specific about the look, version etc because I tend to pass on the books when I am finished reading them but for the rare ones that I do keep, especially when its a series I do like to have my books all look the same in version and size and style. So its rather annoying when publishers change the format (ie comes out in paper back first and then other books in the series comes in hard cover) and design (you start the series with one look and then half way through they revamp them).
Do you have any book pet peeves? What about blogger pet peeves?