SpyreStudios - Design and Development Magazine

There are a lot of really slick blog designs from very talented designers out there. So I thought I’d make a list of my all time favorite ones, hopefully you’ll find some you’ve never seen on this list. Here we go:

A List Apart is probably one of my favorite blogs because of the quality of the content but also because of the clean and (always) fresh design.

Armen Thomassian put this new design online not so long ago and I must say I totally love it! It’s dark, it’s fresh and I love the wooden background.

Blogsessive has this cool mascot/character in the header. Really catchy!

I just love this design! Spoon Graphics Blog has this massive header, you just can’t forget it. Great work!

Design Reviver is fairly new and caught my attention immediately. The ‘Grungy’ feel is very popular right now, and Design Reviver pulls it off very nicely.

DevLounge has to be one of my favorite minimalist design. Excerpts on the frontpage and minimal use of colors always does the trick.

Don’t Trust This Guy has very nice typography, I’m not a big fan of sIFR though but this design is just great!

Gotta love the background images on Evan Eckard’s site!

iDesignStudios has a very dark design with pattern background. I’m usually not a big fan of light text on dark background but this one is very artistic and for some reason the light on dark doesn’t bother me at all! And you got a cool mascott/character in the header, always nice! :)

Left aligned, content/sidebar/sidebar layout, Josh Spear is just great! Not your typical blog design, feels good and is refreshing.

On top of being a Bikini.com Supermodel, Larissa Meek is a kick-ass designer! Can you tell I love pattern backgrounds?

Noupe has an impressive and very unique blog design. I’m sure there’s was a lot of efforts put into this design. No wonder this blog is growing pretty fast.

I really like how they put the recent posts and bookmarks on the blog homepage at OnWired.

Pearsonified is without a doubt my favorite blog design! Period.

Photoshop Lady has some cool mascots/cartoons in the header. Nice use of icons both in the vertical menu and in the content area (left of titles and below posts excerpts)

Can you find the menu on Playground Blues? Move your mouse to the left of the page. See? That’s kick-ass!

I had to include ProBlogger on this list. Main reason is because I find Darren’s new design is such a huge improvement over the previous design. Magazine-style with DOMTabs below the posts in the middle section. Good job!

PS Hero recently changed the design and it’s great! The header is awesome!

Nice use of transparent PNGs on Simply Fired. Ok IE6 doesn’t really like that, but it’s a great design nonetheless.

You just can’t miss Dan Rubin’s Superfluous Banter! Orange does rule!

Click on ‘about’ in the top menu! That’s cool! True Blue Titan has a ‘Grungy’ feel but nothing overwhelming, love it!

Mascots and cartoons are becoming more and more popular these days and the one on Vectips fits the topics of the blog perfectly.

Sometimes when you visit a new blog it takes a couple minutes to really figure out what the blog is really about, well not with Woork. Just a quick look at the header and you got a pretty good idea. :)

WP Designer is (or used to be?) a great resource site for all things WordPress. The site was sold recently and we’ve yet to see new posts, but still the design is great, SP did a really good job on this one.

Young Go Getter has a ‘Grungy’ body background image but the design is still very clean. Also, Vanilla forum has been implemented and the latest forum post is displayed between blog posts on the homepage. Good idea if you want to build that sense of community on your blog. Great job!

Your Turn To Talk

So, which ones are your favorites? And why? I’d love to know what you think. Also, a lot of people seem to be going for the grunge look lately (Matt Mullenweg for example), do you think it’s there to stay? Will it stay longer than the glossy look? Share your thoughts in the comment section below! :)