The aesthetic and existential crisis of picking the right blog design for your blog

For those few who have noticed, I've changed my blog design a couple of times since this summer, and I apologize for any confusion and inconvenience it may have caused (although I doubt it, since you probably haven't even noticed or just thought you had gone wrong and quickly went away again). Well, that's my misfortune. I can clearly see it on the number of viewers, after all [= drastic decline]. I could say that I blame it all on Tumblr and its influence on me with its many flexible possibilities to change your design and interface without much thought for the consequences. It may sound arrogant but I've never struggled getting followers on Tumblr - even though I've had this blog for a much longer time - and I guess that's why I've stuck to my first design on that platform. I must admit my fingers have once in a while itched to change to some of the various tasty designs Tumblr has to offer, but people just steadily keep on coming and in the end, I'm rather pleased with how it looks.

Anyway, it's apparently another thing with Blogger. I've changed it very few times since I first started, never radically and only adding new stuff to it. Then, this summer, I wanted something new to happen with it (a frightful habit at times), and I changed it's whole aappearance.!

I wanted something with a 1950s/'60s look. Something edgy, sharp and sexy like a Mad Men episode or a Henry Mancini lounge score. Like a Saul Bass poster or one of those magnificent opening sequences from the late '50s and early '60s movies.

It ended with a brilliant picture of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon from "Some Like It Hot" as background, some '60s-looking font for the title and an edgy yellow and grey coloring... Well. It wasn't because I didn't like it, it was just that even this seemed like I was trying too hard ... there was too much going on and it wasn't me. It wasn't what I wanted my blog to represent.

So, back to the drawing table.

Well, now it  has ended like every other college girl's iconic dreamscape with a screencap from the one and only "Breakfast at Tiffany's" - with text on  a white background. Believe me, I could have been more creative and original with Photoshop, but I wanted to keep it simple, still.

Though, the proces was far from simple, I soon realised:

First, I sat down trying to make it all come together as one delicious, super-tastic blog, looking at all the nice, über-cool  templates and webdesigns out there, finding several I liked until I saw that with nice came a price (of course!)..and I was like:



After the umptieth time of my own insufficient and indecisive design combinations I was getting a teeny-weeny bit tired of my own inability to stick to something...just something..!!:

The various 'final' results were always a relief (after practically spending whole nights trying out different photos, colors and fonts) but in the end also a bit.. meh:



And now with this hopefully(!) final design I feel - well, let's just say - rather self-conscious and nervous about what it will say about me. I know, I know, the posts themselves should do the job, but as a - so far - self-proclaimed aesthete I firmly believe the visual elements says just as much about you as the text you write on the blog. So this is why, I guess, I'm writing all this: On the one hand, I'm trying to excuse myself out of it all in case it's no success (which you never should and anyway, who cares if it's a success or not!? Tsk!), and on the other hand, I'm constantly trying to fit some not-so-mind-blowing-nor-world-changing personal social medium to my identity... Then again, aren't we all?

Yeah, you own it, girl! Just take it or leave it! (Or in my case, leave it open for change..)