Back in the day, people were stuck; to get work done, your only option was to go to the office and work a 9-to-5. But thanks to technology, the days of being chained to a desk are over, and you can as quickly knock out your nomad blog while you relax next to the lake or on a road trip to an exciting new locale. Learn how to create and design your digital nomad blog and get the best tips.
Becoming a digital nomad and living a location-independent lifestyle has recently skyrocketed in popularity. As the lifestyle becomes more mainstream, more and more nomads are creating blogs to show off their experiences, advertise their professional services to fund their travel, and provide inspiration for people getting ready to leap.
Design Your Digital Nomad Blog
The more travel blogs up, the more saturated the market becomes and the harder it is to break through the clutter and make an impact. The good news? If you’re creative, you’ve got the upper hand—all you have to do is apply what you already know about the design and use it to create a visually stunning blog that jumps off the screen and frames your travels in a meaningful way.
How, exactly, do you do that? What are the critical design elements of a travel blog, and how can you design a blog that’s visually impactful and helps establish yourself as a go-to blogger in the digital nomad space?
Make your color choices work for you
First things first: choose the right colors to make the right impression with your travel blog.
Selecting a color palette for your blog is much more than saying, “I like blue, so I’m going to use blue in my design.” Color psychology is powerful. By choosing your colors strategically, you can use the strong associations people have with specific colors to your advantage.
Let’s say you’re sharing your high-octane adventures worldwide (think skydiving in New Zealand or shredding some severe powder on your snowboard in the Alps). You want your visitors to feel that same adrenaline rush as you were experiencing your adventures. So you’d like to use a color like red, which inspires passion and excitement.
On the flip side, let’s say you’re a yoga enthusiast traversing the globe to find your Zen. In that case, you’d want to use a color like blue, which invokes feelings of calm and serenity.
Something else to consider is whether you want your photography or your writing to be the focus of your blog. If you’re planning to upload tons of images, your blog might benefit from a neutral or muted color scheme to allow your photos to leap off the page. And if your long-form writing is the show’s star, you can afford to be more playful with your color selection.
The point is that color can make people feel, think, and do specific things. When you understand the psychology behind color, you can use it to choose colors for your blog that will make your audience feel, think, and do exactly what you want.
Choose the right layout to create a digital nomad blog
When creating a blog, you can’t just throw everything on a page and hope for the best. If you want your blog to connect with your audience. So, do not entirely overwhelm anyone who stumbles upon your URL. It would help if you chose the proper layout.
When considering your options, always choose a layout that makes the most of your content. If you’re building a blog to showcase your fabulous travel photos, select a design that puts images front and center.
If you answer audience questions on navigating the road to full-time digital nomadism, choose a structure that allows for more text. So, if you have a ton of different blog categories, select a layout that organizes them visually excitingly (like a sidebar menu or a grid of classes at the end of each post).
The right layout for your travel blog will depend on who you are, what you’re about, and what kind of content you’re pushing out into the world. That being said, you want to follow the basic rules of web design and make sure your layout:
- has an easy-to-navigate menu bar
- arranges key design elements based on how readers will scan the page (following either “F” design or “Z” design patterns)
- has a header and footer
- makes proper use of text hierarchy by including headers, subheaders, and body text
- is fully responsive
- has options for gathering visitor contact information
Take your visuals to the next level
You’re including photographs of your travels on your travel blog (that’s the point!). But if you want your content to stand out, you must take your photos and graphics to the next level.
But first, let’s touch on consistency. That alone can elevate a blogger’s public perception from hobbyist to full-on professional. It helps to take stock of your photography and note any patterns in style and scheme. Are your photos heavily saturated?
Do you favor breathtaking panoramas over quiet, minimal compositions? Showcase photos that follow a way authentic to you and support the same associations as the colors you picked for your layout. Voilà! Consistency.
Then, adding elements like typographic treatments. Or filters can make the photos of your travels look even more enchanting to your audience. And the better your photos, the more engaged your audience will be.
Have a photo of your sunrise hike to the top of a volcano? Add a filter to make the colors of the sunrise even more exciting. Did you get some great shots of the time you were stuck in a rainstorm on the streets of Paris? Add a black-and-white filter to make the photos feel more artistic and dramatic. In addition, hHave an endless collection of landscape shots? So, overlay text of inspirational quotes over the pictures and release them to your audience to use as social media images.
Photos of your travels are a must on your travel blog, and going the extra mile to make your photos impactful will get you even better results using the digital nomad blog tips.
Showcase your work to create a digital nomad blog
A huge part of your digital nomad lifestyle is your travels, often in a trusty used RV that serves both as your mobile office and your gateway to new adventures. But your travels are only half the equation. The other half? The work you do allows you to travel, whatever that may be.
Your travel blog should be a space where you can show off the work that makes your lifestyle possible in the first place. Your audience isn’t just interested in all the cool places you’ve been—they’re also interested in how you’ve gotten there. By displaying your work and telling your audience about the process of creating on the road, you’ll inspire them and show them it’s possible to do incredible work while traveling. And who knows? Maybe you’ll get a new client or two out of the deal.
When designing your website, create a portfolio page highlighting your best designs, writing clips, or showreel. And don’t forget a “work with me” page that makes it easy for potential clients to get in touch.
Wrapping things up
Traveling the world and working on the road is equivalent to “living the dream.” Now that you know how to design a travel and digital nomad blog tips that grabs people’s attention and delivers a severe dose of work/travel inspiration, all that’s left to do is get out there and design it! (And hopefully, you’ll create it in true digital nomad style while you enjoy a cocktail next to the beach.)
About 99designs
99designs is the global creative platform that makes it easy for clients and designers to work together to create designs they love. Finally, become a designer to be matched with opportunities, and fire up your freelance career and a great tips on how to create your digital nomad blog.
