Have you ever woken up one day, looked at your blog’s header and other visual elements, and thought, “My, this is ugly!”

You need a visual redesign.

What to do?

There are two solutions to this problem: you hire a designer to work on your new visuals from scratch, or you try to do it yourself. The first solution can come at a cost, so cash-strapped bloggers can easily be tempted to try building their blog’s visual elements by themselves.

But what if, like me, you’re visually incompetent? I mean, really incompetent? You can’t draw a stick figure to save your life, and you know absolutely nothing about the basics of visual design. You’re a writer, after all, and writers are better off writing than playing around with pictures.

And yet, you can’t afford a designer, so you need to find a way, any way, to do it yourself.

In this article, I will share the lessons I have learned trying to redesign my blog visuals on my own—header, logo, and all.

Start with software that you understand

We’ve all tried to play with those complex professional photo and visual design programs. You load a picture or an empty canvas and you think “Wow, with all these great tools, I’m sure I can come up with something amazing!”

Well, not so much. After five minutes of trying to understand the functions of the program, you give up. This happened to me time and time again, until I discovered a nice little Mac app called Logoist.

Logoist is simple and has all the functions I need. I can use cliparts from its extensive library, add text, apply filters and effects and insert pictures and photos. Its interface is intuitive and it has a few tutorials to show you the ropes. It also has automatic grid lines that help align all your elements. This simplicity let me create more freely than any professional design program could.

There are a lot of apps and programs you can use for both Mac and PC. Some are free and most are reasonably priced. You don’t have to go for the $500 creative suite to get the job done.

Black and white are your friends

I’ve always worked under the principle that, when in doubt, you should take the simplest route. In visual design, black and white is a great base to start with.

A black and white design looks professional, clean, and easy to work with. You don’t have to worry about colors matching or clashing. You know your text and your visual elements will be readable on a computer screen, a tablet or a smartphone. Black and white reminds readers of printed paper, something that’s ubiquitous and familiar. It’s trustworthy.

But of course, black and white can become a little bland. To add variety, choose one (and when I say that, I really mean one) accent color for your sidebar widgets, for the picture in your logo, or for the blog title in your header.

For example, on my writer’s website, I decided to go with dark red. It’s a color I like, and I think it brings about the right amount of visual interest. On my blog, I count on the pictures inserted in my posts for a blast of color.

Play with fonts

For my blog’s header, I decided to keep everything simple and play with fonts rather than pictures or images. Each word of my title (Read, Write, Live) uses a different font that expresses something unique about that word.

“Read” is in a formal, serif type that you could find in a book or newspaper. “Write” is in a handwritten-looking font that illustrates the act of writing on paper and separates it visually the other two words. “Live” is in a bold, sans-serif font with unexpected lines. I added a small ornament (one of the cliparts in Logoist) in the middle for visual interest.

Here’s the logo version, with the first letter of each word:

Fonts are great because you can give personality to words and ideas before they are processed by the brain through reading. They leave an instant impression, and can make or break the viewer’s desire to read on.

A tool I love for choosing awesome fonts is Google Fonts. If you’re tired of Times New Roman and Comic Sans, Google Fonts has an impressive collection of independent, public domain fonts you can use.

Be yourself, be realistic

The most important thing when you’re stuck having to design your own visual elements without training is to be honest with yourself. If you don’t know how to use vector software, then don’t. There are a lot of solutions that are within your reach and your abilities.

You also need to be realistic: there is no substitute for a professional design. As much as a self-designed header and logo can fill in temporarily, as soon as you get a steady flow of readers, you’ll be expected to get some custom, professional visual design on your blog. But as a beginner or novice blogger, a handmade, simple header and minimal visual elements can go a long way

One last thing: remember to have fun. I can tell you that this kind of visual work can be absorbing and exciting when you really get into it. I didn’t know I could come up with something so attractive on my own. I was very proud of the results, and it got me compliments from readers too!

Have you ever tried to design your own visual elements? Do you have any other basic visual design tips you’d like to share with the visually incompetent among us? I’d love to hear from you!

Sales of existing homes slipped from August to September but were still up strongly from a year ago — a sign that the national housing market is finding solid ground, the National Association of Realtors said today.

At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, sales of single-family homes, townhomes, condos and co-ops were down 1.7 percent from August to September, but up 11 percent from a year ago.

September sales of existing homes were up 11 percent from last September with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.75 million, which represents a slight dip of 1.7 percent from August’s upwardly revised rate of 4.83 million.

The 2.32 million homes on the market at the end of September represented a 5.9-month supply, down from 8.1 months a year ago. Many analysts view a six-month supply of housing as an even balance between buyer and seller demand.

Thanks to tight inventories, the national median home price was up 11.3 percent to $183,900 from a year ago, the seventh month in a row of annual increases and the longest stretch of annual increases in six years.

“We’re experiencing a genuine recovery,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a statement. “More people are attempting to buy homes than are able to qualify for mortgages, and recent price increases are not deterring buyer interest,” he said.

Low inventory will be a temporary issue, said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. “Rising prices will get some homeowners back above water and willing to sell their homes, and tight inventory will encourage builders to keep ramping up new construction, bringing more new homes to market,” he said.

First-time buyers accounted for 32 percent of purchasers in September, up from 31 percent in August.

Foreclosures and short sales sold for 21 percent below market value, on average, and accounted for 24 percent of September’s sales.

All-cash deals accounted for 28 percent of September’s sales — up a percentage point from August and down two from last September.

Existing-home sales, September 2012

Seasonally adjusted annual rate	4.75 million
% change from September 2011	11.0%
% change from August 2012	-1.7%
National median price	$183,900
% change from September 2011	11.3%
Unsold inventory (months’ supply)	5.9
Share of all-cash buyers	28%
Share of investor buyers	18%
Share of first-time buyers	32%
Share of distressed sales	24%

Source: National Association of Realtors

All U.S. regions saw existing-home sales and prices rise in September from a year ago.

As was the case in August, the Midwest led the way in home sales with a 19.6 percent year-over-year increase to an annual rate of 1.1 million sales. The median price in the Midwest also rose in September from a year ago, up 7 percent to $145,200.

The South saw sales jump 14.2 percent from last September to an annual rate of 1.93 million. Median prices jumped, too, to 13.1 percent from last September to $163,600.

Home sales rose 7.3 in the Northeast on an annual basis to a rate of 590,000. Median prices in the region rose 4.1 percent to $238,700.

The West experienced a slight 0.9 percent yearly increase in home sales to 1.13 million, but saw the largest yearly median price jump of any region, 18.4 percent to $246,300, in September.