Typepad 101: Design Your Blog

Now that your blog is up and running and you are publishing content, let's make sure your blog is looking the way you would like it to look. The look of your blog is really important - it is the very first impression a visitor gets when checking out your blog for the first time. Today's Typepad 101 is about what's available to create a design for your blog.

When you create a blog, it defaults to the "Journal Black" theme. You can stay with this theme if you'd like as it's offered in five different colors.  Or you can switch to another pre-designed theme. 

Choose Your Theme

To see what themes are available to apply to your blog, go to the "Design" tab.  This page is broken up into three sections:

Current Design: This section shows your current design with options on how to customize your current design (Banner, Style (for Design Lab themes), Layout, Content). 

• Banner: upload your new banner
• Style: customize the overall appearance of your blog (fonts, colors, borders)
• Layout: select 1, 2, or 3 column layout
• Content: Add and edit what is shown in your sidebars, post & blog footers, etc.

Create a New Design: This includes a green button "Choose a Theme."  This will take you to a new page with a gallery of thumbnails showing pre-made designs you can apply to your blog.

You can view your options by Feature, New, Customizable, and All.  

Your Designs: Every time you add a new design to your blog, it saves in your Typepad account so you can always go back and reuse it instead of starting over.

About Customizable Options

The Customizable option includes Design Lab, Theme Builder, Styleless, or HTML aka Advanced Templates.   The Styleless or Advanced Templates options are recommended only if you are comfortable working with HTML and CSS code and building your custom design from scratch.  These two options are available for Unlimited plans and higher.

Design Lab and Theme Builder are easy to use with no code required to customize the look of your blog. You can select the colors, fonts, and upload your banner.  You can add additional CSS code to customize your design further but not required. Design Lab is responsive and looks great on all devices, large and small, and meets Google's mobile-friendly requirements.  Theme Builder also has an option to create a responsive design

If you ever get stuck or have questions about how to make something work with your blog design, you can always open a Help Ticket and a member of the team will be happy to help!