About a year ago- when I started blogging, everyone started to complain about all the cutesy blog designs with cartoon women etc. I had already created my own design and this made me feel really bad, but like your idea for your design, mine is very personal. It’s Tricia’s Musings that I’m referring to by the way.

Tricia’s Musings header has a photo of my husband and neighbor in the background being silly, the photo also represents my love of gardening, the iguana on the couch represents my love of reptiles and that actually is my iguana Napoleon who passed away in 2004, the telephone table to right looks very much like an antique on I own (antiques are also something I’m interested in), and the nurses cap and stethoscope on the table represent the fact that I’m a nurse. Oh and the cartoon “me” does look a fair bit like I do.

I’ve posted on my site, not recently, about my design choices and everyone seems to get it. The majority don’t include my blog design in the general distaste for “cutesy” cartoon blog designs. Although some don’t love it.

Personally, I don’t mind the cutesy cartoon designs that much- but if the design is well chosen to fit the blog or blogger I think it works better. All those sex kitten cartoony women? Is that really you? LOL

Whatever anyone chooses to do, it’s your blog, your design choice. Remember that. However I do think that you should choose a header that reflects what your blog is about, or describes who you are in some way.

It’s always a good idea to try to customize the standard blogger or wordpress or other blogging platform designs if you choose to not get a custom design for your site (there’s lots of free blog themes out there- just search!). There’s days I’m surfing blogs and I sometimes see the same design, totally un-customized 100 or more times. There’s nothing wrong with the design but it really doesn’t tell me who YOU are – especially if I’ve seen 99 others just like it that day.