These days everyone and their dog has got a personal blog. And no wonder, after all it's easy to head over to WordPress or Blogger, and just get started – all at the click of a button, and best of all, totally free!

But as anyone who's spent five minutes looking at blogs online knows, quantity does not always equal quality.

It's easy to spot a good blog when you come across one – updates are frequent, content is relevant to whatever niche it's trying to cover, and the writing is great. Often, you can tell a great blog just by looking at it.

Anyone serious about wanting to make it in the blogosphere usually stays far away from the free design templates available, and instead invests in a professional custom blog design that makes the most of the type of content they are trying to share.

Be it images, recipes, book reviews or multi-media content, a seasoned web designer can really make a difference in how your blog content is perceived.

Here we've rounded up six blogs that are really killing it with their modern, customized designs. Be it cookies, watches or hard news they're trying to showcase, these bloggers are doing it beautifully.

i am a food blog

Winner of saveur.com's 2014 Best Food Blog Awards Blog of the Year, i am a food blog is truly a delicious sight to behold. The posts are usually half personal blog, half recipe, always accompanied by stunningly photographed dishes.

From a design perspective, the blog is right on trend with its rich typography on a huge background image when you arrive on the home page, and a minimalist floating navigation bar ready to take you wherever you want to go. Once you scroll away from the big background image, the rest of the post is laid out in front of a simple white background, making the text and pictures stand out even more.

Recipes and posts are organized in a simple card-based design layout, making it versatile across different screens and devices. This truly is a site not to be mist for any serious foodie!

The Sartorialist

At first glance this minimalist fashion blog may not look much different from most other blogs. The layout is very standard, the background plain. But there is something to be said about the old saying "less is more".

The Sartorialist is a blog all about fashion, and by using a very simple layout and white background, it is the photos that take center stage. And the images certainly don't disappoint. Founder Scott Schuman's photography has been published across the world and is featured in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. No fancy backgrounds needed for this one, we reckon.

Vox

Designing a good news and current affairs blog is not easy. In fact, designing any blog that heavily relies on text is difficult.

Vox succeeds at this on several levels. The stylish grey and yellow color scheme is both sophisticated and a bit playful, making it perfect for a blog wanting to be taken seriously. Having the front page very image-heavy, promoting articles only via a headline and image, creates interest and keeps people from automatically clicking away at the sight of a wall of text.

A reader will be much less likely to leave if they're actually interested in the particular topic they clicked on. It's also nice to see that the Pinterest-led brigade of square layouts hasn't quite made it into all the corners of the internet.

Hodinkee

Unless you're seriously into watches, chances are you never heard of hodinkee.com, an online magazine priding itself for being "the preeminent resource for modern and vintage wristwatch enthusiasts". The website is certainly worth a look though.

Much like its item of focus, the blog is both technologically sophisticated and very, very nice to look at. Like i am a food blog, a site visitor is first greeted by an enormous background image taking up the whole screen.

The high quality photographs for each post are also the center of attention once scrolling through the previews, which are laid out in large squares incorporating the image, headline, author and introductory text. The site uses parallax effects, meaning the background image remains stationary in the background while the visitor scrolls through text in the foreground, creating an illusion of multiple layers and three-dimensions.

Howls & Whispers

A favorite blog of the DC editors, Howls and Whispers is "an online oracle of all things cultural, from music, art, design, literature, entertainment and beyond". That's a pretty tall order, and one that calls for some pretty decent design. Luckily, this leading culture blog nails it.

The responsive grid based design maximizes the imagery and feels modern and vintage at the same time. The content is a mixture of playlists, trailer or tour announcements, and short articles, and features photography, audio and video. Mostly, it just feels like a bunch of curated content created by people who are truly passionate about what they do. A winner in our books!

Kenney Myers

This personal blog of entrepreneur Kenney Myers proves that even a WordPress template can look incredible when custom-designed by a dedicated web designer.

The vibrant colors and big homepage image are of course right on trend, and the black textured background creates immediate interest, making it look professional and sleek. Once scrolling, the posts are laid out in a simple and versatile grid design.

Fancy a design just like it? Well, you may just be in luck, as it's put together by DesignCrowd’s very own top designer pb, who has earned over $880,000 on the site to date.

It may be true that anyone can start a blog at the drop of a hat these days, but if you want to be truly successful, you should think about how to set yourself apart from the crowd.

High quality content and frequent updates are of course a must to engage the discerning modern reader, but all the great content in the world will not be able to keep people interested if they're met with uninspired or outdated designs on the front page. So if you have something to say that's worth hearing, make sure your blog's visual design makes the most out of your work!

Want More?

There's a lot to love about a great design, and we have plenty of love to go around. Check out these articles for more design inspiration and tools to put in your web design toolbox:

Visual Design: Best of DesignCrowd 2014

12 Tools for the Modern Web Designer and Entrepreneur

The Best of DesignCrowd Design Round-Up - Volume 5

Written by Divya Abe on Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Divya Abe is an expert graphic designer ready to share her knowledge with the crowd. Besides spending quality time on the internet she enjoys anything to do with cats. Get in touch via Google+.