Exercise 13, arrangement, design,

I've rearranged my blog's layout today : I placed ( dragged and dropped ) the "Labels" gadget onto the left side. I changed the display from the Cloud format to a List.  Previously I was drawn to the Cloud , it looked appealing and innovative, but the list arrangement  allows clearer browsing.
This is how I selected the current display of labels on my blog :

Title
Show	All Labels Selected Labels Selected labels: 31 of 31 edit
Sorting	Alphabetically By Frequency
Display	List Cloud
	Show number of posts per label

Exercise 12, colour, design

The template background I use for my blog has darker tones while the letters are  in white font so the text stands out. When browsing through other blogs I realized, that the black background for my posts looked rather gloomy, so I decided to change it from black to dark gray. 
It is not a huge change, but it made a huge difference in the overall look of my  blog....I am still using quite a dusky tone, but that simple shade change made the pages  less dramatic and the white letters are not disturbingly bright any more. I added a slide show of nature pictures to  the right side of the screen just to bring some more life and colour to it... 
 Pamela Wilson, an award-winning graphic designer and marketing consultant has very interesting tips on using certain fonts and colours for online businesses, blogs and brands: http://www.bigbrandsystem.com/typography/