Blog Design 101: Designing a Header with Google Drawing

Hey people! I'm doing a series on blog design where I help new bloggers stylize their blog.

INTRODUCTION

Personally, I think it's really easy to create gorgeous headers in photo editors. I don't use Photoshop, and I lean towards free, convenient photo editors like Pixlr Express. Also, if you'd rather not, you can design a header with a service as simple as Google Drawing. Choose what you want to do. This tutorial post shows you how to use Google Drawing to create a header. As the example, I'll be making a blog header for a blog named "Live Your Life."

TUTORIAL

1. The function of photo editors for us will be to transform a starting image into a header. Since Google Drawing isn't much of a photo editor, you can decide if you even want photos in your headers.
2. Google Drive offers a wide collection of fonts. Check out the font library to see which you want to use. If you can't find any you like, you can use photos of cool text on Google Images.
3. Here's my starting image.

On a PC, I would use Paint to crop out every word(s) except "YOUR LIFE" after screenshotting my screen. On a Mac, I would hit Command+Shift+4 to select those words with crosshairs. I'm planning to use the "Your Life" image and then place a text box on top reading "Live."

Before pasting anything in, place a white box around your canvas on Google Drawing so you have a white background when you screenshot your header and not a grey-and-white checkered background. 

My Google Drawing canvas with the white box:

With "Your Life" screenshot pasted in:

When you paste it in, make sure the image is centered on the canvas.

I will use a script font for "Live." 

Create a text box reaching both sides of the canvas. This makes sure that the text for "Live" is perfectly centered when you center it in the text box. 

The script font I chose was Meddon. If you don't have it, add it in. The font size is 96px and the color is icy blue (#82dcff). I dragged down the text so it fell on "Your Life."

Screenshot the final product using the methods previously mentioned, and crop out any extra white space.

Our final product:

I hope this helped as a demo of what Google Drawing can do!