my opinion firstly is that if all your devs are working on separate pieces of the project, then you can do away with branches. It may take a little organisation (eg proper log comments and versioning) but that can be a lot less hassle than branching and merging.
Ok, but if you do want branches, they're easy. There are several approaches to this, but basically all involve a 'master' version where the final code ends up. this can be trunk, or some people prefer to make changes on trunk and then merge the code to release branches. The 'trunk is master' is the easiest concept to grasp though.
In svn, making a branch is easy - its a cheap copy so your only problem is filling up a directory with the things (I recommend deleting a branch once you're done with it). SVN gives you a special kind of branch for this type of work too - the reintegration branch. It is special as SVN tracks what happens to it, its designed that you create a branch from trunk, work on it, occasionally updating it with changes that have been made to trunk, and then reintegrate all your work on that branch into trunk in one final bang. Then you can start all over again. It sounds like this could be what you want - typically though, you wouldn't have a branch per developer, you'd have a branch for each package of work.
The trouble with per-dev branches is that as a branch lives longer and longer, the changes they make will be harder and harder to merge back. This is especially true if the developers do not merge the other dev's work into their branches regularly (as they are wont to do).
As svn does cheap copies, I would probably recommend branching the entire trunk for each developer. I find that its easier to remember that instead of branching individual directories, and you'll always be able to change shared or common files without having to worry if committing them will break a different branch. (ie if you branch /trunk/moduleA and later find you need to change /trunk/include/common_file then the common file will not be in your branch as you branched a sub-set. So just branch at the root as that doesn't cost you any extra)