We are standing on the precipice of a new culture? Sceptical, questioning connected with the world, thirsting for information and change. Technology is driving society at a pace unparalleled in history creating new attitudes, interrelationships, and global awareness. A new consumer is emerging, suspicious of traditional media sources, incredulous of advertising, and contemptuous of the contrived the hyped, the false. This consumer is not easily persuaded by clever graphics or manipulated by fads in design. In order to integrate all aspects of a brands presentation on a web-site, the designer must move beyond form, colour and type and embrace the comprehensive impact of design. Enhanced awareness of the world; deeper, broader thinking about problems and opportunities; a respect for the historical roots of and formal conventions of design; planning and diligent study are required to create interesting global web-site designs.
What? subject: Web site design on the Internet Focus: Web site design in the future. Objectives: To identify web-site designs that work, and to identify the reasons to why they work. Why? With the increasing number of web-sites that are coming online daily, in order for them to work, they are more dependent on good design for attracting readership than print is. How? By examination of the most frequently visited web-sites, and although a historical approach with reference to print in design. Section Two Design is the Answer What? Web sites need to be far better designed than anything in the print medium, due to the very interdisciplinary nature of the web-site. Why? Because a magazine with even minimum design gets its information across to the reader.
You buy it because you care about the issues in its headlines, if you want more you jump inside, print by its nature is a tactile phenonenom; touch, smell and accessibility, and it is for that reason it will never die. But web-sites are purely visual and aural, one screen at a time. Encouraging the viewer to go beyond the first layer, even learn where to go for what is required is a common problem for designers. It is their job to bring the viewer inside through the “Dance of the seven veils”,and once inside, guide them, not to confuse or frustrate them.
How? Web-sites that work are sites that do what you want it to do. They do not insult your intelligence, but neither do they obfuscate. They must indicate the wealth of material lying beneath the first page, but also offer you options and alternate means of approach. The answer may lie in better selling of the land in urban planning, to use a metaphor. The solutions to timeless internet problems navigation, access to information will be provided by design.
Good design means; pertinent information, content, good surfing, exploring, and gathering. The designer is the Webs real pathfinder. How does the designer achieve this goal? By drawing up an agenda for good web design. Section 3 and 4 Where does good web design come from? I believe that the principles print informed quality print design for hundreds of years and that these principles are equally valid online.
TEN RULES OF DESIGN FOR THE WEB
1. Put content on every page.
Design should not be decoration. It must convey information. Or entertainment. Content should come to the surface on every single level. Avoid useless and confusing icons, e.g. a navigation bar that has a ? for help.
Make sure the content is easy to read quickly. Break the text into smaller segments. On the web people are in a hurry. They want the information they are looking for quickly, like a dictionary, thats still what the web is really about. 2. The first colour is white 3.
The second colour is black 4. The third colour is red. This is a basic rule that has been around for 500 years. In Print white is the absence of all colours.
White makes the best background. Black holds the highest contrast to white; therefore it is the first choice for text. And red draws the viewer in, and defines the image. 5.
Never letterspace l o w e r c a s e When this is done the natural rhythm of the letters, so carefully designed by font designer, is ruined. In design if you look at what you do today, it should look like what you want to do tomorrow. 6. Never set a lot of text IN ALL CAPS Fonts were not intended to be all set in caps. They were intended to be upper and lowercase and to have serifs and descenders and ascenders so that they are easier to read. 7.
A cover should be a poster A single image of a human being will sell more magazines than multiple images or all type. Avoid the pitfalls of fads. Design loses its power when it falls prey to what is popular now. 8. Use only one or two typefaces There are thousands of fonts on offer, this does not mean it is clever if the designer can use as many as possible at once, good design is pulled together by one or two fonts. The best combination is one light and one bold.
(This seems to work with colours too). 9. Make everything as BIG as possible Type looks good in big point sizes, a bad picture always looks better bigger. 10. Get lumpy ! The trouble with most web design is that it holds no great surprise. 95% of web pages have beautiful graphic homepages, followed by legions of pages that look like newsletters with stamps stapled to them.
Vary the content from page to page; dont keep to the format of picture-and-story.
NINE RULES OF WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN DESIGNING WEB PAGES
. 1. Dont confuse the viewer. Keep the site consistently designed. For different pages and sections the navigation tools and graphics need to look the same throughout.
Make sure the viewer knows they are on the same site when surfing your web pages. 2. Be organised with navigation. Make sure your buttons and navigational directions are simple and clear. Be consistent in these from page to page.
3. Dont make oversize pages. Research shows that 50% of all computers used for the internet use 13″ monitors, designers often use 17″ 21″ monitors, size matters”, keep to 480×640 pixels. 4. Dont design pages that require scrolling.
This makes it painful and impossible to read in a hurry. Browsers will never scroll, they are more likely to press a button and keep going. Shorter pages break up content to bite size pieces this is more appealing to the viewer. 5. Dont use big, slow graphics.
No one wants to wait a minute for art or seven minutes for a video; the only acceptable delay when it comes to the web is no delay. 6. Go monochromatic. Monochromatic pages frankly look better and run faster. Web clutter is typified by free wheeling use of colour. Use one or two colours, not all of them.
7. Dont overdo text. Web browsers skim and surf, if you dont give them something quickly they absorb nothing. 8.
Dont use tiny type. It is very hard to read small type on a computer, make everything bigger than you would print. If you want to get noticed on the web make it easy and clear to read. 9. Dont navigate by type.
Navigate by image, its less confusing and never dull. Section 5. Conclusions What was the question? What defines a well-designed web-site? The “wow” factor this is not cool buttons or fonts, or graphics, or audio or video, but clear, easy to read information in bite size chunks, good content, and easy to follow consist navigation. ent How do we plan a web-site that works? Step 1. Client requirements and Goals The Brief Strategic planning, and engineering. Step 2.
Response and Refinement Trial Pages Design, Content, and marketing. Step 3. Approval The Prototype Final design testing and coding Step 4. Launch The Launch Style book, training, and quality tests.
Whats it all about? Content; The internet means nothing without good stories, personalities and good direction.
