Five Essential Elements 0f Web Design
From those simple text based websites in the early years of Internet to the multimedia rich, elegant and interactive websites today, web design has indeed come a long way. With the increase in the dependency of people on the internet and in its overall popularity, web companies and professional have got much attention in the recent years. It is quite natural, as there has been a need of adding more and more interactivity to websites to succeed in engaging more and more visitors. This need and dependency on websites has impacted
even the languages being used for the development of web pages. Today, it is obvious that most of the popular development languages like HTML/CSS, PHP, ASP, Java, Perl etc. have evolved a lot. Now these languages are even stronger and they support even higher level of interactivity. Summing up everything, we need to take a moment to think as to what makes a desirable website? What are its elements and what are the things web designers should take into account to come with great sites? However, there are several elements of web design but to make it simple to understand they can be divided into five main elements - viz. Layout and Structure, Color Combination, Typography, Image and Rich Media and Styling. Let's discuss them in detail: Layout and Structure: It is undoubtedly one of the most important elements of design. Layout or structure basically means the placement of different elements on the page. Where to keep the navigation? Will the contact details be fine on the right corner of the page? How many columns should there be on the page? Where to show the contact form? What to include on the footer and how large should it be? All these questions need to be answered before getting to the design. Making a rough sketch of the layout and getting it approved from the client is always a wise decision. Color Combination: The second most impressive and powerful element of design - as it decides the look and feel of your web page. Going by the traditional trends, every single color represents a certain kind of feel or say a kind of recognition. Green is mostly preferred by the organizations engaged in environment friendly products or services or social services etc. Pink still defines femininity. Red is robust and yellow signifies advertisement or classified businesses. Nevertheless, it is not a hard and fast rule to go by this trend. There are a number of organizations and companies today opting for every other color on their websites. Typography: It signifies the selection of font family, size, weight, color etc. It again is important to choose fonts according to the design pattern and the need of web design for a particular page. If your client has patented font, make sure to confirm before you use a different set of typography on the website. Image and Rich Media: As I said in the beginning also, its standard has evolved a lot with time. Today, you can see a lot of websites enriched with high definition images, slideshows, banners, audios and videos. On the other hand, there are several that represent clean and simplistic styles. Practically, the use of images and multimedia depends on the main purpose of the website. If you are designing an entertainment website engaged in wallpapers, ringtones, movie reviews etc, you cannot do without images and rich media. However, if you are designing a website for an NGO or social organization, always a simplistic feel of the website is preferred. Styling: Styling refers to the use of Stylesheet and the elated elements in web design. A web page cannot be designed to perfection without the use of Stylesheet. It is the soul of any kind of web design. An intelligent use of styling can add life even to the most boring and dull web design. Today, one can make use of the HTML5 and CSS3 to style a web page. The scope of CSS3 and HTML5 is very vast, so much so that they can even replace Flash if used properly.
In the end, if a designer pays attention to all these five elements of web design wisely, the website is sure to meet their clients' expectations.
www.ksofttechnologies.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/James_Godwin/285825