6 Often-Ignored Principles of Great Design It can be pretty frustrating when you visit a poorly-designed website. You can’t find what you’re looking for, there are too many flashy elements that are distracting, and you eventually wind up leaving the site altogether to go looking for something better. Sometimes a graphic designer only thinks their website has to look cool. Don’t fall into that trap! If you apply these 6 principles of great design, your website is bound to improve in a major way.
Use the white space You don’t need to fill every square inch of computer screen with graphics. Using plenty of white space effectively (white space isn’t necessarily white—it just means empty space) has a way of calming the viewer’s experience. When you allow for white space, your webpage won’t seem so cluttered.
Be consistent Repetition is a key element of a well-designed website. Consistency lets visitors know exactly where they are, and it lets them know that they didn’t go anywhere they didn’t intend to go. If your pages aren’t consistent across the entire range of your website, visitors will just get confused. It’s fairly easy to achieve this through the use of style sheets, so there’s really no excuse for a lack of consistency.
Position the most important elements prominently Because we read left to right, it’s a good idea to have the most important elements of your website in the top left hand corner. Additionally, people should never have to scroll down to find the main focus point of a page.
Use contrasting colors Contrast adds interest, and it’s a good way to make your website exciting without making it too cluttered. Remember the common rule of thumb, “If two things aren’t the same, make them very different.” Your text can be more readable by setting it in contrasting colors that go well together (red and green,
purple and yellow, blue and orange). An image will really pop if it’s set in a contrasting background.
Less is more Less is more—a great philosophy to live by, and a central tenant of graphic design. Don’t give your visitors sensory overload. Maybe you won’t be able to jam all the coolest features into a single page, but your visitors will thank you in the end. Your design will be the most effective if there are very few elements on a page.
Use proper alignment Each image needs to be properly aligned with its description, and everything should be placed in a way that makes sense. There should be no lone images on your page—everything needs to be visually connected to something else. Graphic designers have a tendency to get caught up in the newest, slickest graphics out there. Maybe you just got your graphic design degree, and you’re tempted to show off all your awesome skills at once, whether they fit into the functionality of the website or not. But as long as you don’t forget these 6 guidelines for great graphic design, the internet will be a more beautiful place to behold. 1.bp.blogspot.com, Static.tvtropes