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Sunday 26 May 2013

The Three Pillars of Web Design – Knowing them helps Ensure Perfection

The Three Pillars of Web Design

A perfectly designed website is easily accomplished, if web designers pay attention to some of the fundamental aspects relevant to web design. For starters, they can understand and keep in mind the three mainstays of a perfect web design which are – innovation, aesthetics and relevance, and use them to create a website that is as perfect as possible.
Let us go through each of these mainstays, which all web designers worth their salt must know and implement, to get a little bit of perfection in their sites.

Innovation

Innovation
We live in an era, where almost everything and everybody is online. Be it the college where you studied, your favorite music band, or even the local florist; everyone has their own website(s)! This means, there are chances that your website may end up looking like the mirror image of any other website. This is where innovation enters the scene.
For my money, innovation is the stepping stone of a perfect web design. It is innovation, which differentiates a mediocre website from a perfectly designed website and this is why, you must focus on innovation while working on any web design project. Here are some of the ways, which will help you innovatively design your website:
  • Following up on the latest web design trends
  • Getting inspired from the latest works of the best designers
  • Trying to use new tools and technologies on the market
  • Learning from experienced designers
  • Putting on your thinking cap and think beyond the usual

Aesthetics

Aesthetics
Aesthetics is another important factor, which will help you achieve a design that is all that you, your client and the end user, want it to be. In simple words, aesthetics is all about visual appeal.
Aesthetics in web design is essentially a sum of everything that makes a site look beautiful and presentable to visitors. Let us go through some pointers  which will give you a better understanding of how it works:
Typography - The fonts used on a website does more than just display the text. You can use them to emphasize/highlight certain elements on your site such as the page header or the tagline of the site, so that it immediately draws the attention of the visitors. Additionally, variations in typography make the website content scannable and easily readable (and these are the traits of a website that essentially make it appealing to the end-users).
Color Scheme - Many users nowadays use desktops (most of which have the screen resolution of 1024×768), laptops or mobiles (with very little screen real estate) for browsing websites. Since your website will be viewed on a variety of screen sizes and resolutions, you have to be very careful with the color scheme.
  • As a rule of thumb, use dark background color if you are using a light color for your fonts and vice versa. If you want to get more idea about the color schemes that you can use, do some research on the same. There are plenty of resources going around on the World Wide Web.
Graphics - Your site can be made aesthetically pleasing by selecting the right type of graphics for your web pages. For instance, choose images relevant to your website, which are of high-quality, animations which do not look over the top (or out of place) and maintain an appropriate text-to-image ratio.

Relevance

Relevance
Image Credit : difog.wordpress.com
Your web design will be of no use, if it is not relevant to the product, service, brand or company, which the website represents. For this reason, keep in mind the purpose and objectives of the website and design accordingly.
Let me give you an example:
Suppose you are working on a website, which promotes a brand of junk jewelry. Junk jewelry is  bohemian jewelry or hippie jewelry, all a part of the retro-culture. So, think about a website that has a ‘retro’ theme. Take your target audience back into the 60’s or 70’s by using a lot of floral prints, fluorescent colors (lava lamp), peace and flower motifs and similar things on your web pages. For example you can:
  • Use floral background on the site
  • Use peace symbols as your bullet point symbols
  • Use text boxes that have a fluorescent outer border
  • Use a DIY tutorial video of making hippy jewelry and embed the video on your home page
All these, will help your target audience relate to the products and your website easily.

To conclude

If you are an experienced web designer, then you definitely must have made it a habit to rest your web design on the these pillars, if not, it’s time that you do so. However, if you are a beginner level designer, take a cue from these points and put them into practice to achieve the flawless web design.

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