Articles

The Current State of Web Design

by . November 12th, 2012

Web design is one particular area that has experienced tremendous change in the recent past. Just like the other areas where some pattern of artistic expression is expected, web design has undergone a tremendous and very fast evolution. Some of the powerful web designing tools that web designers use include font embedding; HTML5 and the CSS3. Web designers also have plenty of web designing resources from the internet and a very robust design community. The current crop of web designers are now producing more attractive and pleasing designs though their interactive designs. It is however important to note that that there are new direction that web designing has taken and there are various ideas and concepts that have been adopted.

 


 

Designing for Pleasure

 

The main task of the web designers is to communicate the ideas effectively through the excellent web design. For every message, they create a message that will work well as per their instructions. They do this by guiding their clients through some given steps to ensure that meet their needs. There are various ways to accomplish this namely designing for happiness, joy, surprise and delight. Appealing things have been found to work very well with most folks as it helps them in keeping their attention. Designs that are memorable increases the excitement of brands and products thereby leading to them being engaged or used more.

 

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In order to be successful web designers have to learn to pair the concepts of the user experience with that of the usability design. They should therefore use very effective and clear design rules and proven methods for them to design better web pages. It is important for the designers to be able to site and refer to the laws when they are either discussing or presenting a given design. The following are the laws that a designer used to be well conversant with.

 


 

The Hick’s law

 

The Hick’s law states that for every extra choice the duration to be taken to make a given choice or selection is increased. This implies when a designer has more than one option when he is using a web application or website the more difficult is it to use the design. This law addresses the importance of being simple. Web designers are therefore advised to have few choices from which users can choose from. This can be done by removing the unnecessary buttons, links, selections and pages.

 

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The Pareto Principle or the 80 / 20 rule

 

This principle states that that a large number of users usually perform very little actions. This means that most of the clients will usually go to the page with the least percentage. This means that most users will carry out very little tasks on the web applications. This principle helps the web designers use their interviewing, research and analytical skills to identify the little actions that can be performed by many users. At times this might lead to the alteration of a given home page so that they can find the accomplishing of a given task much easier.

 

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The rule of the thirds

 

This is one method of coming up with elements that are visually appealing together with identifying the various ways that the clients will scan through a given page. This is the law that most photographers have been using to create compositions that are really appealing to the human eye. Web designers use this law to break up a given design into various thirds both horizontally and vertically. This usually builds a grid with lines that intersect. Web designers who adopt this rule usually have their web designs very appealing to most of their clients.

 

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Proximity

 

Many web designers usually neglect this law. This law states that elements that are related should appear near each other. Most web designer usually ignore this law because it probably looks very simple. This means that web designers must be weary of the space that they place with the related elements in their web designs. Web user will assume that a number of elements are related if they have been placed close together. This has always sparked problems with web applications where controls and buttons are grouped together yet they have different functions. Proximity should therefore be carefully used as it is a very powerful rule of web designing.

 

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Terry Low

About the Author

Terry Low is published author and technology columnist with the Monterey County Herald. He along with his partner Clarence Low, co-founded Byte Technology – a highly-successful web design denver firm based out of Colorado.

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