CLARITY
| NO CLUTTER
Clean pages attract, while cluttered pages distract. And offend. And
discourage repeated visits. Remember the goal of the majority of
web users: to find what they want, and exactly what they want, NOW.
A site with clarity offers this. A clean and balanced site also communicates
a professional atmosphere, the message is clear, the site has integrity,
deserves attention and carries a level of trust. Look the site over
and ask if the message is clear or if the site just confuses and overwhelms.
If the latter is true, then a cutback of content and images, and more
balance and cleanliness (see above) is needed.
CLARITY
| HEIRARCHY
Hierarchy not only communicates levels of interest, but also organizes
for design and navigation. I find that its harder to find information
without proper hierarchy, and it adds to a cluttered web site. Understand
what the levels are, or better yet make an outline. Then proceed to
separate the main subjects from their subcategories or content with
the appropriate font style and size (more on fonts below). Most people
are familiar with the design in hierarchy, a larger / bolder font for
the main, and as those subjects are broken down, decreasing font size
(still the same font) to no more than three or four levels.
CLARITY
| COLOR USE
There is a lot to be said for color use. It is the most primal communicator
- red=stop, green=go and yellow=go faster, right? Too many self-proclaimed
designers have taken the ominous black background with yellow or white
text approach. This might be okay if Star Wars is the discussion at
hand, but most of the time it is an annoying distraction. If colors
are a challenge it is best to stick with white or pale backgrounds,
a soft toned color for a sidebar or nav-bar, and another one that might
complement. For clarity, text should be black for content, and complementing
colors between text and backgrounds when text is used in images.
CLARITY
| FONT USE
For obvious reasons fonts are the most read objects and are thus crucial
in having the appropriate format for the design scheme. Either they
are too small, too large, too embellished with italics, bold etc. or
they are the wrong family type (times vs. Arial, etc.). Fonts can be
used to complement the hierarchy system as discussed before. For example,
a sans-serif font, like
the type used here, might be used for the titles and category
headlines, while a serif font, like
this one,
could be used for the body text. One of the limitations of Web design
is not being able to use any font that you choose for the content, since
the text is dependent on the fonts that your customer has installed
on their computer. If another font is definitely needed, it should be
reserved for titles or such. Including embedded fonts for the content
just increases the download time, which is good to avoid.
CLARITY
| IMAGES
The message that an image communicates is important. It affects your
customer in other ways than words and text do. Having an image that
is clear and succinct is just as important since this particular level
of communication depends on that. There are sites where the image is
too optimized and the clarity is lost, the image fails to grab the customer
and the use of the 'back' button results. Other sites use too many images,
which inhibits the clarity and increases the clutter. Keep the images
clear and focused enough to express the message and complement the content.
Minimize the number of images to enhance the clean and attractive overall
image that needs to be represented.
The basis
of design for web sites can remain relatively simple. There is no need
to try to use other mediums, such as print and television to judge the
foundations of web design. Many have already tried and it typically
fails. The WWW is a new and unique medium to itself, the main difference
being that it is dynamic, interactive and depends much more on your
customer's reaction and trust than the other traditional mediums.
