Understanding Principles of Web Design – Web Design Tips 2014 BY ABRAR AHMED · AUGUST 25, 2014

Taking half a lesson, bunking a design class and a design degree never makes you the

designer and never makes you understand the principles of web design. Practical

designers are for whom industrial clients are looking for. Even those nerds cannot

make bucks from freelancing in with exception of luck.

So as designing task is never been easy and day by day changing trends are making

the competitions hefty and positioning a classical designer to a dead-lock. One should

never be void when it comes to design news and updates. There are a lot of sites out

there making world to know the future of web and its looks

And, some designers are so into updates that they forget the necessities of a basic web

design i.e. the contrast, balance, emphasis and rhythm. Check out some bad designs

out there:

There are 2 things i.e. elements and principles of web design which forms a website.

Let’s first talk about some elements involved in web design.

Elements and Principles of Web Design

credits: thewatershed.com

Elements of a website are like pillars of a website without which website will not

behave as it should be. Understanding this will help you create awesome web pages.

1. Orientation

The fact that everything has a way or route and which decides the result of that route

also applies with web designs. There are websites which drives you away with a

pattern which involves proper orientation with the help of content flow, human pattern

and usability. With this element, a planning heads for how a visitor will reach to the

ultimate goals in the website.

2. Texture (Feel)

For a best web design, there will be something best in it which others don’t have.

Websites which are close to reality or to natural aspects are more visually appealing.

Some popular trendy textures include stitched buttons, icons, pages, ripped visuals

and bg moving and much more.

3. Color

Everyone knows the importance of colors in daily life but is it necessary to have

colors in websites? Colored websites, no doubt plays an important role in visual

appeals but using black and white tone in websites makes sounds like: ‘I have an ego’.

It is necessary to use colors where possible and should look decent. Use colors which

reflects your business like, if you are a corporate company then you should use decent

colors like light blue, black, white, peach and other soft colors… You don’t want to

use dark red color for your corporate business but for a wedding website.

4. Rules and Dashes

Orientation of a website is not possible when there is no lining and ruling in

appropriate areas. A web design must constitute lines and bars as a separator between

posts, header, side-bars, footer and other spaces which requires perfect lining for a

decent look.

5. Shapes

Is there any website without shape? These principles of web design must be worked

with full consciousnesses Sure, every website must constitute regular shapes like

circle for a photo, rectangle for a banner, square for add or post snippets but there is

no limit or restriction to shapes as it increases the usability and user interaction in

websites. This increases minimal interactivity with CTR.

Now, let’s talk about some important principles of web design. Every element

including shapes, color, textures, lines and orientation is depended upon these

principles of web design like Prominence, Tempo, Equilibrium and Contrast.

1. Contrast

The most important principles of web design is working with contrast. When it comes

to contrast of a web design we have to make a difference in important and more

important, it also doesn’t only talks about contrast in colors but contrast of different

elements is also essential in order to get a unification and stability in a design.

Contrast means to make a difference i.e. if you are implementing blocks of text then

there is no contrast but implementing a box of text and then a single line, this is called

contrast. Contrast actually comes with different more considerable things which

includes

Link and Font: Change the color of link or just put an underline in it to make it

contrast with other normal body text.

Body/Header Font: Using H1 for headings. H2 for sub-headings and normal text

for body text is usually to contrast between important and more important.

Colors: If a text is bold (for emphasis) to contrast with normal text (less

important) and using light colors and dark colors to make a contrast within certain

parts of the website.

2. Tempo

Everything in this world has some rhythm through which a person can understand the

particular thing. Rhythm in human’s body is the best example. Where it starts from

head and end it to legs. Similarly, Website having a tempo makes the person

understands the thing which the website owner or a content owner wants to show or to

emphasize on certain things. It includes emphasis of headlines and sub-headings for

consistency. A repeated quote to make understand something, bg repeating to make a

pattern flow throughout the website, flow of natural sections of a website vertically or

horizontally or anything which is predictable to help visitor suite the website as it is

nothing odd from real-life. Search yourself to make a trend in the market.

3. Prominence

The sole target of a website is to attract visitors and to sell or provide info what the

owner wants to show. For this, a site should be prominent and emphasize on things or

elements which are essential to help visitors search for it. It’s best to leave visual

hierarchy or tempo and first work for standards of emphasis like semantic workflow

which is the basics of html including using of heading and body texts, using strong

fonts for headings and readable font for body text. Make prominent things within

tempo to help visitor eyes to catch it on the go, wise choice of font-sizes and unity of

texts. Marketers and sole SEO experts use these semantic markups to get a wonder

how google and visitors love texts to be displayed.

4. Equilibrium

Make your website stable by initiating equilibrium in elements i.e. positioning and

setting the elements is the key to a balanced website. There are 2 usual conditions of

balancing your website in unusual situations.

Symmetrical Balance: It is the balance which between two similar elements or a

group of text. If large strong element has to balance with something then bring

another large strong thing to make it balance side by side. But to make it cool,

make a combination of strong elements with block of texts side by side on order

to bring stability and attractiveness.

Asymmetrical Balance: The situation becomes harsh when you couldn’t find

something combination for stability, this is the condition when uneven things

have to be combined. For this, a there should be combination of light and dark or

combine small and big (a simple contrast) for it.

These strictness of these principles of web design will help you achieve a great

design. Implementing these tactics ad rules is very essential when you are designing

website for a client and uniformity of your work depends upon your ever-green

success!

If you like this article, then I am sure you would also love these too!

Freelance Infographics Design Inspiration

– Freelancing Tips!!! OR

How To Get Maximum Freelance Projects