Webdesign Style Tips
Space
This is really one of the most
important things.
What you're aiming for is to draw attention to the
important bits - the message,
the navigation system or whatever is the main thrust
of the page.
People often make the mistake of making these things
very big. They don't have to be. The eye needs to
be drawn to them, and this is best (and most professionally)
achieved by the use of space. Don't clutter your homepage
with unnecessary text and images around the main areas,
since they detract from the important bits.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that if there's
a big white gap in your page that you should fill
it with something. Just have the bits that are necessary.
The other stuff should probably have its own page
if it's that important!
As a rule, maybe only 75% of
your page should be covered with images and text.
Consistency
You should aim to keep the look of a site consistent
throughout.
This means a standard use of fonts, colours, image
styles, layout styles, navigation style etc. Don't
just plonk an animated gif somewhere that you got
off another site, since it'll probably clash hideously
with yours, for example.
Your background colours should remain the same throughout,
and you should pay attention to the little things
like keeping the fonts in the text defined in html.
Don't mix fonts too much, however much there's the
temptation to do so!
Backgrounds
One of the main culprits for a bad-looking site are
these multicoloured background image tiles. They also
tend to have a definite pattern to them, which can
make text really hard to read.
Try to go for a flat colour background, or for a large
image (min 800x600 pixels) which is faded so that
you can easily read the text on top of it.
Images
You shouldn't really have an image file bigger then
30k anywhere - and that's for a REALLY big picture.
Keep images so that they stay on even the smallest
screen, i.e. around 400 pixels across max.
Layout
The trick with layout is to use
tables to provide focus. They also resize to
an extent with the browser size. Think about the layout
of a magazine - it tends to have columns and areas
with background colours to provide focus.
Warm or cold colours?
Without getting too "interior design" on
you, this is an important point.
"Cold" colours (blues,
greens etc) provoke a sense of being quite
"down", while "warm"
colours (reds, oranges, yellows)
are inviting and more cheerful. For instance, if you
combine a cold colour with a black background, you're
definitely sending a pretty miserable message, and
conversely, if you put warm colours such as reds and
oranges on the black, you are giving the impression
of "i'm cool, but i'm a loving, giving person"
- it's also quite "fireside" and inviting.
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