5 killer web design tips that will make your life easier

8/10/2019 5 Killer Web Design Tips That Will Make Your Life Easier

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5 killer web design tips that

will make your life easier

Illustration by Kristina Zmaic

We all want to have a beautifully designed website and yet, its surprisingly hard. Sowhat is it that great designers know that the rest of us dont?

The key to great web design is really very simple: youve got to understand the universal

rules of good design and follow them, all the time.

Lets make surethisnever happens to you.

1. Learn the fundamental rules of type design

The key to good web design, says Ryan Shafer, Lead Digital Designers at MTV & VH1,

is remembering that the web is really just a bunch of text. I encourage all budding web

designers to embrace that the web is fundamentally about typography design.

And the great news is that type designers have spent the past five thousand years

perfecting text design, and there are a few golden rules that all websites should adhere to:

For headlines:
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Make them bold and easy to scan

San serif typefacesare great for headlines because

they are stark and easy to read at larger sizes

For body text, you want to maximize legibility:

For lots of text opt for aserif typeface

Make the font-size much larger than you think is

necessary, we recommend 16 px at minimum

Lines should never be more than 50-60 characters

long

2. Pick a solid typeface, and maybe one with a touch of whimsy

Now, dont get us wrong, we love Helvetica as much as the next designer. When it comes

to picking a font-face you want to pick something super easy to read, graphic, and maybe

something a little, you know, whimsical.

Colin Nederkoorn, founder ofCustomer.iosays that recently, Proxima Nova has

replaced Helvetica Neue as my sans-serif typeface of choice. They probably wont make

a movie about it, but if you want a sophisticated sans-serif typeface that the lay(wo)man

wont recognize, give Proxima Nova a shot.

Some other good choices areMontserratandMerriweather Sans.

3. Pick a three-color palette & then stick to it!When it comes to picking a color palette the key is to pick it and stick (to) it. Consistency

is everything when it comes to creating a cohesive color palette for your site.

I prefer neutral palettes that use a strong accent color in a bold way, says Mike Fortress

designer atOak Studios.Perhaps a white background (#fff), a not- too-dark text value

with a little hue in it (#45585f), and a strong accent color (#4e5fff). But, warns Mike,

Be careful with that last color!
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Check outAdobes Kuler toolfor picking colors, or get inspired by the collection of

palettes atColour Lovers.

4. Make sure your photos are the right sizeRemember, the web is pixel based, so if your image isnt large enough its going to look

pixelated.

When you are looking for images on Google or iStock, make sure to get the proper size

says designerKristina Zmaic.Photo clarity adds a lot of credibility to a site, even if they

werent taken by you.

If the image is too small, dont use it!

5. When in doubt, give it space

The most important design tip is also the simplest: Make sure your content has breathing

room; give it proper margins will help with legibility and focus. In particular, says

Kristina, its important to avoid overwhelming users with walls of text.

Too much text canbe a bit daunting. Text is necessary so make sure to break it up with

larger sub headings and legible paragraphs. Considering using icons or images as

alternative ways to communicate your point.

If there is one golden rule of design its this: pick your aesthetic and stick to it.

Consistency is key. Nothing will tank your design faster than picking one design direction

and then switching it halfway through.
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Do you know what is the first thing that your eye is drawn to on a website? And in what pattern

do people scan your website? There have been many eyetracking tests on this subject and Ill

give you 15 most useful facts you should know.

The picture below shows 3 different websites and where people look on them. Red indicates the

area, where people looked the most, yellow areas got a bit less eye-action, blue areas got the

least views and the gray areas, well, people didnt focus on them at all.


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As you can see, the more people scroll down, the more they lose focus and start mainly scanning

your website. So always try to place the most important information in the top part of your

website.

Here are the 15 facts you should know on how people view

websites.

1. Text attracts more attention than pictures.

2. People start viewing your website from the top left corner.

3. Readers ignore banners. Surprise, suprise.

4. Fancy fonts are ignored.

5. People only scan the lower parts of your website.

6. Short paragraphs work better than long ones.

7. Ads, that are placed on the top or left part of your website, get the most views.

8. Ads, that are placed inside or below an awesome piece of content, get more views.

9. Big pictures attract more attention than small ones.

10. Also headlines draw attention.

11. Visitors spend more time looking at menus and buttons than other parts of your website.

12. Lists are better at keeping your reader focused than large paragraphs.

13. Some people even completely ignore large chunks of text.

14. White space is good!

15. Menu works best when placed on the top part of your website.


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There you go. Some points from this list are pretty basic and elementary, but a good reminder

never hurts. So the next time when youre writing an awesome piece of content, or building your

new website, keep these points in mind. You now have the knowledgeuse it!

Interesting facts about web design

Web design is one of the most popular and profitable industry today. With thousands of new

websites being regularly launched live on the Internet, its not surprising that web designers

are in high demand. But in this article Id like to share some interesting facts about this

interesting field of work. Hopefully, youll find them interesting.

1. Flash is outdated. Everybody knows that Flash programming makes a website visually

appealing and interesting for its customers. However, in the last decade Flash-based websites

have lost a big number of its followers because websites with Flash applications take longer

to load. Besides, their performance in terms of SEO is very unsatisfactory.

2. Web design is more than just a design. One of its major components is search engine

optimization. This means that a webmaster whos working with a project has got to have

knowledge about web development languages as well as SEO principles. Another requisites

of an effective web design are social media compatibility, compliance to the world design

standards and multiple browser compatibility.

3. A few seconds to load is the time limit. Every website that takes longer than a few

seconds to load is a failed design. Visitors will simply switch to another site that doesnt take

that long to load.

4. Lively images is what visitors like. According to the recent study on the attention that

visitors pay to different elements on the site, researchers have come to the conclusion that

web users like the pages with pictures of animals, people and birds rather than cartoon

figures. The most preferable photographs were the smiling faces of babies. On the contrary,

ads were the most neglected elements of the site.


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5. Design and its future maintenance. The concept of web design usually depends on the

future goals of website owners. Its got to be created with an end user in mind. A

professionally designed website design is expected to feature the content as the most

important part of the site. Flashy animations, ads, images, etc.which are placed in the center

of the page can cause a rapid decline of the site rate.

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...""There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry'sstandard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make atype specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remainingessentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsumpassages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of LoremIpsum.

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Contenthere, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors nowuse Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in theirinfancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humourand the like).

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia,looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the citesof the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book isa treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsumdolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32and 1.10.33 from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form,accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in someform, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use apassage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All theLorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first truegenerator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentencestructures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free fromrepetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.


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Musings and Amusings About Web

DesignWhen you stop to think about designing websites, unless a site is designed to be humorous, you

wouldnt think there is much about web design that is funny. However, when you take a look at

website design from the right perspective, especially when comparing todays website designs to

historical (hysterical?) ones, youll find there are quite a few things that are quite funny indeed.

For example:

Code

Website design used to be all hand-coded. If you didnt fully understand

HTML, Perl and other web intensive languages, you were lost. Today, web design packages can

take care of all the coding for you. which means you can put together complete, engaging and

fully interactive websites without entering a single line of code.

Speed

With modems and other low-speed internet connections, building a fast website meant

minimizing graphics and photos and such luxuries as videos were essentially impossible. Also,

with hosting space and bandwidth limitations, a large website was expensive. Now, with

virtually everyone connecting to the internet with a broadband connection of some type and with

huge bandwidth backbones and the ability to cross-link to sites such as YouTube, leveraging

video and high definition photography into your website is a snap without worrying about speed

or size issues.

Storage

Speaking of hosting issues, bandwidth and storage were expensive.

Storage space was limited, sometimes being as little as 10 megabytes and sites that required

lots of bandwidth because of the volume of visitors could run up thousands of dollars a month in
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bandwidth fees. Today, you can get a complete hosting solution with unlimited bandwidth,

unlimited e-mails and unlimited storage for under $5 a month.

Time

Designing and building websites used to take forever to do. Between coding, manipulating

photos and graphics to minimize page load times and other website optimizations to have a fast,

great looking site, a designer could spend days on one page. This meant completing a complex

website could actually run into the weeks or even months category. With high-speed internet

connectivity and all the great web design tools and resources available today, building a great

looking, well rounded website can be fully completed in an evening.

Maintenance

Website maintenance and changes could take forever as well. Having to

re-code dozens of pages, manipulating new photos and graphics and getting everything to look

perfect could takealmost as long to do as building a new website. Tools such as website

designer packages, pre-made templates and modular designs means you can totally do a make-

over on a website in a matter of a few mouse clicks today.When you take a look at what you used to have to do for building websites versus what little you

really have to do today, taking a look at all the expenses, all the hassles and all the hoops you

had to do in the past is, without a doubt, truly funny. While there are still hoops you have to jump

through today, especially with community connectivity with blogs and social media such as

Facebook and Twitter and SEO evolution to consider, when you compare it to what you had to

do in the past, the humor factor definitely comes into play.
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5 killer web design tips that will make your life easier

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