Aesthetics of Web Design
Since every company needs a website, it is probable that everyone be involved in the designing a website or hiring a web designer at some point. Many professionals may ask what makes a website beautiful and wonder if beauty is even necessary. Since websites could be a form of art, businesses seeking a return on investment should not disregard the potential beauty of their web pages. Aesthetic needs are important to everyone to a certain degree.[1]
Aesthetics is a deep subject that analyzes people’s sensory perceptions and responses to everything and anything met and observed. The study of aesthetics dates back to the time of Plato and is relevant to a wide range of studies, including web design[2]. Philosopher Immanuel Kant would look for the following aspects to determine if something was beautiful: taking pleasure because one could judge something to be beautiful and those judgments of such objects should be universally agreed upon.
If Immanuel Kant were alive today and could see the Internet, he may judge a website slightly different than a painting, sculpture, musical composition or nature. There are two important aspects to consider when determining effectiveness in a website. First is its efficiency, functionality, and effective communication. Second, and equally important, is its aesthetics. It is possible for designers to get too focused in the aesthetics and forget about the usability. On the other hand, some usability experts could create a perfectly standards compliant website and that is devoid in visual appeal. In order to create a successful website that effectively engages one’s target market, it is essential for the website excel at both usability and aesthetics.[3] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol use the human body as a metaphor to illustrate this concept. The skeleton can symbolize the technical compatibility with different browsers and platforms. Then flesh is added with makeup, clothing and accessories to make it aesthetically pleasing. The skeleton along with the flesh must always work together otherwise the website will not be successful. Going further in this metaphor, the personality and character can be added to make the website an individual, just like a person.[4]
Beautiful websites usually have a consistent theme or style throughout all the pages of a site to help viewers know they are viewing a single site. Consistency is the key word; web pages do not have to be clones. Methods for creating a consistent theme can be relevant images, the company color pallet, font family, grid layout and graphics. It is important that all of these aspects are carefully selected to work together, creating a mood and message relevant to the target market. A theme consisting of hot pink and purple colors, Lisa Frank style graphics with Comic Sans font family is probably not going to be wise for a website targeting professional men in their forties.
Recorded studies of color classification are as far back to the works of Aristotle in the third century BC. Since then, many other great artists, such as Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Johannes Itten contributed to the study of color theory. The works of these three individuals from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries laid the foundation for much of the understanding of color. The color wheel is a simple yet effective tool developed to visually present the concepts and terminology of color theory. All three theorists explained colors relative to a color wheel, using the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.[5]
Images that are aesthetically or emotionally appealing can have a great influence on the viewer. The idea is to try to carefully consider of the tastes target audience since opinions on what images are appealing will vary widely.[6]
To novices, type choices might not seem overly important compared to powerful imagery and color pallets. Type can have enormous impact and can influence a design in profound ways.[7] Although it is great to experiment, it usually takes a very experienced type designer to effectively use multiple families. One cannot go wrong with simplicity.[8] Aristotle has wisely said that "moderation in all things" is an optimal rule for living. There are occasions when design should be intense, yet for the majority of clients served by professional designers, balance is key.[9]
Since content is the main reason for viewers to visit a web site, design should act as an easy passage between the user and the information.[10] Usability professionals caution that design should not be a hindrance. Viewers should not have to hunt and spend much time to scan the page for the information they want. No business wants their targeted viewers to get frustrated and leave their website. One tip to ensure that viewers easily find the information they need is to keep the main content block in the forefront and viewable without scrolling. Author Jason Bearid uses the metaphor of a folded newspaper to illustrate this idea. This fold is approximately 400 pixels from the top of the web page.[11]
It is important not to underestimate the importance of white space on a page. Some novices may assume that all the information they want their viewer to see should be on the home page. The website will not look beautiful and viewers will feel bombarded with too much information, unable to find what they need and leave the page. A widely known example of a poorly designed website with no white space is www.havenworks.com. When it is necessary to show a large amount of information, it is wise to disperse across multiple pages and provide a facile navigation.
The identity block is integral to consistency and increases brand recognition.[12] It should appear at the top on each web page and should contain a well-designed company logo. Because the eye naturally moves toward the top left quadrant of a web page, placing a logo in the top-left quadrant guarantees maximum exposure. The next best place to place an important image is the top right corner.[13]
To create an aesthetically pleasing website, attention and emphasis should be given to the positioning of images and text. While many designers rely on their intuitive sense of proportion when they are designing a page, it is helpful to be familiar with of the principles of proportion to determine the correct division of the space within a layout. Aesthetically pleasing compositions could usually be divided by lines, which are proportionate to the Golden Ratio. The Pythagoreans discovered the Golden Ratio and considered it to be divinely inspired since they found it to be a repeatedly observed pattern in nature. They referred to this pattern as the Golden Ratio or Divine Proportion. A line can be bisected using the golden ratio by dividing its length by 1.62.[14] With the words in the title of this section, Italian scholastic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas attempted to capture a fundamental relationship between beauty and mathematics.[15] Humans seem to react with a sense of pleasure to "forms" that possess certain symmetries or obey certain geometrical rules. The ratio of the dimensions of surrealist painter Salvador Dali's painting Sacrament of the Last Supper is equal to the Golden Ratio. Interesting to note, Dali engulfing the supper table with a huge dodecahedron, which is a twelve-faced Platonic solid in which each side is a pentagon. According to Plato, the constellations and the whole heaven were produced by the solid dodecahedron. Both the surface area and the volume of a dodecahedron of unit edge length are simple functions of the Golden Ratio.[16] Since the Golden Ratio gives us logical guidelines for producing appealing layouts, even novice designers can increase the beauty in their website if they can basically understand this concept.[17]
A line bisected by the golden ratio is divided into two sections, one of which is approximately twice the size of the other. Dividing a composition into thirds is an easy way to get close to the Divine Proportion without being overly mathematic.[18] Elements can then be beautifully arranged with this simple grid work in place.
Immanuel Kant claimed that if something is beautiful, it should be universally regarded as such. Since websites should be designed to satisfy a specific target audience, it is impossible to find a way for one website design to satisfy all viewers. Research on the specific target audience should always be conducted to create an aesthetically pleasing website for them.[19] If it is a wide audience, the average tastes within that group should be considered.
The average person does not search the Internet with the intention to marvel in the ‘beauty’ of various websites. However, viewers will notice the aesthetics of a website if something is wrong or is very strong. The aesthetic value of a website stems from the user’s satisfaction resulting from one’s positive experiences and emotional responses.[20] It should be the goal of every web designer to create a website which facilitates a positive experience from the viewer. Any seasoned Internet user can agree that web design has made great strides since its humble beginnings the 1990s. At that time, web design was new wilderness where anyone with IT skills often pushed the limits and anything went. Although good design transcends technology, new developments have made it easier to create a website that is both beautiful and functional.
Websites are an incredibly powerful tool for one to communicate with an intended audience. Since developing a website is an important investment in time and money, it is essential to create web pages that are beautiful and easy to navigate. Leaving a web site haphazard or unpolished is unprofessional and may negatively impact your search engine optimization. It is important for a website to be designed with careful consideration of aesthetics and pragmatics, which are interrelated and must accompany each other. [21]
Works Cited
Beaird, Jason. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. Collingwood, Australia: SitePoint
Pty., 2007. Print.
Lawrence, Dave, and Soheyla Tavakol. Balanced Website Design. [New York]: Springer-
Verlag London Limited, 2007. Print.
Livio, Mario. The Golden Ratio: the Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number.
New York: Broadway, 2002. Print.
Livio, Mario. "The Golden Ratio and Aesthetics." Plus.maths.org. Web. 08 Aug. 2010.
a href="http://plus.maths.org/issue22/features/golden/%3E">http://plus.maths.org/issue22/features/golden/>;.
Shea, Dave, and Molly E. Holzschlag. The ZEN of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for
the Web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, Peachpit, 2005. Print.
[1] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol, p. 61.
[2] Ibid., p. 59.
[3] Beaird, p. 4.
[4] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol, p. 63.
[5] Beaird, p. 46.
[6] Ibid., p. 131.
[7] Shea and Holzschlag, p. 303.
[8] Ibid., p. 307.
[9] Shea and Holzschlag, p. 309.
[10] Beaird, p. 6.
[11] Bearid, p. 8.
[12] Ibid., p. 6.
[13] Shea and Holzschlag, p. 179.
[14] Bearid, p. 9.
[15] Livio, p. 178.
[16] Livio, http://plus.maths.org/issue22/features/golden/.
[17] Beaird, p. 10.
[18] Ibid., p.10.
[19] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol, p. 72.
[20] Ibid., p. 64.
[21] Ibid., p. 66.
Aesthetics is a deep subject that analyzes people’s sensory perceptions and responses to everything and anything met and observed. The study of aesthetics dates back to the time of Plato and is relevant to a wide range of studies, including web design[2]. Philosopher Immanuel Kant would look for the following aspects to determine if something was beautiful: taking pleasure because one could judge something to be beautiful and those judgments of such objects should be universally agreed upon.
If Immanuel Kant were alive today and could see the Internet, he may judge a website slightly different than a painting, sculpture, musical composition or nature. There are two important aspects to consider when determining effectiveness in a website. First is its efficiency, functionality, and effective communication. Second, and equally important, is its aesthetics. It is possible for designers to get too focused in the aesthetics and forget about the usability. On the other hand, some usability experts could create a perfectly standards compliant website and that is devoid in visual appeal. In order to create a successful website that effectively engages one’s target market, it is essential for the website excel at both usability and aesthetics.[3] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol use the human body as a metaphor to illustrate this concept. The skeleton can symbolize the technical compatibility with different browsers and platforms. Then flesh is added with makeup, clothing and accessories to make it aesthetically pleasing. The skeleton along with the flesh must always work together otherwise the website will not be successful. Going further in this metaphor, the personality and character can be added to make the website an individual, just like a person.[4]
Beautiful websites usually have a consistent theme or style throughout all the pages of a site to help viewers know they are viewing a single site. Consistency is the key word; web pages do not have to be clones. Methods for creating a consistent theme can be relevant images, the company color pallet, font family, grid layout and graphics. It is important that all of these aspects are carefully selected to work together, creating a mood and message relevant to the target market. A theme consisting of hot pink and purple colors, Lisa Frank style graphics with Comic Sans font family is probably not going to be wise for a website targeting professional men in their forties.
Recorded studies of color classification are as far back to the works of Aristotle in the third century BC. Since then, many other great artists, such as Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Johannes Itten contributed to the study of color theory. The works of these three individuals from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries laid the foundation for much of the understanding of color. The color wheel is a simple yet effective tool developed to visually present the concepts and terminology of color theory. All three theorists explained colors relative to a color wheel, using the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.[5]
Images that are aesthetically or emotionally appealing can have a great influence on the viewer. The idea is to try to carefully consider of the tastes target audience since opinions on what images are appealing will vary widely.[6]
To novices, type choices might not seem overly important compared to powerful imagery and color pallets. Type can have enormous impact and can influence a design in profound ways.[7] Although it is great to experiment, it usually takes a very experienced type designer to effectively use multiple families. One cannot go wrong with simplicity.[8] Aristotle has wisely said that "moderation in all things" is an optimal rule for living. There are occasions when design should be intense, yet for the majority of clients served by professional designers, balance is key.[9]
Since content is the main reason for viewers to visit a web site, design should act as an easy passage between the user and the information.[10] Usability professionals caution that design should not be a hindrance. Viewers should not have to hunt and spend much time to scan the page for the information they want. No business wants their targeted viewers to get frustrated and leave their website. One tip to ensure that viewers easily find the information they need is to keep the main content block in the forefront and viewable without scrolling. Author Jason Bearid uses the metaphor of a folded newspaper to illustrate this idea. This fold is approximately 400 pixels from the top of the web page.[11]
It is important not to underestimate the importance of white space on a page. Some novices may assume that all the information they want their viewer to see should be on the home page. The website will not look beautiful and viewers will feel bombarded with too much information, unable to find what they need and leave the page. A widely known example of a poorly designed website with no white space is www.havenworks.com. When it is necessary to show a large amount of information, it is wise to disperse across multiple pages and provide a facile navigation.
The identity block is integral to consistency and increases brand recognition.[12] It should appear at the top on each web page and should contain a well-designed company logo. Because the eye naturally moves toward the top left quadrant of a web page, placing a logo in the top-left quadrant guarantees maximum exposure. The next best place to place an important image is the top right corner.[13]
To create an aesthetically pleasing website, attention and emphasis should be given to the positioning of images and text. While many designers rely on their intuitive sense of proportion when they are designing a page, it is helpful to be familiar with of the principles of proportion to determine the correct division of the space within a layout. Aesthetically pleasing compositions could usually be divided by lines, which are proportionate to the Golden Ratio. The Pythagoreans discovered the Golden Ratio and considered it to be divinely inspired since they found it to be a repeatedly observed pattern in nature. They referred to this pattern as the Golden Ratio or Divine Proportion. A line can be bisected using the golden ratio by dividing its length by 1.62.[14] With the words in the title of this section, Italian scholastic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas attempted to capture a fundamental relationship between beauty and mathematics.[15] Humans seem to react with a sense of pleasure to "forms" that possess certain symmetries or obey certain geometrical rules. The ratio of the dimensions of surrealist painter Salvador Dali's painting Sacrament of the Last Supper is equal to the Golden Ratio. Interesting to note, Dali engulfing the supper table with a huge dodecahedron, which is a twelve-faced Platonic solid in which each side is a pentagon. According to Plato, the constellations and the whole heaven were produced by the solid dodecahedron. Both the surface area and the volume of a dodecahedron of unit edge length are simple functions of the Golden Ratio.[16] Since the Golden Ratio gives us logical guidelines for producing appealing layouts, even novice designers can increase the beauty in their website if they can basically understand this concept.[17]
A line bisected by the golden ratio is divided into two sections, one of which is approximately twice the size of the other. Dividing a composition into thirds is an easy way to get close to the Divine Proportion without being overly mathematic.[18] Elements can then be beautifully arranged with this simple grid work in place.
Immanuel Kant claimed that if something is beautiful, it should be universally regarded as such. Since websites should be designed to satisfy a specific target audience, it is impossible to find a way for one website design to satisfy all viewers. Research on the specific target audience should always be conducted to create an aesthetically pleasing website for them.[19] If it is a wide audience, the average tastes within that group should be considered.
The average person does not search the Internet with the intention to marvel in the ‘beauty’ of various websites. However, viewers will notice the aesthetics of a website if something is wrong or is very strong. The aesthetic value of a website stems from the user’s satisfaction resulting from one’s positive experiences and emotional responses.[20] It should be the goal of every web designer to create a website which facilitates a positive experience from the viewer. Any seasoned Internet user can agree that web design has made great strides since its humble beginnings the 1990s. At that time, web design was new wilderness where anyone with IT skills often pushed the limits and anything went. Although good design transcends technology, new developments have made it easier to create a website that is both beautiful and functional.
Websites are an incredibly powerful tool for one to communicate with an intended audience. Since developing a website is an important investment in time and money, it is essential to create web pages that are beautiful and easy to navigate. Leaving a web site haphazard or unpolished is unprofessional and may negatively impact your search engine optimization. It is important for a website to be designed with careful consideration of aesthetics and pragmatics, which are interrelated and must accompany each other. [21]
Works Cited
Beaird, Jason. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. Collingwood, Australia: SitePoint
Pty., 2007. Print.
Lawrence, Dave, and Soheyla Tavakol. Balanced Website Design. [New York]: Springer-
Verlag London Limited, 2007. Print.
Livio, Mario. The Golden Ratio: the Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number.
New York: Broadway, 2002. Print.
Livio, Mario. "The Golden Ratio and Aesthetics." Plus.maths.org. Web. 08 Aug. 2010.
a href="http://plus.maths.org/issue22/features/golden/%3E">http://plus.maths.org/issue22/features/golden/>;.
Shea, Dave, and Molly E. Holzschlag. The ZEN of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for
the Web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, Peachpit, 2005. Print.
[1] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol, p. 61.
[2] Ibid., p. 59.
[3] Beaird, p. 4.
[4] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol, p. 63.
[5] Beaird, p. 46.
[6] Ibid., p. 131.
[7] Shea and Holzschlag, p. 303.
[8] Ibid., p. 307.
[9] Shea and Holzschlag, p. 309.
[10] Beaird, p. 6.
[11] Bearid, p. 8.
[12] Ibid., p. 6.
[13] Shea and Holzschlag, p. 179.
[14] Bearid, p. 9.
[15] Livio, p. 178.
[16] Livio, http://plus.maths.org/issue22/features/golden/.
[17] Beaird, p. 10.
[18] Ibid., p.10.
[19] Dave Lawrence and Soheyla Tavakol, p. 72.
[20] Ibid., p. 64.
[21] Ibid., p. 66.
Views: 25
Comment
Groups
-
Ads of the World
559 members
-
Non-Traditional & Altern…
407 members
-
Creative Directors Club
403 members
-
Copywriter Group
231 members
-
Social Marketing Group
191 members
Birthdays
Badge
© 2012 Created by Steve Hall.
You need to be a member of AdGabber to add comments!
Join AdGabber