5 Points Geeks Should Consider
a non technical article with valuable points
Web Design has come a long ways since the days of 1997. A lot has changed, some for the better. It seems we have rockets compared to the tools of old. Back in the days when we were coding html by hand and didn’t have the use of stylesheets. What we have today doesn’t require rocket science, just a passion to learn. Here are five design points to consider.
All that has changed now. We live in world where the tools to make magic happen are available to everyone and almost anyone. Anyone that can teach themselves and has the patience to stick with it can learn the basic in a few weeks.
For some of us that are more hard headed it may take longer. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible to really get the hang of things. It is however still very possible. Not only possible, but very practice. Learning how to do this kind of work can build skills in the rest of your life.
While you may feel like it’s not much fun in the beginning, once you start to develop skills then it’s like a fix that you have a difficult time getting enough.
While it’s taken me two years to adapt to the changes of today’s modern web design standards. There are some things that will make life easier for everyone. Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. Hope it’s possible to unlearn the old ways.
With that said here are a few things that can help or hinder your progress in web design.
Negative Space
Beware of your use of negative spaces. In some design aspects they can be very useful. However you have to really look at the design as a whole and understand it completely.
Are you making full use of the whole page? Does it scale for mobile and still use the whole page? My findings are that people really like phones, but they aren’t too hip when it comes to using a computer.
Take this into consideration when designing your sites. Don’t use too much negative space in your designs.
And it has to scale for use on mobile ready devices. My thoughts in the matter is that there will be two groups of people. Mass consumers who use smart phones, and the Geeks that rule using high res displays attached to Terabytes of storage.
Typography
Please designers, do not neglect your typography. Because, this is really important. There are plenty of design solutions available today to meet or exceed your design requirements.
This means using fonts and actually designing your site to use the fonts in the ways that maximize your design. Gone are the days of html 1. Even web 2.0 is now obsolete. You have to adapt to new ways of making things look great.
Pick your fonts out and design your whole site to look and feel throughout the entire site. Design matters, and typography is key these days. Make good use of fonts and design for using them.
Photography
To be successful in todays internet market, you have to be able to take great photographs. You have to be able to have some WoW factor to your work. It’s advanced a lot. In addition you not only have to have good photography skills. Not only that but you also have to understand aspect ratios to make graphics that look good on your blog. Then it has to look great when shared on social media.
This requires knowing how to make the right size graphics that will port from your blog or website to the social media giants standards that will keep the content looking professional.
Don’t make the mistake of posting work to your blog only to have it shared to social media and look like junk.
A very useful webpage for design aspects and ratios is found here (Image Sizes For Social Media) and you will find it useful to make your graphics based upon these sizes depending upon where you want to be putting them.
You need to be a photoshop pro with today’s current tools and be able to maximize the look and feel for your images. The best results will be from work that makes the view feel something.
No feeling, very little response rate. Make them feel something, and you will get better results. The best thing to do is make them feel good, not bad. However if you focus on the good you will get better results.
Color Pallets
When designing your site. You have to think about the entire theme of your site, this includes what color pallet your viewers are going to be seeing. You want to pick a suggestive color pallet that leaves a calm and relaxed viewer.
While there is room for attention grabbing headlines, it’s best to stick to black for those. Using today’s available tools, pick a color pallet of at least twenty colors. Then decide what purpose each will have before you design. Staying consistent with your colors is key. While from page to page has to stay consistent you also have to wow the viewer with enough color that they feel alive.
Things to avoid are using fonts for text that have poor contrast from the background. Readers will tune out so fast that you will lose them all right quick. You have to have good color balance and make it easy on the eyes to read. I would avoid text in shades of red for more than just a headline and never body of text in red.
Dynamic Designs
Be creative. Don’t design static pages that look the same every time they are viewed. However keep the refresh rate low and design to be stable. Using content from your social media sources or using content from a randomized array that has been designed to group together is best. Update to dynamic content can be both content that stays the same for days or weeks, mixed with fresh work mixed into it on a per page view basis.
However don’t move the important content all over the site. Pages should keep content that is important in the same format and place for the entire duration of the websites life time. Therefore, consider these five design points, carefully!
Archive your websites. Save. Keep. Recycle. Update new stuff and move old stuff to the back of the board.
Really the goal should be to keep it simple, dynamic, fun, and stable. People have to be able to come back to the same point for the content they need most. Don’t move things around too much. Once you set it, pretend it’s set in stone.
Conclusion
Therefore, keep these Geek Tips in mind, they are good design points to consider. There are a lot of people that write technical content, but this should suffice as a high level overview of some of the things to consider when doing technical design work.
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