Practical Web Design - Fundamentals of Web Design

Part 1: The Essentials

The rule of "Keep it Simple, Stupid" is tried and true, but it's not a be-all end-all of Web design. Gamers, for example, expect a busy page with a lot of sophisticated graphics, Flash effects, and the like. The usual understated page with the off-white background and the typical menu of links sedately trundling down the left side of the display leaves this audience cold; obviously the people who designed this Website aren't on their wavelength -- these guys like plenty of whizz-bang in the pages they visit.

On the other hand, when Aunt Gracie goes on the Web to hunt down some nice dinnerware, she isn't going to want jazzy Flash effects, purple-on-black color styles, and a raft of animated graphics doing gymnastics in front of her rheumy old eyes. She's been known to take a stick to the monitor to make it all stop. Corporate users expect something that might not necessarily be "buttoned-down," but certainly something solid and professional that reflects positively on their business and compares well with the competition. Personal home pages want an emphasis on the personal -- the site should reflect the interests and personality of the owner.

Target Your Audience - Visually

The key here is to know who is going to be using your page, and to design with their needs and desires in mind. The KISS rule is a good one in most cases. If you don't need something -- a frame, an animated graphic, a Flash animation, a fancy DHTML effect -- don't use it. On the other hand, you don't want a page with all the appeal of last week's oatmeal, either; a bland, uninteresting page full of unbroken blocks of text with a drab color scheme and dreary graphics won't attract anyone's attention. Everything in moderation, folks... including moderation. Consider your audience first and last, and craft your site accordingly.

Whatever your site's reason for being, you want to portray an image that conveys what your site is all about as well as the feelings you want to engender in your audience. It's no coincidence that most financial sites use design and graphical tactics to give a feeling of rock-solid stability, calm, unworried affluence, and old-fashioned values. No matter what the stock market does, this site won't have its feathers ruffled. In contrast, the ultra-hyper site design of the Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network sites appeal to their sugared-up audience of pre-teens and teenagers; you can't overstimulate that crowd. A site selling luxurious lingerie isn't going to use the same design scheme as a site selling outdoor gear for folks who want to go trekking through the outback. One will go for frothy, comforting pastels and gauzy, languid design, while the other will use a rough-hewn design scheme with logos seemingly carved of granite, and not a pastel in sight.

A good Web designer will be able to design all four sites, and others as well. Don't forget, if you're designing a Website for a corporation or business, that they very likely have trademarks, logos, color themes, and other elements that will need to be included in your design scheme. As Mary E. Carter reminds us, "Color communicates subtle, but important 'information' about your site long before people read its content." Carter also provides us with a most useful set of color palettes that evoke specific moods. Check it out!

Appealing to Multiple Audiences

If you're trying to design a page that will appeal to both Aunt Gracie and her hyperactive, video-addicted grandson, then you're going to have to make some compromises that could possibly alienate both audiences. You may want to consider refining your site to appeal to a narrower audience, or you may even choose to mount separate pages with different design philosophies for different audiences. In this case, you might do well to produce an introductory, or "doorway," page with links to the "whizz-bang" and the "sedate" pages -- the content might essentially be the same, but the design style would be dramatically different.

Consider Connections

And don't forget what your audience uses to access your site. Not everyone has a broadband or T1 connection; most of the world still limps along with slow dial-up connections, or must flounder around the Net through a maze of network connections. These folks appreciate your limiting your usage of big, slow-loading graphics, or at the least, providing thumbnails that automatically load and allow them to click for a bigger (and slower-loading) display. Remember, .JPG graphics are generally bigger than either .GIFs or .PNGs (Flash animations, surprisingly enough, load fairly quickly considering their complexity, but they can slow down a page, particularly one accessed over a dial-up connection). Complex table structures can take a while to load, too, especially if they're larded with graphics. Slow servers cause slow downloads; if your provider can't get your site up to speed, switch to someone who can.

"Elegance" is a favorite term to describe good, clean Web design, but what it actually means is up to the interpretation of the designer and the site user. To me, the term as it applies to the Web implies a certain grace and restraint of design, with well-chosen colors and graphical choices that don't assault the eye, but instead invite the visitor to relax and enjoy the content. It's the difference between being wooed over a candlelight dinner and being mugged in the elevator.

As the folks at Project Cool remind us, "clean design plus a good use of technology equals a good Web site." Another, equally applicable slogan: "less is more." Even the most hyperactive Playstation addict appreciates clean design, though his standards may differ from yours, mine, or Aunt Gracie's.