Designing Attractive Web Pages

A well- designed page, whether in print or on the Web, is a thing of beauty. A skilled page designer can take widely differing elements like body text, headings, graphics, links and whatever, and arrange them into a harmonious whole. Most readers know nothing about fonts, leading, justification or kerning, but can subconsciously sense when a page is well laid out, just as people can perceive the difference between a good and a bad photo or audio recording, without actually understanding the technical issues that make it good or bad. Good design is practical as well as aesthetic. Well-designed pages are easier to read, and lead your readers' eyes where you want them to be led.

In this article, we're looking strictly at the visual aspects of page design. The practical aspects of organizing pages into sites, and providing good navigation tools, were covered in a previous article. Nor shall we go very far into the technical tricks involved in achieving various design effects. For that, you'll want to consult an HTML tutorial.

Let's get a couple of things straight right up front. First, the concepts of "good design" and "bad design" exist only in the eye of the beholder. Page layout is an art, and in the final analysis, can't really be judged in objective terms. There is, however, such a thing as generally accepted design, or "standard" design principles, and that's what we're discussing in this article. Should Web sites always follow standard design principles? By no means. Look at Wired magazine for an example of how to break every design rule in the book. Even the paper it's printed on is a non-standard size. The question to ask is, What effect are you trying to create? Solid and dependable, or wild and crazy? Musicians call it "playing inside" or "playing outside." To put it another way, you have to know the rules before you can break 'em.

A second basic fact to keep in mind is that the Web is not print. While many of the rules that apply to print pages also apply to Web pages, there are some important differences. The main one, of course, is that a Web designer can never be sure exactly how the page is going to appear to the end user. The only thing you can be sure of is that it will look different on different systems. To attempt to get every element lined up perfectly, as a print layout artist does, is to start down the path to madness. Some misguided control freaks lay out whole pages as graphics, not realizing that even this is no guarantee of uniformity - some browsers won't display the colors correctly, and some souls surf with images off.

Contents:

Good Page, Bad Page
Have Your Colors Done
Timeless Typography
It's Always Something