Emphasis in Web Design
January 6, 2011
•IADT Sacramento, Web Design and Development
• 0 Comments
A common mistake that new Web designers make is trying to emphasize too many elements on a page. If everything is trying to stand out, nothing will. Pages with too many elements competing for attention always turn out to be cluttered messes that users ignore. Take the time before creating a page to determine which elements need to be emphasized and how you are going to emphasize them. A little bit of planning will go a long way toward creating a site that users will love.
What to emphasize?
Every single page on your site should have one specific purpose. Maybe you're trying to sell a product, communicate information or get a user to fill out a form. Once you've figured out a page's purpose, stick with it. Because you can create plenty of Web pages for your site, you don't have to force a single page to do too many things.
Once you decide the purpose for your page, develop a hierarchy for that specific page. For example, if you are designing a page that features a product, make sure a picture of that product dominates that page. Since you want people to purchase that product, you should probably place secondary emphasis on your call to action. After that, the page needs to feature a headline, body copy and navigation. Knowing the hierarchy of a page will help you emphasize wisely.
How to emphasize it
Once you know what you want to emphasize on your Web page, you can start designing it. Every designer has three main tools for emphasis: size, placement and color.
- Size - The larger an element, the more emphasis it gets. Two of the elements you'll usually use to emphasize are visuals and headlines. Varying sizes is also an easy way to keep a page from looking stale.
- Placement - Since users look at sites from top to bottom, more emphasis is placed on elements at the top of the page. If you've decided to place any kind of emphasis at all on an element of your site, place it high enough on the page where users won't have to scroll to see it.
- Color - The use of contrasting colors helps boxes and text stand out from clutter on your Web page. When incorporating color on your site, be careful to limit the number of colors on a single page to keep your site looking clean.
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