Unique Digital Design

If you want to design your own webpage then there are millions of examples that you can look at and be inspired by. Take a holiday website for example. Check out their website, the colour scheme is white and inoffensive, giving the idea of a stress-free holiday without clutter. The home page has an image box that flashes up with new pictures of the luxury life lived in the Caribbean.

A booking engine is in the bottom right-hand corner of this image so immediately webpage users can see whether they can pay a visit to the hotel. Scrolling down the page takes the user to three different tabs to different departments of the hotel: the wellness centre, activities, and food & drink. These tabs are illustrated by photographs that are beautiful and relevant.

At the top of the page, there is a menu that smoothly takes the user through the site to pages that all have the same template and rotating images, illustrating what perks the hotel offers. The food & drink page has a choice of links to different restaurants in the hotel, each laid out spaciously and with feature cut-outs (such as heads) spilling out from the photograph on to the page, bringing the splendour of the photographs to life. Similarly, activities page shows the variety of activities they offer.

These are some basic principles that can be applied to a webpage design.

Proximity needs to be taken into account when web designing as the arrangement affects the message that was planned. The proximity will reflect the desired communication to the viewer of the content.

Visual Hierarchy positions elements of the design in a prioritised order, putting the most powerful images/content at the forefront of the page.

Symmetry or asymmetry plays an important role in the way elements are connected to each other on a webpage. The designer takes into account that the user experience may be positively affected by the balance of graphics as it appears organised.

Repetition of elements brings consistency to the web design. These elements could be a logo, colour scheme, shape, proximity, font or texture. The visual appearance holds all the different pages together as one unit.

Contrasting visual elements can result in an emphasis on a stronger element, allowing one aspect to pop out at the viewer. The emphasis should be eye-catching compared to the rest of the page and should be unrepeated. This technique can be slightly confusing though and the viewer may overlook some important parts of the webpage.

Digital designers will often use various digital software programs such as AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max and Rhino to develop digital representation in 2D and 3D digital spaces. There are innovative ways to develop design work, including the use of digital laser-cut prototypes and 3D printing techniques.

For designers who create mock ups before the website is created, Balsamiq Mockups is a fantastic tool. Low-Fi wireframes can be sketched using Balsamiq, meaning that the sketch is innocuous so the emphasis will be on functionality instead of appearance. The sketched tabs and menus can actually be linked so to demonstrate how the final version will work. Finally, the files can be exported as PNG or PDF files and can be uploaded onto a wiki page.

Reports say that Balsamiq has transformed a job that would take hours into a 10 minute stop. Users can use their keyboards to build wireframes, build their wireframes onto templates or drop and drag components. This simple tool increases the productivity of web designers and, for all the time saved, looks good.

Try the Balsamiq demo to see for yourself.

With millions of people logging on to the internet every day looking for products and services they need, website design is an extremely important factor in a positive user experience. The user experience must be well-thought out, ensuring that the website is easy to navigate around and each appearance is unique.

The colour scheme, text, search functionalities, images are planned through wireframes before being signed-off and developed into the live site. Testing is crucial to ensuring its appearance is good and a piece of cake to understand.

Take Monster Jobs for example, you go to their homepage and half of it is purple. The only functionality in that space is a toolbar. Users do not need to search for the area where perspective jobs will be listed, they just enter in the keywords and the search results are listed after just one click.

Monster have modelled their search results on Google’s search results page, so users feel familiarised instantly with how to use the system. With a design that makes Monster so easy to understand, users stay on the site for longer and may recommend it to their friends.