The web designer''s idea book volume 2

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always served as a basic reference point for me. According to Lisa,
all design is built on the basic principles of emphasis, contrast, bal-
ance, alignment, repetition and ow. The more thought that is put
into these elements, the better the design is likely to be. When these
principles are forgotten, a design often goes astray. By returning to
the fundamentals, you can refocus your eyes and mind to produce
an exceptional design.
However, keep in mind that simply following a formula doesn’t
guarantee success: I’m not saying that this is the formula to good
design. I can say, though, that time and time again, these principles
are what encourage me to polish my own designs and allow me to
discover why some designs work and others fail.
In this section, a focused effort has been made to provide exam-
ples of sites that demonstrate these elements in a variety of ways.
Some samples use them in strikingly obvious ways, while others are
more subtle. This is what I love about real-life examples, though; they
are much more practical for illustrating a point because nothing in the
real world happens in textbook-perfect patterns.
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basic principles of design
emphasis • contrast • balance • alignment • repetition • flow
emphasis
Emphasis highlights a special importance
or significance, and in many ways em-
phasis is closely related to, if not the same
as, hierarchy. In order to design around
the principle of emphasis, you must ana-
lyze a site’s content in order to determine
what hierarchy of importance the content
should use. Once this is established, you
can create a design that effectively car-
ries out the hierarchy. A great method to
establish what needs emphasis is to list all
of the elements required on a page. Then,
number the elements in order of impor-
tance. With this list in mind, design so that
the visual hierarchy of the page reflects the
determined importance. One reason this is
so important is to avoid an attempt to em-
phasize everything. It also helps avoid the
trap of an accidental hierarchy. It is always
better to consciously decide what should
be the visual priority and not just leave it
to chance. If you try to emphasize every-
thing, you effectively emphasize nothing.
Let’s look at some samples to see what
has been done to create a visual hierarchy.
Bryan Connor (Figure 1)
Bryan Connor’s site is a great demonstra-
tion of emphasis. The most prominent
element of the page is the most recent
post from his blog. It has a sharp contrast
to the majority of the page by being the
only white section, and the type is large
and placed near the top of the page. This
is a sign of clear intention and a desire
to direct attention. In cases like this, it
might be tempting to think the portfolio
pieces or the contact information should
be equally important, but again, trying to
make everything equal ultimately makes
everything blend together.
Digitalmash (Figure 2)
This site of fers another clear use of
emphasis to control the user’s consump-
tion of the page. The large, dominant text,
which has again been placed at the top
of the page, clearly states the site owner’s
purpose: This site is intended to get him
work. It’s not there to show off to his fam-
ily, to share Flickr photos with friends or
to hype up his latest tweet. It’s simply to
drum up work. Consider your site’s pur-
pose and how you can use emphasis to
bring it out and highlight it.
Cold Stone Creamery (Figure 3)
This site offers a common layout formula
that leverages effective emphasis. The
page has a typical header containing
a logo and key navigation items. From
there, the design starts with a very strong
emphasis. Primarily controlled by the
amount of physical space elements occu-
py, the emphasis of items is reduced as
you move down the page. Some sites will
have more than the three layers we find
here, but that is not necessarily required.
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Here, the large masthead movie directs
the user’s attention and offers the sites
owners to direct user attention as they see
fit. Then the design moves into a denser
content region with three messages in
separate buckets. This density means it
will be looked at second and not first. It
makes really good sense to match the flow
of emphasis to the way a user engages a
page: top to bottom. Don’t fight it, just go
with it and work it to your advantage.
Figure 1 http://www.bryanconnor.com
Figure 2 http://www.digitalmash.com
http://www.greencircleshoppingcenter.comFigure 3 http://www.coldstonecreamery.com
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http://www.serj.ca
http://www.smartosc.com
http://stonetire.com
http://www.atebits.com
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basic principles of design
emphasis • contrast • balance • alignment • repetition • flow
contrast
Contrast is the visual differentiation of
two or more elements. Elements with
strong contrast appear distinct and sep-
arate, while elements with low contrast
appear similar and tend to blend together.
There are many design elements you can
manipulate to achieve contrast, including
color, size, position, font choice and font
weights. Contrast in a design will help a
site have visual variety and avoid being
stale. Contrast can also help achieve
focus, thereby addressing the need for
emphasis on certain elements. You can
see how a loop among the basic design
principles appears, as contrast is used to
affect emphasis, flow and other aspects
of a design.
Contrast may have its largest impact
on the hierarchy of a page, as it is often
used to enforce the desired emphasis. In
this way, contrast can contribute to the
visual order of a design. It can quickly
draw attention to key elements, such as
content, action items or purpose state-
ments. As always, the needs of a site
should be carefully considered so you
can intentionally draw attention to certain
elements though the deliberate control
of contrast. Let’s look at some samples
to see what other designers have done
with contrast.
Twe4ked Studios (Figure 1)
In this example, it is easy to spot the con-
trast because the two large green buttons
leap out of the page. These key calls to
action have been emphasized through
size and color. Clearly the designer of this
site is driving at two purposes; he wants
you to either look at his portfolio or give
him a call. We also find contrast at work
in a few other areas on this site. His intro-
duction is large and dominates the top of
the page. Not only is it the full width of
the page, but it is also the largest text on
it. The entire top half of the page is black
on white with the bottom being reversed
out. This contrast sets the top content
apart with an apparent level of importance,
which is further emphasized by the con-
trast in type density. The content in the
bottom is far denser, making it feel less
important. It’s amazing how fundamental
contrast is and how inescapable it can be.
Be the Middle Man (Figure 2)
This site again demonstrates how a radi-
cal use of contrast can drive emphasis
and the desired action for your user. This
site encourages the user to test out their
search tool by making it a dominate ele-
ment in the page. As such, their goal is
clear. Another interesting aspect of this
design is how the density of content
gets greater as the page goes down.
This increasing contrast flows nicely and
matches a user’s behavior. If a person is
reading this page to the bottom, chances
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are he is more and more interested as
he reaches the bottom of the page (or
perhaps more desperate to find what he
needs), so the site packs in more and
more to try to offer up what the user is
looking for.
http://www.swgraphic.com/v2
Figure 2 http://www.bethemiddleman.com
Figure 1 http://twe4ked.com
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http://www.onebyfourstudio.com http://www.mediacontour.com
http://www.pokeseo.com
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http://www.allisclear.com
http://andrewlindstrom.com
http://www.tunnel7.com
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balance
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basic principles of design
emphasis • contrast • balance • alignment • repetition • flow
The principle of balance revolves around
the idea of how the elements in a design
are distributed and how they relate to the
overall distribution of visual weight within
the page. This has a considerable impact
on the visual stability of the design. As ele-
ments are grouped together in a design,
they create visual weight. Typically, this
weight must be balanced out by an
equal and opposite weight in order to
achieve balance in the design. Not doing
so results in a design that feels unstable,
though this is not to imply that it would
be necessarily bad. I have no doubt that
a lack of balance could be put to effective
use. But a well-balanced design creates
a subtle notion of stability and is generally
more appealing.
There are two approaches to balance:
symmetrical and asymmetrical. We will
look at examples of each.
SYMMETRICAL BALANCE
Balance through symmetrical design is
accomplished when the design of a page
is mirrored on some axis and the two
halves have identical visual weights. In
web design, this is typically seen when the
left and right sides are split vertically and
each side has an equal weight. As always,
I prefer samples, so let’s look at one.
MINT Wheels (Figure 1)
The use of symmetrical balance matches
with the content of this site in a very natu-
ral way. Consider the precise efforts that
go into ensuring perfect balance in luxury
cars; these cars offer up some of the most
perfectly balanced experiences one can
find on the road. In this way, a symmetri-
cally balanced site fits well with the type
of experience one has when driving a car
such as this. Note how the logo has been
moved to the top center of the page. This
not only helps establish symmetrical bal-
ance, but also puts the logo in the visual
hot spot for the layout (top and center).
This site is slick and clean, and it perfectly
matches its content.
ASYMMETRICAL BALANCE
Asymmetrical balance is achieved when
the visual weight of a page is equally
distributed on an axis, but the individual
elements of these halves are not mirror
images. That is a really complex way of
saying that asymmetrical balance is a
result of the use of dissimilar elements to
create an overall balance. That still sounds
complicated; let’s look at some samples
to see how this works.
Dallas Baptist University (Figure 2)
Asymmetrical balance is extremely com-
mon in web design because it is often
a more natural solution to the content
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being presented. In this case, we see
asymmetrical balance throughout the
page, starting with the header. The logo
balances out the main navigation items
(which have been placed where the logo
usually resides). The logo is tall and dark,
allowing its small size to still match up with
the navigation. Bellow the banner section,
the text box with the welcome message is
larger than the denser quick facts section.
The size of the left box is well matched by
the smaller but denser box next to it.
Campaign Monitor (Figure 3)
In some cases, it will make most sense
to actually blend these two approaches
to achieving balance. This is exactly the
approach taken on the Campaign Monitor
landing page. At the top, we see asym-
metrical balance with the copy section
balancing the image. But below that, we
see a section of balance where the six
items, the logos below that and the footer
copy are all perfectly balanced left to right
in a symmetrical way.
Balance is one of the more subtle ele-
ments of design, and one that many of
us will address instinctively. If your design
feels lopsided, consider how you can bal-
ance it by minimizing the contrast. This
might mean two dominant elements that
match well, or a set of equally controlled,
less prominent items to balance it out.
Does your design feel like it would tip
over? Does it feel unstable? These are
the types of questions to ask yourself to
discover if you have balance issues.
Figure 1 http://www.mintwheels.com
Figure 2 http://whydbu.dbu.edu