Principles of Web Design
Thiết kế is Vietnamese for “Design,” and Thiết kế Websites is all about excellence in website design. Creating a great website only seems simple to those who don’t do it! Here we have a lot of fun with those who design sites poorly. Old-fashioned HTML–the dreaded Internet of 1995–can be an entertaining topic! But we also care about those who design well, who understand the beauty of web design, and of being able to navigate smoothly through your world via computer.
The Internet has made the web a place where we travel, communicate, learn, socialize, research, and consume. Here we watch TV and movies, listen to music, chat with friends, do our jobs, shop, study, and more. Web design, then, is as important as urban infrastructure. A well-designed or poorly-designed website impacts us just as a well-designed or poorly-designed highway. If you’ve ever missed your exit because you didn’t see the sign for it until you’d zoomed past, then you understand this analogy all too well.
What is great web design?
- It serves a specific purpose. Whether to entertain, to gain marketing leads, to sell books, or to inform, a well-designed website is one whose design exists to help fulfill its purpose.
- It is planned out. Haphazard design will cause navigation byways that short-circuit the site’s intention. Planning will help produce a harmonious result.
- It is invisible to the user. The site shouldn’t be invisible, but the design should. Unless the purpose of the site is to sell web design, then the design should recede into the background so that the user can enjoy his or her experience. When you go to the movies or the theater, you don’t want to watch an actor act; you want to see a character so real you forget the person is really an actor pretending to be that character. “Seeing” web design is like seeing an actor act.
- It’s a pleasure to use. Hey, designer. Users are people too. Let them have a bit of fun!
