Website Decisions V - Appearance

By Dustin Schwerman

It is time to think about your website’s appearance. If you have been following the path outlined in the previous articles, you have decided your keywords, gotten some inspiration, and figured out what sort of graphics and animation you want to use. There are a couple factors to consider when determining how you want your site to look, beyond simply what the graphics will be.

The first thing to consider is the layout. In general, a single layout that remains constant throughout all of your web pages is best. This setup provides the appearance of consistency, and also makes it easier to implement dynamically created pages, AJAX functions, and similar useful tools that can simplify web building. This also allows the use of php file reading and css stylesheets to keep the majority of the layout for the site in only a couple of files. Changing the appropriate files automatically changes all pages, which will be important if you ever wish to alter your site’s appearance.

With that in mind, your layout is important; in essence, the face of your site. Consider the style of graphics you plan to use, and decide how to position them to enhance the site while still leaving room for critical content. Decide where you want your logo or banner, if you want a background image, a background color, or simple white space. Take care of size and spacing; you don’t want your site to appear cluttered, but minimizing scrolling is always good. A site that fits into an 800 by 600 pixel area should be small enough to fit on most current monitors. Note, however, that such a site will seem small on larger monitors, so you may want to consider a repeatable background image to make up for lost space.

Think about how you want the text to look. What color should the content, headers, and links be? If you lay the pages out graphically first, you should have an easily established color scheme. Use it to determine your font colors. Keep in mind that complementary colors are appealing to the eye, while color contrasts are an easy way to draw attention.

Don’t make the mistake of using many changing colors, sizes, and decorations (such as bold or underline) in your text. Although such things are fine for organization or the occasional emphasis, overusing them is a sure-fire way to make your site look shady. Nothing says scam quite like few bold, enlarged, bright red words in an otherwise mundane paragraph.

The appearance of a website can be a delicate balance between text and graphics. You need your text to make your point, and you need that text to be readable. Ornate custom fonts and uncomplimentary color choices can make it difficult to read your content. If your text is placed above a background graphic, the changes in color of the image behind it may be sufficient to complicate reading even when using an easily legible color. As such, you may want to use a semi-translucent screen behind the text to make it easier to read. Doing so, however, interferes with the background graphic, and the larger the text area, the more of the picture gets cluttered.
This is why it is so important to establish an area for text, links, and other key points of the website when setting up the layout.

Appearance is a critical decision for web design, and a graphics-heavy site makes it all the more involved. However, done properly, you can have a site that is both attractive and functional. The key is to balance text and graphics, using colors and backgrounds to allow them to complement one another, rather than pitting them in competition for limited page space.

Copyright © 2007 Dustin Schwerman.

Dustin Schwerman is the primary web designer at Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in impressive, custom sites designed to capture the essence of the businesses they represent, as well as creating useful web-based programs to improve and simplify some of the tasks of running a business.