Even though the web design field has become a real industry, building a website is part art, part science. The design of a website may attract people but it may also make them run away, it depends on the work of the web designer. The experience, the talent and the capacity of endeavor are the greatest tools of a web designer, a good layout is based on all of these and, besides that, it is a very time consuming activity.
Making a good layout is difficult and judging its value is subjective, a design could be liked by me, but disregarded by others. In spite of that, there are few things that are recognized worldwide as bad solutions in web design.
In order to help any designer avoid making mistakes that simply destroy a website, I have created here a list with some tips to take into account. It will be a great reward to me to have added up your interesting opinions here but at the same time the new readers will find a more complete post. In a nutshell, please help me and write your consideration in the comment area.
1. The lack of white space
There is nothing more disturbing than a design that has plenty of information and no white space to rest the eyes of the readers. Many web designers want to offerall the information available from the first page and they end up simply creating the Tower of Babel. This annoying look is more specific for beginners but unfortunately there is no age limit when it comes to making mistakes. It happens mostly because of the wrong mentality in the web design world, website creators are too dependent on the layout we created until now and they are simply lacking the courage of trying anything else. The correct mentality is to ignore any convention and create what you believe is the best for users; they are the single element that matters the most.
2. A bad combination of colors
Yes, there are a lot of modalities to make a layout ugly and unfriendly but a bad color combination has even the power to scare people. A very common mistake is to create visual tension considered as a stronger contrast, these are different notions and still from school everyone should know how to differentiate.
The so much desired contrast that is meant to emphasize the most important parts may be obtained also from one single color by using various hues and saturations. There is an old trick really awesome: desaturate your files and if the differences between various elements are clear then it is alright. The logic is simple: the people that have no trouble with the eyes will see perfectly while the majority of the ones with sight difficulties will see the layout mostly black and white or in grey color. Now it is simple, if they have no difficulties the layout passes the accessibility standards relate to chromatic.
3. Adding too much information on a single page
It sounds similar to the first point but a layout could have enough white space but at the same time too much information. People initially scan the websites and a web designer should make the layout more scanable. A website that is fully of information, having inserted into it tons of icons, buttons or images isn’t easy to the eyes, it’s hard to scan, hence is a construction that is user unfriendly.
4. Uninspired use of images
An image may speak more than one hundred words but when these words are against you then the layout is a disaster. The written content, the layout and the images used are part of a team and they are not separated entities. Any web designer must understand this idea and more important, to apply it. The images should complete the message of the website and their selection is a primordial task in realizing a good design.
5. Ignoring typography
It’s a great sin to ignore the letters just because they are small and many. An easy lecture is one of the special purposes of a website therefore the typography is determinant in this case. Another important tip is how everyone understands typography: it isn’t just selecting a font; it is related to the arrangement of the sentences, paragraphs and titles. As you might have guessed there is enough to work, but a fruitful result has a decisive impact over the entire layout.
6. Making a layout passing the accessibility test
Maybe accessibility is considered more of a trifle than a necessity but an inaccessible website is the work of a selfish designer. The online world was created for everyone and it is rude not to let some people enjoy a complete freedom. The first steps have been made; the USA legislators promulgated a law that obligates any official website of various institutes and departments to pass the accessibility tests. In fact, the accessibility of the websites isn’t rocket science and, i.e., adding the alt attribute costs nothing. Personally, I consider that there shouldn’t be any law; it should be the morality of us that shouldn’t let us simply ignore some fellows.
7. Not thinking in advance
It’s the lack of experience that makes us toconstantly correct what we have made; facetiously, it could happen that what we created during the night to be deleted in the day. A wise designer should make the big picture of the layout from the start, in this way a lot of time and resources are saved. Clearly, it’s difficultenough but try to think before actually starting to work and it’s impossible not to modify something but try to reduce these. Don’t worry; it all comes together with the experience.
Now, reading this post is as same difficult as to realize a qualitative layout, but it is easier to avoid big mistakes. Please let me know if it really helped you.
