Special thanks to @learnnuggets for tweeting this. I agree. SO many other design disciplines have a LOT to offer instructional designers. We need to see and learn more from them.
Amplify’d from webdesign.tutsplus.com
Understanding Visual Hierarchy in Web Design
Visual hierarchy is one of the most important principles behind effective web design. This article will examine why developing a visual hierarchy is crucial on the web, the theory behind it, and how you can use some very basic exercises in your own designs to put these principles into practice.
…Understanding that people will see our designs in terms of relationships is crucial to becoming a more effective designer.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/dclv
7 comments:
Great post. If you're feeling down, head over to http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com and get a better sense with some anti-examples. I would suggest checking out the worst websites of 2010. Quite a treat.
The web also opens up the possibility for movement which would play an important part in visual hierarchy when used effectively.The reason visual hierarchy is so important is because by mastering it, you can have immense control over how a visitor reads your page.
Visual hierarchy can greatly improve conversion rates of websites. I hope some more testing and studies be done to it. If conclusive results are reached this can greatly affect how websites are designed.
- Taylah Puddy
Whilst it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up your website, spinning graphics and logos often distract your visitor from the content, not to mention they can take too long to download. Your visitors may click away even before your spinning logo finishes loading.
Ensure your visitors can read the text on the background, ie. no black writing on dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure your links are light.
The reason visual hierarchy is so important is because by mastering it, you can have immense control over how a visitor reads your page. In an ideal world, every viewer would read all of the information on the page thoroughly, allowing you infinite time and space to get your message across. Visual hierarchy can be established through an element’s position, size, color, and complexity in relation to the other elements on the page.
While designing a website, what the element is, how the element relates to the page goals, and where the element fits with the other elements on the page- these are all the basics you keep in mind. Do you have a perfect method or an ideology say about web designing, or you just throw them onto the page like anything?
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