Refresher on Design Elements
This week, we had a senior publishing professor come in and talk about design elements to keep in mind to create an eye-catching website. It was quite fun to hear her talk about and give feedback on different websites from our class. One of the websites she chose to present was mine. I was a little nervous to see my website up there, especially because I hadn’t thought much about design elements before. I just did what I felt was right.
As nervous as I may have been seeing my website being talked about and critiqued in class, I found it quite helpful. I noted down some things that students and the professor mentioned and made changes the very same day. To mention a few, it was mentioned that my sidebar seemed too wide with its dark grey background, posts can be separated into bolded headings for better presentation and there could be lesser text in the sidebar.
So what I did was go into the theme code of my website and change two lines of code to make the sidebar a lighter background shade and reduce the thickness and its distance from other posts. I also condensed some text from the sidebar to make it easier for readers to follow. I would say I am quite happy with how it looks now and I learned something new out of it!
Here are some short notes on different elements to keep in mind:
Design Principles
- Balance: symmetrical vs asymmetrical
- Rhythm: movement through space
- Proportion/Scale: relative size and scale of different elements in your design- used to create emphasis/importance, but also tension and emotions
- Contrast: create emphasis- has a primary point of focus- generally no more than 3 points of focus – can use colour, texture, size and shapes
- Unity/Harmony: consistency – variety – all other principles working together – harmony of design
Type
- Contrast
- Proximity
- Choosing typefaces
- Personality
