How to create clean and impressive web designs

Written by Don on December 2nd, 2009

When you say cleanliness in design it comes in many forms: crisp typography, uncluttered lay out, unified color choices, crisp imagery, visual hierarchy and judicious use of white space. The information given below is a general “How to” in creating a web design. If you master these general concepts it will be easier to branch out and explore your own ways of creating clean design.

1. Uncluttered layout

Use as much white space as needed. Keep in mind that lots of white space doesn’t always mean ‘clean design’. A most common design that you can use with is a home page with one large, crisp, prominent photographic image with a fair amount of breathing room. Do not put too many things on a page.

Focus a page

A clear focus should be given to each page irrespective of it being a picture, or a headline, or a graphic giving the user an immediate clue as to what this page is all about. The users should not be kept guessing about what the page is all about and should not be held responsible for combining the page for tidbits of information.

Clean crisp lines

Overly compressed picture files, fuzziness, glows and drop shadows should be avoided. A little shadow here and there is a good thing but you have to force yourself and try designing without any fuzzy elements or shadows. The font should be clean and see to that the setting on photo shop is set to “crisp” anti-aliasing. For a little depth that looks crisp use well placed single pixel highlights.

Well balanced type faces

Use of beautiful, classic typefaces enhances the design of a page. Some of the classic typefaces are Bodoni, frutiger, universe, hoefler text or Franklin gothic. You must learn to use beautiful well proportioned typefaces as opposed to most of the typefaces at low cost font sites. It is important to master about classic typography and also train your eye from good type to bad type.

Breathing room

As the name suggests it is the extra space between any two elements in a lay out that keep the items from crashing into or pushing against one another. This is the most frequent mistake among junior designers. Most designers make the mistake while designing that everything needs lots of space around it. But the term breathing room means everything on the page needs enough space around it.

Color

Most of the web designs which are clean and impressive use one major color and a couple of complementary colors. Always try working with one major color and varying the tone of the color resulting in a variety of colors you need for the design. Try doing the entire design in one color and then introduce one or two colors into the design. Introducing the other colors should be done in such a way that they will draw attention.

Important things get top priority

In a web page design the most important elements should be larger and more prominently placed. The place must be chosen either close to the top or in the middle. The elements of least importance should be off to the sides, smaller and lower on the page.

Practice makes perfect

As the old saying goes, you have to practice a lot and try assimilating some of these ideas into your own design.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Design, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.