Basic Rules of Design

Improve your web site, brochures, adverts, proposals etc. by understanding the basic rules of design

Isn't it easy to tell a home page from a 'real' one, why is that? The answer is design, or the lack of it. Somebody decides to create a web page and has all the tools they need (except one) and something strange happens. If that someone created the page to market a book or their career as is now common with writers, it might even have done more harm than good. Things that you look at on the web and make you want to vomit, like the damned blink tag or millions of Java applets in one place, suddenly become objects of pride when you're creating them yourself. Before long you're feeling like an expert, churning out pages completely blind to their faults.

      Yet you don't need to study design extensively to benefit from it, just an overview of the fundamental principles can make all the difference. The elements of design can apply to many fields writers may be involved with as well as web pages, like advertising, business cards etc. Some other reasons to spend a moment planning your page and learning the elements of design are:

1. Design adds value.
2. Design enhances readership, because something designed properly is easier to read and so more people read it.
3. Design simplifies.
4. Design provides selective emphasis, showing which ideas are important and placing/displaying them so the pages intent is obvious. The ideas in a page become a hierarchy, with the main thesis presented first and the ideas flow from there.
5. Design adds organisation. Ideas that form an aside rather than part of the main body text can go in a sidebar; a forward is set in a different font to indicate it's not a part of the body or main essay. Repeated warnings can be introduced by a warning icon rather than sounding like a lecture in the body text.
6. Design speeds production. Look at magazines, from issue to issue the stories and pictures are different but the basic layout, where the pictures are placed, the fonts used, colour of the cover etc. don't. Their design becomes like an old friend. As soon as you see your favourite magazine at the bookstand from 10 meters away, your eyes are drawn to it because of its consistent design. This means that if you have the basic layout for your first page, you can make a basic template of HTML tags and just fill in the information for the following pages.
7. Design saves money. If you're doing this for commercial reason, then a well-designed effort costs no more than a poorly designed one, yet more people will read the former. If you're only doing this for fun or your own gratification, then you'll have more viewers and your time will be better spent.
8. Design creates the right image. You wouldn't write a page about corporate insurance in shocking pink and comic sans font, and if you saw one, you wouldn't take it seriously. Look at the covers of an intellectual broadsheet paper as opposed to a downmarket tabloid. You know what to expect of the content just by the difference in the headlines, fonts, photograph placements etc.

     Next time your surfing and notice a particularly good or bad site, stop to analyse why; this is a great way to learn design. Think: does it have impact? does the colour help or hinder this? What's the choice of background? Does it have a unique image, and is that image suitable?