Continuity and Change

Hopefully by now the 'old friend' principle of consistency has sunk in, another problem of constant and radical change is that people will think they've left your site. Yet absolute consistency equals a lack of variety, this is a fine line to tread, here are some guidelines/ideas.

Use graphic text for consistency and image. Say your headlines are specified as a certain font in the HTML tag, the browser will only display this if that font is installed on the viewer's computer. Graphic Text is text drawn in a graphics program and saved as a graphic file like GIF. Usually, if you want to be sure that someone will have a certain font on a computer, you must stick to decorum, read boring, fonts. By using graphic fonts for subheads and headlines, you can use one that has the right image and will also be sure of exactly what the viewer is seeing. If you don't have time for this, or don't know how, there's an animated banner maker on the web where you choose the font, colour, type the text and it will present you with a saveable image. It's at www.mediabuilder.com

Use visuals uniformly, in the same place consistently at the same size, with the same border etc.

Only colour code a small part. For example, throughout your site you could have a large left margin in yellow. On the home page each section of your web page can be introduced with a different coloured background. So say the short descriptive text and link that introduces the section about your dog is written against a boxed background of brown, then the actual section about your dog still has the yellow margin, but with a brown oblong containing the title as graphic text. This way the whole site looks consistent, but you are using colour to code the various sections and for variety, variety that is without crossing the line and introducing too much change. On the dog page, you could also use the same brown for borders, horizontal rules, headlines and so on, to unify all the elements.

Clashing coloursRemember that two colours which usually clash when placed together can be striking when one is very dominant and they other is used very sparingly in 'spot' applications.

     Another very effective use of colour is to have a side bar of a deep colour, say deep red on the left of the page in 100% saturation, then the background of the main body is a much lighter tint, say 10% of the same colour (that's how this page is designed). This introduces variety without too many colours being present. Also it's easy to maintain and means your logo and navigation links will always be consistently placed if they go at the top of the 100% saturated border. If you changed the entire colour of the whole background for each section, then people would definitely get confused and think they've left your site.

     Section titles can be a 100% saturated colour of the 15% saturation background. This also indicates change without too many colours being introduced. It's also good because colour from a monitor, unlike that from a printed page, is projected, which means that the reader is actually staring into a light. Often a slight tint for a background colour is easier on the eyes than stark white.

     The point of all this is to strive for repeating standards that makes a site unique and memorable. Remember that a significant change attracts attention, like a change of font, a sidebar, a picture which is suddenly a different size. Each time you change something you're drawing attention to the fact that it's different, always make sure that that was intentional.