Answers to the discussion questions:

1). How important is colour as a design factor? To what extent does dolor coordination effect the reading or viewing of a text? An emotional impact on the response of readers or viewers? Relation between color background and foreground elements ( and highlights)?

Color is the key factor for page design. To some extent, color choice can determine the web site is attractive or not. Good color choice can make the page attractive and inviting, while a bad color choice can ruin the design totally. Take a look at the Annoying Web Page Award at http://www.users.nac.net/falken/annoying/award/html. Most of the pages on the list are in dark color background, dull and annoying, which may be the main attribution to their award. Therefore, we should be careful in color selection, and if possible, use the default values that are unlikely to pose any problems

However, no colors are inherently good or bad, and one person’s favorites may be another person’s allergy. So color coordination seems to be more important than the color itself. We’ll consider one special and very important case of coordination, namely the selection of background, text, and link colors for web pages. If the background is a too bright, flaming color or its contrast with the text is too low, reading the text will become torture. I might just as well say that text color needs support from the background, as a dark-colored text is very likely to be taken simply for black. If, however, background and text colors back up each other, their true nature is communicated in a much more eloquent fashion.

2). How important are lettering styles—the use of fonts,size of letters, letters spacings/lines,capitals,etc?

To better understant what underlies different letter use, case styles, an analogy with voice tone may be useful. A sentence with one initial capital and full stop at the end sounds as if it’s pronounced in plain, affirmative, narrative tone. If you capitalize initial letter of very word, the some phrase attains a more declarative and self-confident tone.

An incredible creative potential lies in varying the two spacing parameters of a font, the distances between letters and between lines. Increasing natural intraword spaces makes the text sound more slow, solemn, even heavenly. For multiline text, an analog of increased intraword space is the big interline space—this, too, makes the text sound more profound and persuasive.

Generally speaking, typography is probably the most esoteric of all visual arts. So we should spend as much time as possible experimenting with fonts, reading about them, and meditating on the best examples of their use by others.

3)Going beyond the particular purposes of a communication(e.g. information persuasion/commercial or even entertainment): do you think it is generally more important to emphasize simplicity and functionality or attractive appearance (i.e. form or function)… To what extent is a young generation more “visual” than their parents?

It’s indeed very important to emphasize simplicity and functionality of a design. Usability on the web isn’t a luxury. Only if a site is extremely easy to use will anybody bother staying around. So on the internet, it’s the survival of the easiest. We should focus the site on people’s needs in plain language in a layout that’s easy to scan and fast to download. A good example is the website: http://www.powa.org/ . It’s easy to browse and to get the information directly.

Roughly, young generation is more ‘visual’ that their parents. The old generation prefer the function, while the young people tend to be attracted by the form. A cute and lively cartoon may capture the attention of young people, but it can hardly seize their parents.