Designing Rules

TEN RULES OF DESIGN FOR THE WEB

1. Put content on every page. Design should not be decoration. It must convey information. Or entertainment. Content should come to the surface on every single level. Avoid useless and confusing icons, e.g. a navigation bar that has a ? for help. Make sure the content is easy to read quickly. Break the text into smaller segments. On the web people are in a hurry. They want the information they are looking for quickly, like a dictionary, that's still what the web is really about.

2. The first color is white

3. The second color is black

4. The third color is red. This is a basic rule that has been around for 500 years. In Print white is the absence of all colors. White makes the best background. Black holds the highest contrast to white; therefore it is the first choice for text. And red draws the viewer in, and defines the image.

5. Never letterspace l o w e r c a s e When this is done the natural rhythm of the letters, so carefully designed by font designer, is ruined. In design if you look at what you do today, it should look like what you want to do tomorrow.

6. Never set a lot of text IN ALL CAPS Fonts were not intended to be all set in caps. They were intended to be upper and lowercase and to have serifs and descenders and ascenders so that they are easier to read.

7. A cover should be a poster A single image of a human being will sell more magazines than multiple images or all type. Avoid the pitfalls of 'fads'. Design loses its power when it falls prey to what is popular now.

8. Use only one or two typefaces There are thousands of fonts on offer, this does not mean it is clever if the designer can use as many as possible at once, good design is pulled together by one or two fonts. The best combination is one light and one bold. (This seems to work with colours too).

9. Make everything as BIG as possible Type looks good in big point sizes, a bad picture always looks better bigger.

10. Get lumpy ! The trouble with most web design is that it holds no great surprise. 95% of web pages have beautiful graphic homepages, followed by legions of pages that look like newsletters with stamps stapled to them. Vary the content from page to page; don't keep to the format of picture-and-story.

Useful Tools:   GIF Animation   Adobe Studio

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