Aesthetics in Web Design

Webpages are no longer merely simple sources of information but bloated showpieces, thanks to graphic designers who are ruining them. They have created the webpages identical to how they manipulated their print advertisements, making them more attractive and interactive. This has resulted in a tremendous increase in size from 93.7kB to over 679kB. The "view status" bar in your browser informs you on how many discrete items went into making up a page.

Web page design can be viewed from the technical aspect and the aesthetic appearance of the page (Leigh 2011). A web page should look balanced and pleasant as if it were a picture as it influences how a user navigates and interacts with it (Michailido, Harper and Bechhofer 2008). The page layout and visual components such as colours, font style and size, images and animation are visual aesthetics can change the perception of the viewers (Michailido, Harper and Bechhofer 2008).

Some general principles in web designing is to keep your pages short. Short pages get higher rankings by the search services and load faster (Leigh 2011). Use framing devices and white spaces to avoid "cluttering" your page. Framing devices determine whether the elements of a layout may either be disconnected, marked off from each other, or connected, joined together (Kress and Leeuwen 1998). These provide connection and a sense of direction for readers. It also makes written text & layout look more comprehendible and presentable. Furthermore, you should limit to not more than three colors in each page and avoid having multi-coloured text (Leigh 2011). Some pages are so full of animated icons, photographs, clip art etc, that they tend to look messy and unattractive (Leigh 2011). Thus, it is important that web designers adhere to these basic principles to keep viewing, interaction and navigation a breeze for users.

Reference

Leigh, A 2011, Aesthetics, Shire, accessed on 10 November 2013, .

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, 'Front pages: The critical analysis of newspaper layout'.

Michailido E, Harper, S & Bechhofer, S 2008, Visual Complexity and Aesthetic Perception of Web pages, School of Computer Science: The University of Manchester, accessed on 10 November 2013, .