Making Choices in Design: Web Design

Design is great. It helps people communicate in effective and visually stimulating ways. We are surrounded by design everywhere we go. Books, labels, logos, billboards, you name it, we can print on it. With the coming of the information age and new technologies, we gained access to a new world of design. Things like video graphics and web design were a whole new chapter in the history book of graphic design.

Web design is an incredibly important aspect of design. Especially now that the world-wide-web is a very mainstream entity and millions of people have access to the web and all the things it can offer. This is why web design is such a dominating form of communication. People look at things on the web every day. News, hobbies, music, videos, everything is accessible. It is important that designers have their hands in how websites are made. This way there will be more memorable, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to navigate web pages to help out the web audience.

Controlling how information is presented to an audience is a great power. As designers, you get to decide how viewers experience things. When designing a website, you must keep in mind that people these days are very impatient and that they want their information fed to them as quickly and easily as possible. No one wants to go out and search for answers anymore, they should just be there right in front of them. So first and foremost, form should generally follow function in a website, a principle best known from the Bauhaus. This will bring us to the “3 click rule.” This rule was stressed in my first web design class, and I hold on to it pretty tightly now. Especially after visiting some websites out there and realizing just how hard it was to get to where I was trying to go. It basically states that you should be able to reach your destination on a website within 3 clicks. Navigation is key with web designs, but this does not mean websites have to be no fun. There are all sorts of creative ways to design functional websites that also look good. Like I will say many times, that is what we are here for.

Now I am no web designer (yet), but I sure can visit a website and quickly tell whether its design works well or not. Aesthetics are great, but always make sure that the user can get to where they are trying to go as quickly as possible. Sometimes viewers will leave websites if they cannot access information fast enough. Lots of times it will be hard to sift through advertisements stuck throughout websites to find what you want. This can be incredibly irritating and confusing. We are bombarded with loads of information on the web, and sometimes it is just too overwhelming. So to the designers out there, thanks for designing functional and pretty websites for your audiences.