After the introduction of the web, the primacy of web design could not be ignored. The first was the baby of TimBerners-Lee of CERN, (one of the world’s largest and most respected centers for scientific research) when he created a global hypertext project, which he christened as the World Wide Web defined as “a wide area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give access to a large universe of documents.”
Web design, though now associated with graphic design arises from technological advancements of the browser in particular. Starting with the Mosaic to Internet Explorer and beyond, web browsers have helped web design evolve at a rapid pace.
Today, companies vie with each other and are constantly improving on their web design. And this is not surprising because first impressions, which are very important, are all formed on the basis of the design of the website.
There are seven components of a visually appealing web design
- Colors – The website’s color should convey your company’s identity. Colors have emotional connotations so it is important you use the right color.
- Fonts can also carry the meaning of what your company stands for like a serious looking font like Times Roman would be suitable for a news website rather than Freestyle Script.
- Pictures and Graphics – Make the website visually appealing rather than lines of text only.
- Simplicity- It should be simple not complex and simple not boring.
- User friendly – Navigation should be easy and meaningful
- Clarity – Images and text should be sharp
- Consistency – Every page on the website should have the same heading, color, button styles to reinforce the subliminal message that the website is conveying through its design to the viewer.
The latest trends in web designing are listed below:
Web trends – Use of hero images (a large banner image, usually placed in the center of the web page and consists of image and text and may be static or moving). There use of minimal (use of negative space) flat design which incorporates the needs of mobile interface rather than a computer, video sliders or slide shows added to a web page, background video, CSS animation, front end frameworks and framework of ready components like Bootstrap, etc.
The latest web designs take care of the two most important concerns of UX (user experience) and mobile platforms, for which Flat designs are being preferred as they are easy to download and basically have the visuals stripped to the basic levels.
Typography – A variety of typographies are available such as serif, sans serif and handwriting.
Material design, which is a set of Google design standards, that has separate elements like the layers concept in image editing software. More imagery and less text.
Dynamic storytelling – Telling a story through graphics supported by text.
Feedback, but from comments on social media pages rather than from the commenting system provided on the website.
Latest designer tools like Adobe Project Comet launched in 2016 and as always uniqueness
A website builder or a website designer?
A website builder is a set of tools without manual code editing that helps you build your website. They may be web hosting companies.
Designing websites is a very complicated and elaborate process. If you can afford it, it is better to employ the services of a website designer.