Basic Design Principles for the Web

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Josh Loewen Design & Branding / Basic Design Principles for the Web / Feb 24 06 … In a visual medium such as architecture, engineering, and web design …

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Basic Design Principles for the Web
780.920.3338 josh@loewendbs.com
Josh Loewen Design & Branding / Basic Design Principles for the Web / Feb 24 06A website designer’s intention is to provide a unique and memorable user experience
while presenting information in an easy to locate and understood format.
1. Eye Flow
When viewing a website visitor attention typically begins at the top left of the screen and
falls bottom right. Logos are usually placed in the top left because that is the first place
people look and this will quickly identify the owner of the site and so those owners can
establish a first level of visual branding.
Significant contrast or distracting movement can interrupt this flow and in that case all
bets are off. Good page layout design is like a game of connect the dots, guiding user
attention to the areas of importance based on a numeric scale which in turn is based on
website goals.
The top left to bottom right viewing pattern is common in entire layouts and for short
blocks of information (such as paragraphs, headlines and ads.) Studies (see
“Homepage viewing patterns” at http://poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/viewing.htm) have
shown that on most news websites, headline summaries are only a read a third of the
way through and are read top left to bottom…