Web design is relatively new profession compared to other forms of design, due to the youth of our medium. The word design means a lot of different things to different people. But nearly everyone you meet says that it is obvious what design is. They are often surprised to find that other people mean something different by design then they do. Web design is the process of designing websites. It is a collection of online content including documents and applicants that reside on a web server. Web design is a flick industry. Just like every other form of artistic expression, web design has undergone a continuous and surprisingly fast evolution. Once a playground for enthusiasts, it has now become a mature rich medium with strong aesthetic and functional appeal.
As with any design discipline, there are aspects of the web design process that are unique to the medium, such as screen resolution, additive color spaces and image compression.
Design basics are very important for a learner to design a web. These design basics are as follows:
- Color: color has the huge impact on the mood of the design. A predominantly red color usually represents strong emotions, such as; love, anger passion, and while, blue can make the design feel calm, cool, and peaceful. Color contributes to the unity of a series of flyers, emphasizes important and leads the eye through a design. Some websites use color like the site about HCG drops, they use color to emphasize health and wellness.
- Line: the quality of the line (hand drawn to precise) can say a lot about the mood you are setting design. Hand drawn or thick lines tend towards juvenile themes, where as straight and thins lines are more refined, corporate or intelligent. How lines interact with each other is important, too. If they are straight, thin lines, but are colliding at all sorts of crazy angles, that is going to be chaotic. If they have a hand drawn quality to them but are more or less straightly and orderly, this can give a much needed personal appeal to a design.
- Shape: shapes are a vital thing in the design basics. Angular shapes like square and triangles tend to indicate masculinity, while smooth and curving shapes like circles are more feminine. Squares are very familiar to us, so they are secure, trustworthy and stable. Circles are very pleasing to the eye and are organic, whole, and peaceful and exude unity.
- Scale and size: bring balance, proportion and contrast to your designs with scale and size. Just for reference, size is actual dimensions of an element on the page, scale is the element’s relation to its original and proportion is the relation of all the elements on the page in terms of size and scale. Use scale and proportion to indicate the actual size of an object or to emphasize the difference in the sizes of two objects.
- Space: space is often referred to as white space and gives the design some breathing room and the eye a place to rest. An ill use of space can make the design feel crowded and claustrophobic.