Web Design Post

For my website, simplicity is what I'm striving for. Although I do wish that I had the skills to do some fancier styles, I'm just keeping it simple. As the article stresses as the main point, simple goes a long way. I believe that I have achieved that through my website design. The only colors that I'm using are red, black, and white. I also have a picture of a temple in Japan in black and white. The text is mainly white, except for when you hover over the link and are on the page, the text will be red. I feel that through my design, you can get a lot from me based on how I have everything arranged and the graphic that I chose. I love Japanese culture, so the picture gives it away but at the same time it doesn't. I also like the color combination of red, black, and white. Also, red and black are my top favorite colors. People wouldn't seem to get this right from viewing the page, but right there it shows them a lot about myself without really using any words to explain myself.

From reading the article and viewing the samples of the "bad designs", I can see why simplicity goes a long way. If you have a lot of graphics or colors, people are going to be all over the place on your website that they won't even think about your content seeing that they are distracted by everything else. It's better to just keep things simple so that people can follow and understand your website better.

The article mentions another point: navigation. My navigation is pretty simple as well. It's also easy to follow and navigate through when the links become active. The red text gives away the simple navigation. Red is such a bright color that people are attracted to and it's a strong enough color to show viewers where they are when navigating the site. When someone is on the contact page, the contact link will be red, while the other navigation links will be white.

The use of columns is another feature that the article mentioned. Although I don't have columns on my website design, using columns (the right way) can be a great organization tool if you have a lot of content to put on your website. I decided not to use columns because I personally do not like the way most columns look on websites. I'm not sure if it's just the columns that I've seen on sites, but sometimes columns can really clutter a website and it doesn't look aesthetically pleasing. There really is a right and wrong way to do columns on a website (as far as I'm concerned).

The last feature that I used on my blog was bigger text. I tried to make the text pop out and also make it easier to read. The text is also bolded. For my text on the top of the page, I used a 55pt font and the Bell Gothic text. I used the Bell Gothic text because it seemed like a text that would be very easy for viewers to read. Text is important on the site because you do have to have words on the screen, but it can also be a design tool. If you have a certain text, people are more drawn to it. People are not going to appreciate someone having 12pt font in a fancy, non-readable font. It's just best to keep it simple.