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Casual Articles - Intelligent Design - Basic Design Guidelines
When you are starting out, choosing the right source for inbound links can be difficult to determine, especially when you have a new site and no PR.When I started writing my first blog, one of the main ways that I used to promote it was through gaining inbound links from various other blogs using articles. I had tremendous success and still do with many of my great articles. It's a very quick and efficient way to gain the best foothold in the search marketing world because of your ability to target multiple websites with similar content with very little effort. So, very shortly after I started that first blog, that's what I did. As a result, a lot of my articles ended up on various blogs. What I noticed, though, was that a few mont
Giving Design elements Room to Breathe
Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Give your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe.
Use the Grid, Luke
To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design.
The Golden Section
There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. If you take a picture,
Ordinary it is today, to hear stories of online frauds, credit card dupery, haunted PC' s forgery, pranks, crimes etc happening over the Internet! Well if you are thinking, ‘ The Internet is a virtual world and hence the implication of this all, should only be limited to that- you are truly getting over bored with your Optimism.Internet is serious business and for many, Internet Security poses a serious problem that needs to be countered to let it be safe place where e-commerce, education, entertainment- all of it can survive without ramparts. Being aware of all this, as Consumers and Users of the Internet it is obligatory for each one of us to be attentive and cautious while indulging into e-commerce activities etc online.C
There are some very basic things about design that one can learn that can vastly improve one's ability to make appealing and intelligent creations. Some of those things are:
1. Lining Things Up
2. Using Variation
3. Giving Breathing Room
4. Using the Grid
5. The Golden Section
6. Lining Things Up
Things that line up look nice. Things that are all over the place don't look nice. Of course, one must know rules to know which ones to break, so these rules are only guidelines. In general though, straight or smooth lines are appealing. Jagged and inconsistent lines are less likely to be appealing. A design with many elements lining up and a few elements that don't can create nice contrast, yet starting with things that line up is a nice easy rule for beginners.
To support these statements, lets look at examples of man-made objects. Roads, desks, walls, buildings, orange juice containers. The forms of all these objects are straight or consistent and any deviation from this norm is considered mildly repulsive. On roads, the matter is quite important to health. There is a merge under construction from the 60 East (that's how we identify freeways here in California) to the 215 South, where the turn starts at one size circumstance then abruptly veers a few degrees tighter to another sized circumstance. This slight change in curvature results in a driver having to adjust for this change with a slight, and apparently unexpected, turn of the wheel. I say apparently because road barriers prevent a driver from seeing the whole turn going into it and there are a bunch of tire marks etched up the construction barrier right at the point of the change in curvature.
Lets look at desks. Obviously straight and even desks are good for writing, fit against straight walls well and look nice, at least to me. Buildings, like desks are convenient shapes for space efficiency, map drawing, road creation, furniture and room modularity. Sure, curved buildings are beautiful too, yet the curves are often very even, and more often than not, the curve is accompanied by a straight line in another dimension.
OK, orange juice - very nice to ship little square boxes. Long rectangles make a nice canvas for marketing. If the straight lines are not straight, but crumpled or dented, chances are you won't buy that carton.
All of these are man-made objects that benefit in usability from straight or evenly curved lines. Lets take a look at nature. Trees are basically straight lines. The trunks of a redwood forest all go in one direction with remarkable consistency. (That direction is up, by the way, unless you are on the opposite side of the Earth, in which case it would be down.) Again, this is usability for the tree - a competition in height to get to the sun. Leaves - straight veins out to the tips - same idea, get some (light). Curvature of the earth - smoother than the curvature of an 8 ball. Something to do with gravity which, for existence as we know it, is quite useful.
OK, OK, but how does this apply to my intelligent ___________ (fill in the blank - web site, ad, package design, solar electric car, hair)?
For your designs, line up your stuff in straight lines. Line up images so that image edges are lined up with image edges and lines, text with text, and other elements inline with other elements. This is a fundamental design principle yet, some websites are all over the place with every image and section of text every which way.
Using Variation
Things that line up and have no variation are boring. For example, straight long roads with no turns are quite boring. The 58 zigzags across the arid Southern California desert, between mountains, with every few miles a turn. The 5 goes in one straight line for mile after mile after hour after hours. Which would you rather drive?
Likewise, with web sites, if everything lines up on the same line, the page is likely to look very boring. You can change it up with:
1. Bold Titles
2. Lists of items
3. Indented text
All these things break up the monotony of straight lines and can add rhythm to a design. Yet if there is too much breaking up of the lines, the design can become junky looking noise That is hard to read. Hey, no doubt - some people are into that.
Giving Design elements Room to Breathe
Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Give your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe.
Use the Grid, Luke
To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design.
The Golden Section
There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. If you take a picture,
1.Why give away what you could sell?That's a fair enough sort of question. If you write an ebook or report then surely you should be paid for your sharing your knowledge with others.But if you put a price on your work, especially if you are not yet recognized as an expert in your field, you will probably find your work being overlooked.Why not make it freely available to anyone who might be interested in your topic of expertise & promote yourself in the resource box you put at the bottom of your report.Allow it to be reprinted as long as your resource box is included.2.What do you give away?Take a look around your website. What
Lets look at desks. Obviously straight and even desks are good for writing, fit against straight walls well and look nice, at least to me. Buildings, like desks are convenient shapes for space efficiency, map drawing, road creation, furniture and room modularity. Sure, curved buildings are beautiful too, yet the curves are often very even, and more often than not, the curve is accompanied by a straight line in another dimension.
OK, orange juice - very nice to ship little square boxes. Long rectangles make a nice canvas for marketing. If the straight lines are not straight, but crumpled or dented, chances are you won't buy that carton.
All of these are man-made objects that benefit in usability from straight or evenly curved lines. Lets take a look at nature. Trees are basically straight lines. The trunks of a redwood forest all go in one direction with remarkable consistency. (That direction is up, by the way, unless you are on the opposite side of the Earth, in which case it would be down.) Again, this is usability for the tree - a competition in height to get to the sun. Leaves - straight veins out to the tips - same idea, get some (light). Curvature of the earth - smoother than the curvature of an 8 ball. Something to do with gravity which, for existence as we know it, is quite useful.
OK, OK, but how does this apply to my intelligent ___________ (fill in the blank - web site, ad, package design, solar electric car, hair)?
For your designs, line up your stuff in straight lines. Line up images so that image edges are lined up with image edges and lines, text with text, and other elements inline with other elements. This is a fundamental design principle yet, some websites are all over the place with every image and section of text every which way.
Using Variation
Things that line up and have no variation are boring. For example, straight long roads with no turns are quite boring. The 58 zigzags across the arid Southern California desert, between mountains, with every few miles a turn. The 5 goes in one straight line for mile after mile after hour after hours. Which would you rather drive?
Likewise, with web sites, if everything lines up on the same line, the page is likely to look very boring. You can change it up with:
1. Bold Titles
2. Lists of items
3. Indented text
All these things break up the monotony of straight lines and can add rhythm to a design. Yet if there is too much breaking up of the lines, the design can become junky looking noise That is hard to read. Hey, no doubt - some people are into that.
Giving Design elements Room to Breathe
Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Give your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe.
Use the Grid, Luke
To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design.
The Golden Section
There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. If you take a picture,
Let's be honest, this is just between us … are you one of the 10% who work purposefully to complete important tasks or one of the 90% that are frenzied and fed-up?If frenzied and fed-up sounds right, join the 90% of those with responsibility for managing people and/or processes who self-sabotage by busily engaging in non-purposeful activities, procrastinating, detaching from their work and needlessly spinning their wheels.OK, I'll be the first to admit it…I have been known to scurry around, multi-tasking away and at the end of the day I am horrified at what little I have actually accomplished.It's called, "Busy Idleness" and it affects most of us. We have an easy and abundant access to knowledge and timesaving resourc
OK, orange juice - very nice to ship little square boxes. Long rectangles make a nice canvas for marketing. If the straight lines are not straight, but crumpled or dented, chances are you won't buy that carton.
All of these are man-made objects that benefit in usability from straight or evenly curved lines. Lets take a look at nature. Trees are basically straight lines. The trunks of a redwood forest all go in one direction with remarkable consistency. (That direction is up, by the way, unless you are on the opposite side of the Earth, in which case it would be down.) Again, this is usability for the tree - a competition in height to get to the sun. Leaves - straight veins out to the tips - same idea, get some (light). Curvature of the earth - smoother than the curvature of an 8 ball. Something to do with gravity which, for existence as we know it, is quite useful.
OK, OK, but how does this apply to my intelligent ___________ (fill in the blank - web site, ad, package design, solar electric car, hair)?
For your designs, line up your stuff in straight lines. Line up images so that image edges are lined up with image edges and lines, text with text, and other elements inline with other elements. This is a fundamental design principle yet, some websites are all over the place with every image and section of text every which way.
Using Variation
Things that line up and have no variation are boring. For example, straight long roads with no turns are quite boring. The 58 zigzags across the arid Southern California desert, between mountains, with every few miles a turn. The 5 goes in one straight line for mile after mile after hour after hours. Which would you rather drive?
Likewise, with web sites, if everything lines up on the same line, the page is likely to look very boring. You can change it up with:
1. Bold Titles
2. Lists of items
3. Indented text
All these things break up the monotony of straight lines and can add rhythm to a design. Yet if there is too much breaking up of the lines, the design can become junky looking noise That is hard to read. Hey, no doubt - some people are into that.
Giving Design elements Room to Breathe
Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Give your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe.
Use the Grid, Luke
To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design.
The Golden Section
There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. If you take a picture,
Once working and focused in tune with what they do best, your people are freed up to deliver their very best performances. They encourage others to work to their strengths too. Thus, each is far more effective. By recognising this in each other, there is another benefit. Everyone realises the value that differences can bring to the team, business or organisation. And that is valued - people work together much more freely.So, by challenging each other to be honest about what others can do better than they can, all benefit. Everyone is enabled to deliver what they do best, and by elevating them to work together, the bond grows as each values the performances where they work best.In their excellent book, “Now
For your designs, line up your stuff in straight lines. Line up images so that image edges are lined up with image edges and lines, text with text, and other elements inline with other elements. This is a fundamental design principle yet, some websites are all over the place with every image and section of text every which way.
Using Variation
Things that line up and have no variation are boring. For example, straight long roads with no turns are quite boring. The 58 zigzags across the arid Southern California desert, between mountains, with every few miles a turn. The 5 goes in one straight line for mile after mile after hour after hours. Which would you rather drive?
Likewise, with web sites, if everything lines up on the same line, the page is likely to look very boring. You can change it up with:
1. Bold Titles
2. Lists of items
3. Indented text
All these things break up the monotony of straight lines and can add rhythm to a design. Yet if there is too much breaking up of the lines, the design can become junky looking noise That is hard to read. Hey, no doubt - some people are into that.
Giving Design elements Room to Breathe
Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Give your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe.
Use the Grid, Luke
To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design.
The Golden Section
There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. If you take a picture,
Everyone wants to increase traffic to their sites. In the pursuit of more traffic you will come across many gimmicks on the internet that will promise the world but leave you very little. In this article I’d like to share with you just a few proven ways to generate targeted traffic to your website. These are methods that have been tested over the years and have been proven to work.The first method and my most favorite method to drive targeted traffic is to write articles. The reason why I like article writing is the fact that it doesn’t cost any money to implement. All it takes is a little time and some effort. If you can dedicate some time and have the ability to put a sentence or two together then writing articles can be a great
Giving Design elements Room to Breathe
Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Give your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe.
Use the Grid, Luke
To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design.
The Golden Section
There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. If you take a picture, it just happens to look real nice if you show a little more than two thirds sky. The same applies to many forms of composition. This golden section has some relation to basic geometry that seems to resonate with a human's sense of beauty.
Conclusion
When designing things, remember: Line things up, but don't get boring. Use grids to line things up. The golden section looks nice. Peace.
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