zemo.co.uk

Well I have been designing websites ever since the Internet first came out, I have had my own homepage since 1996 and have done many courses on website design. Basics of Web Development and design is keep the GUI Simple! I see so many web sites which have images all over the place and about 100 different colours on the same page. The main things which you should look at when designing a website or web application are the following:

1. Keep the user interface as easy to use as possible: This includes page linking and actions which the user can do. Basically you don’t want the user to be looking really hard at the site and getting annoyed that they can’t find something.
2. Only use two fonts: this is basically mandatory to site design, I was taught this in Communications / English Literature at College. If you have any more than two fonts on a page then it gives a very amateur look to the site.
3. Only use one colour scheme: This is a very big thing. If you look at any well known website, you will see they stick to this rule. You should choose one colour scheme to work with i.e. Orange, Blue, Red, Yellow etc.
4. Don’t over-do complex objects on the site: I have designed a whole load of sites using different design methods such as image effects and flash. For some of the layouts I have designed, the layout is so complex that they have not left the drawing board so to speak, because they were overpowering to the eye (as a Developer, you think up certain ideas and until they are designed you can’t really see this).

If you stick to these basic but very informative points, you should succeed in website design!