The interactive quality of the web is one of the main features that sets it apart from other mediums. Interaction means allowing the users to actively engage with the world you have created on your site, with text, images, sounds and animations. It can be everything from simple feedback when they move their mouse over a link, to a complex interactive story.
As with any design project, typography plays a vital role in successfully communicating your ideas. Refer to your client’s Corporate Identity or Brand Guidelines - very often a pre-selected typeface at a range of different weights and point sizes will have been defined in order to maintain the integrity of the brand.
In the case where no guidelines have been specified, a wider range of typefaces can be explored. For example, sometimes a highly stylized typeface when used in moderation can enrich and complement the elements within a sites layout.
Colour is a form of communication. If you use it with care and love, colour can be one of your strongest assets of communication. Colour can provoke all manner of emotion. It can make people happy, sad or even enrage! It’s a matter of precision. Think of colour as a form of music… some songs are sad, some hard to describe and some can move mountains. Colour for websites is what music is to films.
Animated Navigation
Back in the day (the late 90’s to be precise) it was quite easy for a web designer to get his audience salivating with a few simple mouseover effects on his menu items. A bit of JavaScript did the trick nicely!
Those hey days of early web sorcery are over since Flash stepped into the ring. Nowadays a wide variety of visual effects can be achieved by the means of the “timeline” and programmed transitions that can even include audio and video. Smart mathematics allow us to create complex navigational systems. There are hardly any technical boundaries. The only limitation is the web designer’s own imagination.
Horizontal Naigation
Navigation can singularly make or break a site. It is responsible for the success of the user’s interaction; if they enjoy using it they will keep coming back. If they don’t, you will never see them again. It should form the backbone to any content-rich site and the starting point for the organisation and architecture of your build.
