Graphic Design

Good day to you internet! Seeing how I am the graphic designer responsible for this site and a couple of others that I play with and I have been up and down with websites for the last five years that I could at least share some perspective on web graphics. As you can tell by this site there really is not much web design involved in terms of graphics which is actually the intention of the layout of this entire blog network.

Over the years I have gone back and forth on the style of design from very fancy looking graphics heavy sites that are have been very appealing to look at (at least to me anyway ) but it always felt like the fancier the design and graphics of a site got that the more the actual content of the site itself got lost in all the prettiness.

Which is why over the last few years I have taken to the premise that less is really more when it comes to website design and the layout. I find that the sites that I do visit the most frequently are usually the ones that can a clean and simple design with an easy to understand navigational layout to them. The prime example to this would be the number one site that most everyone on the internet is familiar with that being Yahoo.

Their front page is all about the content and the navigational links to get to the stuff you are looking for as fast as possible. It’s a formula that has worked for them for years and is a big part of the reason why they have been the number one site for some many of us on the internet for a long time now. Have you noticed their site in terms of graphic design is very bland in comparison to a lot of other sites out there. They have the all important branded search bar of course and the Yahoo name other than that it’s all about content, navigational links and add on the right side of the page.

Which by the way when did the right side bar become the prime ad spot for websites? Is it my imagination or am I just seeing a lot of sites placing their ads on the right side bar now a days? I always thought the top left corner was the prime real estate of a website for ads, oh wait I must be thinking of those websites that place those ads for people to actually click on them

Anyway when it comes to a successful web design for anyone that may be just starting out keep it simple and clean would be my recommendation and don’t waste your time with all the graphics stuff unless of course that’s all you want people to come look at is your fancy design ideas. There is one graphic design piece of your website that you may want to spend some time on and that is probably the smallest but most important graphic of any website, the favicon.

Your favicon has become a very important branding picture that is a big key to getting return visitors to your site. I can not tell you how many bookmarked pages or sites I have in my web browsers top bar that I go to everyday. The ones that are a simple identifiable graphic are the ones that I revisit all the time. Part of the reason is the visual recognition that gets embedded in our brain for example you know what that little fancy primary colored G stands for or that purple and white Y! for Yahoo, how about the red/white YouTube favicon? We all know these brands and sites based on that little graphic no other explanation is needed for you to click and go back to their sites again and again. It’s a powerful little graphic that should not be ignored when it comes to graphic web site design.