Good designs are a bunch of CRAP.

This entry was posted on September 12, 2007

Contrast

Contrast is a very important aspect of any design. Contrast is the difference between what makes something eyecatching and what makes something dull.

You can add contrast to your design by using different colours, by making certain words bold, by using italics, or by typing in CAPITALS. However, adding too much contrast has the effect of not making things contrasted at all. A large paragraph with certain words in CAPITALS has more punch than a paragraph that’s typed all in capitals.

Contrast is also important with the colours you use. Baby pink text on a lilac background is a good example of bad contrast. Black text on a white background is a good example of good contrast.

Repetition

Repetition is good. Repetition is good. Not in your text (because that’s a sign of old age as well as a waste of words) but in your design. Use as few fonts as possible - if you have to / want to use more than one, try and use the same font for your main bodies of text and use a different for titles.

If the first h3 tag on your page is 120% bright green tahoma, make sure all your h3 tags are 120% bright green tahoma. This repetition adds a sense of consistency. Use the same design for all your pages. Don’t do unexpected things to your visitor!

Repetition helps things to “flow”. If I have one paragraph in baby pink georgia, the next in lime verdana, and the third in orange times new roman, you’re going to be left wondering what the hell has happened to my site.

Alignment

Text and images on your site need to look “just so”. For large bodies of text, this usually means aligning text to the left. This not only makes the text “look neater”, it also improves the readability. Whilst justifying the text may make the left side and the right side “look neater”, it makes the text harder to read because it messes with the spacing. Messing is not good!

Centred text is a favourite trick for novices to use, but there has to be a valid reason why the <center> HTML tag is now deprecated, right? Humans weren’t built to read large chunks of centred text - our eyes just don’t function that way.

The way you align objects can also add to contrast (see above). You’ll often see blockquotes indented slightly - this uses alignment to help contrast the blockquote against the rest of the text.

Proximity

From dictionary.com

proximity. noun. the property of being close together.

Things that should be near each other need to be placed near each other. This means keeping your navigational links all together rather than dotted all over the page. Keep your sidebar’s elements all in one place. Put your contact details near your copyright statement. Keep your blog entry’s meta details near the title of your entry.

Visitors follow information logically. Once they’re read, say, your blog entry’s title, they expect to see information on when the entry was published, etc. Don’t try and confuse your visitors!

There we have it. A brief explanation of the CRAP theory. The first step to a brilliant design is a bunch of CRAP. And for those of you who don’t like the word “crap”, you can of course change it to “CARP”.

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Look! No Georgia!

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I’m not happy with the theme I made. The sidebar bugged me and I noticed a problem with the comments. So, until I fix it / make a new one, you get a premade! Yay for plug and play themes.

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A dream…

This entry was posted on September 11, 2007

Lene dreams a lot, and I do too. Last night I had a dream about Andy Hurley, the drummer from Fall Out Boy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had dreams about celebrities before, but this one was different. This particular dream was so bizarrely real I can still remember it six hours later (which is unusual for me).

In this dream I was at a rock concert in a tiny club. It was a strange set-up in that there was no moshing going on, and the standing was upstairs while the seated was downstairs.

I somehow managed to end up downstairs but the only free seat was right in front of where Fall Out Boy were sat. Anyway, when the band came on everyone stood up and was dancing / jumping / whatever.

I just remember feeling Andy’s hands on my shoulders, which was the strangest thing. I can’t really put it into words, just… wow. Why the hell would I dream about Andy Hurley’s hands on my shoulders?

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