Posts Tagged ‘palette’

Posted on January 29, 2009 - by Khaled

The Beauty and the Web: Thoughts about the importance of the visual aspect in Graphic and Web Design

This was a part of a longer article but it got righteously chunked from it by the publisher to whom I submitted the paper. I chose to post it here as it contains some points that deserve to be shared, and probably discussed, with you.

Nowadays it is obvious that images are very important for humans. On the net Images and graphical interface and presentation are very important components of most of the websites.

Having a well designed site with attractive images that can express a given message will make a huge difference for your visitors and that will probably lead them to have a better opinion about your site and you. The internet is becoming more and more visual, people are making sales or hiring decisions based on the looks and how much your products (and images) can be incorporated and nice to see in their daily life.

So even if you’re a top notch programmer or developer you will need a nice usable front-end! You can have the best of the applications developed but you won’t go far if it does not look good or if it is not useable! If you can’t do it yourself seek help. Graphic designer, artists, User experience designers (UX), Human-computer interaction (HCI) guys are just there for this.

Of course there are multiple definitions and interpretations about beauty and beauty in Graphic/Web Design. But there are simple rules to always respect. For some Graphic design is a type of art while for others it is just a tool or a medium to embellish web sites, web applications, software or documents and to guide the consumer while using them.

Almost everywhere and at anytime visual images are there trying to drag our attention and to persuade us of something! Or may be to amuse and impress us! And any Graphic or artistic web designer try to communicate a message through their production and through a given style they chose.
Another important point is the choice of the right colors palette for the right production whether it is a Web site, a print document or anything else. Colors are very important as they mean something! Yes colors are significant! Just remember that even the flowers colors mean different feelings and mind-sets. The same rule applies for Web and Graphic design. Choose the right color for the right product! Do your research in this field. Don’t create dark Web sites for young teenage girls! Yet don’t create flashy pink business cards for a CEO of a big company! I know I am pushing it to the limit but this is just to caricaturize the mistakes that can be committed when it comes to choosing the right colors.

Try to always be creative and innovative and to align your elements carefully to render something that is coherent and “beautiful” to see.
Just try to put as much time on your images and graphics as you put on your copy and texts. This will have a concrete effect on the way you are perceived by your visitors and potential clients.

The above posters about graphic design are taken from Veerle’s Graphic design poster competition.
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Posted on December 18, 2008 - by Khaled

Weather & Web Design

Today is a rainy cold day… The sky is dark and gloomy. As I have a big thin glass window in front of me it seemed to me as if the stormy weather colors were sneaking inside my office, and by the way this is my first winter in this office with this huge window that gave me the impression to be seating on the dark clouds…

This just happened as I was looking for some inspiration to design a new graphic theme for a joomla web site. The general topic of the site is about Nature, wild life and environment… Checking out my Gmail box themed with the “Bus Stop” design that turned into its ‘rainy’ version based on my location gave me a nice idea to design different themes for this web site that will be displayed according to the weather of the visitor’s location… I proposed this to the client via a phone call and he really liked the concept…

Funny enough, when I opened Photoshop to start a design mock up and pick up color palettes; I instinctively started with a rainy theme… It was the easiest palette to create and it probably has the nicest colors… At least that’s what the other Graphic designers of my company thought…

This is the first time I feel such a strong connection between Web Design and the elements surrounding you especially the weather. Of course I, sometimes, seek specific inspiration from different sources according to the theme or the design element I am working on including going out to some specific places or browsing some given web sites or reading/viewing some magazines, books or photo albums but it is usually necessary to take some time and think about ideas and sketch some of them on paper… So the connection is not as obvious as it was today and the creation of the mock up (which turned out to be quite nice and close to a final design) and the choice of the palette were never easier?!! Is it the window? Or is it the fact that I am producing less during the year as I am a bit more focused on tasks like Sales, marketing, Project management and human resources recruitment… I can’t really tell but I believe that today’s rainy weather was really useful to come up with this design and to discover tangibly this existing and interesting relationship between Web design and nature element like the weather… It was like a flawless process this time…

A hot cup of kopi luwak coffee is good idea for now…