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The Paradox of Design and How to Break It

Under the notion of today's fashionable status quo it has become readily apparent that looks can be everything, even permeating my thoughts as an adolescent where I can recall a line in an Iron Man comic book where a bystander asks (in regards to Iron Man himself) "Does the suit make the man, or the man the suit?" and dare I say it, we see the website as the same.

I've seen countless horribly designed websites that are supposedly serving incredibly run and notable companies and it's the paradox of design that leaves me confused and astonished and it goes like this: A great company should have an incredibly designed website. But, I've learned that a website is supposed to match the brand of the company, help build its image and remain congruent with the overall stratagem of the organization.

As I can attribute first hand experience to this paradox, we've undergone numerous projects and proposals where the client was looking to have the fanciest website, a gorgeous doorway page, or more images than you can shake a stick at and not just any stick. But, a ergonomically designed shaking stick.

If you're reading this with the idea that a website needs to be fancier than a 1960's jet setting socialite I'm here to tell you that you couldn't be further from the truth!

The website needs to be simple enough to for the user understand exactly their looking at with the first two seconds. Nothing is more annoying for the average Internet user than going to the website of interest and having to wait for something to load, trying to find the page you want that's hidden by mystery meat navigation , or having to go through more layers of a drop down menu than archaeologists go through strata layers.

You need to keep the amount of images to a minimum.

I'm a firm believer in keeping the number of images to a bare minimum, and I only advocate the use of an image if it's going to provide the utmost use in conveying a distinct and necessary message to the website user.

Keep things as bright and clean looking as possible

A website needs to be able to provide a bright and illuminating outlook on whatever content its presenting unless it's in your business's best interest to keep it looking as dark as possible (such as horror or criminal genres). I prefer to keep the overall background white or extremely bright and keep the text lightly contrasting to the white background. Therefore instead of using white backgrounds and black text I opt for dark gray text or dark blues/ dark reds, it'll provide greater depth to your website and it'll keep your users from growing tired of the black and white color scheme they've grown so sick of.

And that's it for now, by focusing on usability and ease of understanding your website will do terribly well in today's highly competitive online world. Ciao.