The Elements of Web Design

The elements of website designing are the buildingTexture- Texture in website designing refers to a
blocks constituting a designed webpage. If you aimfeel of the surface of the webpage and is the tactile
to create effective and powerful web pages, it ispart of the elements of web-design. Although
crucial for you to have an in-depth understanding oftexture of a webpage is visual, you are able to
the five basic elements, fundamental to web-pagegenerate an illusion of smoothness/roughness
designing.hardness or softness through introducing natural or
These five elements are:o Lines and line workoartificial textures in your design. Texture in
Shapeo Textureo Coloro Directionweb-design is applied in several ways; e.g. through
How lines figure in the web page design- Lines aresuitably textured backgrounds, special emphasis or by
basic elements of web designing that are used tousing stylized design features such as etchings or
add style. Along with contributing to style, lines serveengravings. Incorporating texture in web-pages
to enhance readability and comprehension of a design.through background images is the most commonly
They can be used either as a border around anused technique. You must however, remember that
element or as a divider to separate differenteven when you do not use a special texture
elements. Lines can also be used as decorations orbackground, things may still possess an approximate
for accentuating contours around elements.texture. For example, images without backgrounds
Shapes in web-designing- Shapes as basic designwill have the texture of the images. Moreover,
elements are made up of closed contours and/or byseveral elements present on a page provide a
placing 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional objects in thecombination to present a textured look.
design. Shapes can be categorized into three basicColor- Color is one design element to which all
types: geometric, natural and abstract. They are usedwebsite designers pay the most attention. However,
to convey meaning, organize information and can becolor is not an essential element of designing. The
used in several other ways also. For example, theybest way is to create a design in black and white and
can serve to add interest, sustain interest, guide eyelater on add color in bits to enhance design effects.
direction around the design and help organizeColor is used in designs, in images, backgrounds, text
separate elements in the design. Geometric shapes inforegrounds and accents. While in the foreground,
design consist of rectangles, squares, circles, trianglescolors are used in fonts and text color, in the
and diamonds and are usually created by layout andbackground color is used to change the background
CSS. Natural shapes, as the name suggests areof the element in the foreground. Color is also applied
those, which are commonly found in nature such asto borders around elements. It is added to web
trees, ponds, puddles and leaves etc. Abstractpages through images/photographs. For flat color GIF
shapes refer to those, which though possessing aimages and for photographic and multi-color JPEG
recognizable form are in fact, not real. For example, aimages are used.
stick figure drawing of a horse is an abstract shapeDirection- this is one of the most important aspects
different from that of the picture of a real horse,of web-design. An intelligently designed site
which constitutes a natural shape. Abstract shapesincorporates a sense of direction across the design,
are added in web-designs by using images. Somemeant to deliberately lead the visitor's eye to
examples of abstract shapes are alphabet glyphs,whatever the designer wants the viewer to see.
icons, symbols etc.Direction can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal.