Chapter 11. Style: Defining Visual Appearance

“There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.”

Ansel Adams

The penultimate layer of the interface, Layer 8: Style, contains the application’s visual details and graphic expression. The elements most people expect to see at the beginning—fonts, colors, imagery, icons, and logos—finally make their appearance here near the end. In most Web applications, the primary role of the Style layer is to support the more fundamental components of the design, described in the previous layers. Thanks to the power and persuasion of visual communication, however, the Style layer has the potential to exert significant influence on the user’s overall experience. In the context of a Web application ...

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