Web Design Garage

Chapter 1. Designing to Aid Navigation

Design on the Web isn't really about giving your visitors something pretty to look at. It plays a more important role: creating a sense of place. A good design unifies the pages of your site by making them look like they belong together. The design gives you the “siteness” of the site, in other words. It draws a border around your particular stake on the Web and says, “This stuff goes together.”

You achieve this sense of place by using design elements consistently throughout your site. Things like the layout, color scheme, and text style of your pages should hang together visually. If every page of your site uses different design conventions, no matter how effective these individual designs may be, you create ...