Color in Web Design

Color in web design is something just as, if not more important than all other layout decisions. It can be extremely pertinent to the users decision concerning the credibility of your site, how attractive it is and therefore how interested the user becomes, and how it is used to highlight focus areas. 

There are many parts of your site's layout that all work together to create an intriguing and informative site. However, if just one of those pieces are missing, the whole structure that you spent time to put together will collapse. Elements of importance include typography, color, shape, orientation to the users' perspective, etc. Every one of those pieces count. You can have great typography and layout, but if you make bad or obnoxious color choices, your presentation immediately loses brownie points.

For example, say we take a look at webmd.com:

The light blue tones convey a comfortable atmosphere; This is similar to the blue theme that you see in hospitals and doctor's offices. 

However, if we took the same website and changed the colors to an obnoxious bright pink and green theme, the site not only becomes less credible, it also becomes a lot less comfortable. In my opinion, I'd also have a much harder time focusing on the content.

So all in all, when building a website, we must learn to take everything into account design wise and give each element an equal amount of planning and thought; If we spend enough time planning and executing with care, it may make all the difference in the long run!

In creating this blog, I have come to realize how far some things have advanced since the last time I looked at them. Since Google has bought blogger, the interface has expanded much farther. You can now edit the raw HTML and CSS manually, to customize to your liking. I will definitely be doing this within the next week in order to really make the blog my own.

This past week's class has also led me to realize that there are definitely easier ways to go about certain things. In my development experience, I have traditionally had the mindset that as long as it works, it is good. However, I have worked with many languages from HTML and CSS to jQuery and PHP; This thought of mine does not work, especially for very extensive languages. 

In class this week, I saw an example of a background animation that I would have previously figured would only be able to be built using a javascript based language. This instance, however, was built using only HTML5 and CSS3. 

I suppose the biggest takeaway from this week's classes is that the more up to date you are with you languages, the better they can serve you ( and save you lots of time! ).