Year 13 Media Studies Web Design
Because we want your web sites to look fantastic we've provided you with some excellent help and advice on building them. Please follow the links:
Aims | Do's | Dont's | Tips | Examples | Bands and Tourism
Our main aim is quite simply to create web pages
of unsurpassed beauty and clarity which are
gems of excellence!
Some guiding principles:
- Clarity
We want our readers to understand what our pages are about, and how to use them - without the need for mental gymnastics. - Consistency
Maintain a consistent style from page to page in a site and your visitors will feel happier - Keep navigation elements in the same place on each page
- Keep a similar scheme of fonts and colours - so they know they are still in the same site.
- Orientation
It is a good idea to keep users informed of where they are - and how to get back to where they came from. - Speed
We live in an increasingly impatient world where people don't want to wait more than about 8 seconds for a web page, so pages which work faster will succeed.
- Check that your page looks good in various screen sizes.
- Give the page a sensible title - it appears in the user's list of favourites
- Think about how easy it will be to update the page at a later date (links in a circle might be a nightmare if the number of links changes!)
- Give the visitor a way to get back to where they came from - a "home" link is useful.
- Make it obvious what they should click to get to somewhere interesting - and make it clear where it will take them.
- Think about the organisation of the whole site - can you get to related information within 3 clicks?
- Keep it simple - and keep it fast! - Keep images small, especially on pages which are 'navigation pages'.
- Avoid too many fonts and font sizes, too many colour changes and too many different ways of formatting text.
- Keep text and background in sufficient contrast - if it is hard to read, then visitors simply will not bother to read it!
- Don't use an effect on a web page just because you know how to do it! - only use an effect if it serves a useful purpose.
- Don't use weird fonts unless you are sure that they will be available on every PC used to view the page - it might look great on the PC you created it on, but if the viewer has to see it in Times New Roman, it might be a lot less effective.
- Avoid lines of text which go the full width of the screen - too hard to read after a few lines.
- Avoid large amounts of text which are bold, italic, capitalised or centred - these things are great for emphasis, but loose the effect if over-used.
- Only use animated images for very special effects - things which continually move on the page soon get to be irritating and distract the eye. They might attract the visitor the first time they see them, but soon lose that effect.
- Don't use long filenames containing spaces or other "funny" characters. Windows allows them, but the look terrible in web addresses. Remember that people sometimes have to type addresses into the address bar - and some people do not know how to type characters like ~ ...
- People tend to find things faster if links are arranged in columns rather than rows.
- Try to stick to fairly standard fonts - the visitor may not have many fonts installed.
- Don't use Flash or images as the only means of navigation - users with no graphics will be stranded!
- Dark text on light backgrounds works best for legibility.
- "Fussy" backgrounds are not good for text readability.
- Avoid text lines which are too long - use wide margins or tables to break long lines.
- Children seem to find sans-serif fonts easier to read than serif fonts.
- Modern users of web sites tend to ignore animated graphics (especially at the top of the page) - because they are associated with advertising banners.
- Frames tend to confuse people, and are generally poisonous unless used really well.
- The most common complaints about web sites are:
- not being able to find specific information,
- using websites that are confusing,
- web sites with slow download time,
- links that do not work
- pop-up windows and animated adverts
- horizontal scrolling is a real pain - so check that your layout is not too wide on narrow screens.
- sites like this are worth a look for ideas: www.37signals.com/design.php
- here's an excellent HTML colour chart: www.hypersolutions.org/pages/rgbhex.html
Have a look at these - and evaluate
them
NB: Most of these are how NOT to design a web site. One or two of them are very good but most are lacking in design and navigation.
http://www.htmlguru.com/guru.html
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/earthpulse/
http://www.airmall.com/home.htm
http://www.swedishmatch.com/eng/
http://academic.bowdoin.edu/zen/
http://historywired.si.edu/index.html
http://www.microsoft.com/careers/design/workMSN.htm
http://scienceworks.museum.vic.gov.au/
http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/home.html
http://www.surfscranton.com/ontheweb/content.htm
Your web site will based on either a Rock/Pop band or tourism. Here we're going to have a look at examples of both categories to give us some idea of what people involved in building such sites are doing. Remember, the people who have built these sites know who their target audience is. That's the key when designing your sites - know your audience and appeal to them.
Bands
These are the official web sites of well-known rock/pop bands. Check out the similarities and differences in them. Also have a look at any that you know of yourself.
| www.islandrecords.com/bonjovi | www.limpbizkit.com | |
| www.atomickitten.co.uk | www.led-zeppelin.com | www.itv.com/popidol |
| www.cheeky-girls.com | www.thebeatles.com |
Tourism
The following are official tourist information web sites. Again, you will notice how they all differ and yet also have similarities. To find the tourist web site of anywhere in the world just type that place name into Google and hit ‘search’.
| www.visitlondon.com |
We hope you find this advice helpful. Good luck with your web sites.
Back to Media Studies | Back to English Homepage