Designing the First Impression

You know what they say about first impressions, right? That they can last a lifetime? Yeah, that's true on the Web as well. But not enough sites are designed with this in mind.

Steve Jobs, the fearless leader of Apple, is rumoured to be obsessed with first impressions, which could explain why the first impressions of apple products are always so gripping.

Opening up a new MacBook Pro, for example, is designed to make one's mouth water. First, the packaging creates a sense of anticipation and surprise. And once the box is open and the MacBook has found its way to your desk, the start-up process is engaging from the first moment, welcoming you in several languages with a lively animation, and getting you set up against a backdrop of elegant imagery and attention to detail that makes the process feel effortless.

Translating this to the Web is not easy, but establishing an aesthetically pleasing and compelling page design is an essential part of our job.

Discovering the Layout

You start the design by attempting to discover the layout, the most basic element of a page design.

I say discover because the layout of a page is not always up to the designer. When I think about page layouts, I often feel like the painter Bob Ross, who was famous for turning splotches of paint in his rich landscapes into "happy trees," always letting the painting tell him what to do next instead of the other way around.

See, you don't choose a page layout. It chooses you.

It's the result of the need to organise content, and it tends to take shape on its own. Once you gather up all the requirments for a page and get the content nailed down, your job is to chip away at the block of plaster until the sculpture emerges.

Guiding the Eye

In Western cultures, the eye tends to move from the upper-left to the bottom-right of a given layout, as though a page design has gravity. This is because Westerners read from left to right and from top to bottom, and the eye moves naturally in this downward path as a result. Layouts that support this diagonal balance are generally considered examples of good design.

The diagonal balance pattern is achieved simply by using visual elements to create an imaginary line for the eye to follow that moves diagonally from the upper-left to the bottom-right of a layout.

Use Colour to Draw Attention

Colour is a fantastic way to draw the eye to specific elements as well, particularly when the colour contrasts against the other elements of the page. Human beings are hardwired to notice differences, so a little dab of colour can go a long way toward drawing the eye straight to very specific things on a page.

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