Principles of Website Design

The main page of TAMUCC follows many of the basic elements of visual design that is detailed on the article, Visual Design Basics. The shapes that it utilizes keeps the uniformity throughout. It uses rectangles, which makes sense because they are mainly used for images and for text boxes to offer additional information about the pictures. There are lines that draw attention to the top stories and news. What really keeps the site clean is the color scheme. In addition to the other basic elements mentioned, everything is really simple and clean and sticking with the blue and white theme keeps is simple and easy on the eyes.

There is a sense of balance to the front page. Everything falls within its perimeters and different sections maintain that balance that we read about on Visual Design and Usability Yellow Brick Road. It also displays important information on the page in a hierarchal manner to keep the flow of information as it pertains to the user. Keeping in mind the dominance aspect that we read about, the focal point is the banner that we see when we pull up the main page. The banner has the most important information that could be what the user is looking for and then directly below that, we see the Top Stories and More News sections, which would, again, follow this order of importance.

Based on what we learned from reading, Color Theory for Designers, Part1: The Meaning of Color, TAMUCC’s main page does not seem to fall into this theory. This is simply because it follows the school colors, rather than the theory that blue produces the feelings of calmness or sadness. If anything, it could fall in lines with producing the feeling of responsibility, however I don’t think that is why the blue was chosen.