Designing Interfaces

THE BASICS OF VISUAL DESIGN

As you looked at the Zen Garden examples, you might have observed how they achieve such different impressions—a page's color scheme may cause you to either smile or cringe, for example. Using these examples as a touchstone, we can talk about some of the principles of good visual design.

You might recall that we've already covered some visual design principles in Chapter 4, Layout, and Chapter 6, Information Graphics. Those chapters explored how the human visual system responds cognitively to certain inputs. The time it takes for someone to click on an orange square out of a field of blue squares, for example, doesn't depend upon a user's aesthetic sense or cultural expectations.

But now we're talking about emotional and visceral reactions—does a single orange square add tension, brightness, balance, or nothing at all to a design? The answer depends on so many factors that it's genuinely hard to get it "right" without a lot of practice. The cognitive aspects of these design choices certainly play a part; for starters, you can make a page hard or easy to read (a cognitive effect). But each person is unique. Each person has a different history of experiences, associations, and preferences; and each person is part of a culture that imposes its own meanings on color, typography, and imagery.

Furthermore, the context of the design affects the user's response. Users see your design as a part of a genre (such as office applications, games, or e-commerce sites), ...