Topic 8: Screen Design
Some Web pages have an attractive and appealing
appearance and convey their information easily while
others can look questionable and be very hard to use.
Screen design describes the process of designing the
layout and appearance of a Web page so that it is
attractive and engaging to the reader and easy to use.
Screen design is both a science and an art that uses
judgments and rules in its practice.
Fig 8.1 www.penfolds.com.au: An attractive and engaging
screen design
The visuals in a Web site are often considered to be the
most important elements in terms of creating an
appealing and attractive site. Clever designers,
however, often use the textual elements as part of the
visual design. According to some theorists, visuals are
remembered better than words because visuals are
more likely to be encoded redundantly than words.
Specifically, words, sentences, and paragraphs that are
highly imaginable are recalled better than those which
are not. It is a known fact that the learning of concrete
concepts precedes the learning of abstract concepts.
This is because concrete concepts are stored as images
whereas abstract concepts are stored as verbal
representations.
Visual literacy is an acquired competency in visual
expression and communication that involves insights
and skills no less disciplined than those required for
proficiency in engineering and construction. In olden
days, the Bible was commonly explained to people
through paintings and imagery, an action that led to a
wide variety of famous art ad paintings, many of which
were originally designed for functional more than
aesthetic purposes.
The Web abounds with screen designs that are good
and bad. Many writers suggest that people with the
best marketing sense are those selling alcohol and beer
and their television advertisements live up to this
reputation. Their Web sites usually do as well.
Some companies selling a diverse range of products
fare less well when it comes to the design and delivery
of their Web sites. Often the Web site, whilst
achieving some form of functional utility, is lacking in
design and presents a face to the public that is less
attractive and engaging than might otherwise be used.
Fig 8.3 Imagery as a means of communicaton. Cappella
degli Scrovegni painted by Giotto in Padova
8.2. Typographical elements
Fig 8.2: www.telstra.com: A busy Web site providing a
range of links to products and services
Topic 9: Screen Design
Screen design is a modern day visual competency that
is becoming more and more important as use of the
Wed develops. Screen design, as the name suggests, is
design that is intended for digital computer screens.
More recently as the shape and size of computers
changes, visual design also encompasses design
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