Notes Design

Your website represents your brand. New visitors will form a first impression of your service or product within seconds of arriving at your website, and the visuals, layout and aesthetic will play a large role in shaping that impression.

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Last week we presented the first results of our study of top blogs. As promised, this week we publish the second part of the survey, including further findings and problem solutions we have found out during the study. In the first part we discussed layout design and typographic settings. What remains to be covered are the navigation design, information architecture, advertisements and functionality (RSS-feeds, tag clouds, pagination etc.).

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By using vivid images designers can draw user's attention, communicate a message quickly and effectively and leave a memorable first impression. Practically all websites use images in their design, but few use vivid images to achieve maximum results. What is a vivid image? A simple definition is an image or photo that is striking, shocking, intriguing, interesting, beautiful or sexy (we'll be looking at plenty of examples below). It causes a reaction from the senses of visitors that an average image would not.

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Textures and patterns are used more often than one may think. The reason why we don't see them is because they usually remain in the background, supporting the overall design, replacing a standard background color and creating a more inviting atmosphere. But they almost never stand out. Used primarily for background images, they need to fit to the overall design making the content easier to perceive.

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