1. What are the latest trends in design for web sites?
The trend is leaning toward designing around how it will look like on mobile. In fact many designs are first created for mobile, and then adapted to desktop version. Mobile readiness is paramount and so many elements are utilizing design structure that best look in a vertical format. Gone are the days of FLASH intros, multiple usages of JavaScript rollovers or expandable images. The audience brain makes decisions in just a 20th of a second of viewing a webpage. If people believe a website looks good, then this positive quality will spread to other areas – such as your content.
2. What colour scheme should I use, font styles and sizes?
It’s best that you keep your audience in mind to determine colour and font styles. Some larger font for some areas help draw attention to it, but it should be used sparingly, the same with usage of italics, and bold. Rule of thumb is not to use more than 2 font styles. Best read font style on screen is Verdana/Geneva. More corporate sites look
3. Why are most sites so boxy looking?
The interface structure is rectangle in shape, however, with the larger screens now, designers have more flexibility to creating effects that are showing designs outside of the rectangle, so it doesn’t look so boxy, as well we are seeing trends move more into rounded corners, abstract art and pop-up figures created in FLASH that give more dynamic feel.
4. Are there any design factors I should consider for designing a search friendly site?
There are a few elements that can affect the search engines ability to access your site, including the design. Heavy usage of graphics without using ALT tags (image identifiers in the code), text graphics will also not show information for indexing. A complete site developed in FLASH is also not search engine friendly.
5. Why can’t I use fancy fonts for the site, my developer said that it isn’t wise to do so?
This is old news now, especially when you use Google fonts. Ask your developer to set you up with Google fonts and you will have a much wider choice. Try not to use too many font styles and types and colours. Your developer can set up a global and element specific style sheets that make it easier for you when you are editing your content.
