10 Web Design Rules That You Can Break

Over the years, web design and design has evolved immensely. As a result of this evolvement, rules have been established to ensure consistency has remained in design.

Why were these rules created? Many web creators started to abuse design principles without giving a thought to the users of their created websites.  However rules are meant to be broken and that goes without saying, especially if after breaking the rules the finished website is truly amazing.

This article covers the 10 rules that can be broken to suit your design requirements.

Rule #1: Bye bye horizontal scroll bar

How many mice do you know of that have a horizontal scroll wheel to make them move? The answer would be none, unless it the sort that you use with a computer. Although these types of mice have a scroll wheel it is vertical and not horizontal which makes it difficult to scroll left and right. It is just a little annoying when you have to drag the mouse to the bottom of the browser to click the scroll bar to just read the last word in the sentence.

Rule #2: Don’t overdo it with font faces

Keep your typeset simple. If you start mixing up fonts then your visitor will become overwhelmed with what they see on screen. Each font has its own personality and crowding a website with fonts can be chaotic and each font will cramp the other font’s style.
If you want to use more than one font your design has to be very much text focused with other areas of your design less busy.

Rule #3: Take it easy on your colours

So how do you distinguish professional designers from the fresh out of university designers? That is simple. A design that is wild with colour is the answer. Professional designers will go all out using the boldest of colours creating a loud mix. However, a designer just starting out will play it safe and use soft colours to create a design that is not to o hard on the eyes. However, the danger here is that their finished design will look lifeless.

Rule #4: It must be obvious what your website is trying to achieve

New designers on the block are often told that a website design should tell the viewer instantly what it is about before they even read the content.

For any large corporation, design is paramount because this is what promotes their brand awareness. However, for the smaller businesses they need to forward think and be smart on how they will attract visitors. Teasing visitors with snippets of information will always make them come back for more.  Using this teasing technique is a great way of keeping visitors on your site.

Rule #5: Don’t over complicate the navigation

A site should have un-restricted navigation. A user should be able to find exactly what they are looking for in a few clicks of a mouse. However, navigation should also be navigation and fun for the user as it makes them feel like they are interacting with your site.

Rule#6: Background and text should be different colours

This is one rule that isn’t really written everywhere but is important. Fresh designers are very cautions when it comes to colours for text and background and are very scared of experimenting. They panic because they don’t want to make their text unreadable by using the same colour for text and background. However, grouping together similar colours works very well.

Rule #7: Don’t sacrifice content for the sake of animation

As good as animation looks on a website, the positioning is critical.  Never place a super doper flash animation where a person will be reading content. Bad examples include survey boxes or ads that pop up in the middle of the screen overshadowing the text. This is the biggest annoyance for a reader who is trying to read your content. However, if the animation is subtle it can work. For this to work your design has to be clean and the animation not so obvious.

Rule #8: Choose fonts that are web safe

As technology is evolving, it is now becoming possible to use font face replacement techniques. However, this is still in early stages so don’t get too carried away.  Recently new technology includes sIFR, Cufon and Typefasce.js has emerged.

Rule #9: Avoid splash/landing pages

Time and time again designers are having the same conversations with their clients about splash pages and why they should be avoided. What most people do not realise is that any website with a splash page will be ranked lower in the search engines. Another annoyance of a splash page is that it delays the user getting to the content they need. However, on a plus side if created exceptionally well they can be truly wonderful.

Rule #10: Be a rebel and break all rules

This should be taken with caution. Rules should only be broken if the design you are working on calls for it. These ten rules wouldn’t ever be considered with your average designer and it is this that lets you differentiate between run of the mill designers and out of this world designers. IF you have the courage to break all the rules that you were taught then it is you that will truly stand out in the crowd.