The Elements For Designing a Clean Website
Designers are often heard praising websites and the most common phrase heard is ‘This website is so clean’. This clearly means that neat, clean and simple web designs have gained a lot of popularity in recent times and we hardly see crowded websites. Today, we will not only discuss the important elements essential for a clean website but, we will also share a few tips on how to design a clean website.
Let us start with the most essential elements a clean website should have.
Essential Elements
1. A well-structured layout
Layout is the most important thing in any website and mostly the first thing through which people judge the entire website. It only takes few minutes for a user to browse through the website and decide whether it belongs to the genre of clean websites or not. A well-structured grid is an essential element for designing a clean website. Any designer who is familiar with grid designing can tell you the reasons behind its importance. It actually helps designers in organizing a website. In other words we can say that grid designing helps designers with hierarchy establishment and also with brining a harmony and consistency within the website.
Also make sure that all pages share the same underlying framework to give users the same browsing experience on visiting different pages of your website. If your website has a lot of content, designing a simple website might get a little difficult however, it is not impossible.
2. Excellent Typography
After layout, the second thing which could interest your visitor would be your website’s typography and the font used for a website plays an important role in making a website look neat and clean. If you use different and multiple fonts on your website, it will take away consistency from your website and website will appear incoherent. If you visit a few websites that are considered to be the best and near websites, you will see that they have not used more than two fonts. Yes, they will play with those two fonts by changing size and color but the consistency will remain there.
Apart from good typography, spacing between lines also plays an important role. Proper spacing will make the content easily readable.
3. Limited Usage of colors
In order to make a website look attractive, you do not have to use multiple colors. Although, as a web designer, you have the liberty to use any color but limited color-palette will do the trick. A good combination of two colors should be more than enough if you plan to design a clean website. Always remember that less is more and when it comes to designing a clean website, use subtle and neutral colors.
4. Consistency in Images
Isn’t it bothersome that you see different styles and sizes of images throughout the website? Definitely it is. Creating a consistency and harmony between images on the website is very important to design a neat website otherwise; you will end up with an agitated visitor. Yes, at times, it gets impossible to publish all images in the same style because of some practical reasons but in such cases, a designer should be intelligent enough to use graphical elements, borders to bring in consistency and harmony.
Important tips for designing a clean website:
1. From more to less
Most designers draw a rough sketch of their websites on a paper to being with. If they are drawing with a concept of keeping it simple, mostly designers will be afraid to draw anything on the paper to avoid making it crowded. This process will not at all allow you to experiment or explore. In order to avoid this, you should start from more and then move towards less. Draw everything on the paper that you like and later on you can start removing things that you think are unnecessary. Once the web designing page is complex enough you can start simplifying it.
Also, it would be a good idea to get a second opinion from someone who is not at all associated with the project. They can easily tell you what looks good and what looks bad because they do not have any attachment with anything. Other than this, make sure that you can justify everything you have designed. If you cannot justify something, remove it. After removing all the unnecessary stuffy, you will be left with what is important and then you can assemble it properly.
2. Tug, Twist and Teak
There is always a room for improvement in any design so a design is never really finished. In order to make a clean website, you have to keep a lot of stuff in mind. Your website has to be consistent, harmonious with a well-structured layout and all this can be achieved with a lot of tweaking. Keep on trying and experimenting with things that you think can be improved. Making a clean website if often more difficult in comparison to a cluttered website. Tugging, twisting and tweaking your final design will help you in designing a neat website.
3. Printing and pinning
If you have ever worked as a print designer, you will be aware of the term printing and pinning. Printing and pinning layouts is like a ritual for print designers because they think this will help them in seeing flaws of their website. Mostly web designers don’t do this and by not doing this, they are missing out on seeing the big picture. By pinning your layout, it will help you in seeing all the flaws that you are unable to see otherwise. Once you identify the imbalance and inconsistency in your website, you can get rid of it and improve the layout. So, print, pin and analyze your design.
Conclusion
Because cleaner websites are in demand, you need to work really hard on paying attention to detail because it will take you a long way. If you include the essential elements and follow the tips mentioned above, designing a clean website should not be a problem for you.
I totally agree layout has to be good otherwise the website looks clutter.Another good thing is to have a sitemap.
Another important point is to have good, unique and valuable content in your website which is well optimized for readers.Nice points.Thanks for sharing
I love your site when it produces such articles. Fills me with so much of inspiration. Thanks. Bookmarked.
Amazing! A very ignored yet essential topic to talk about. Enough has been debated about responsive web design in the past and present as well but a clean website design is something that still needs to be recognized. I see websites with content and images loaded without even paying attention to the site architecture. Maintaining an equilibrium between images and content is the key to a well maintained website! Cheers
Actually, I too believe that a proper and well planned layout and a design plan with a perfect navigational model makes a better website.