When designing any website or online presence, it’s important to stick to the basic web design principles, and do extensive research before making even the most basic web design choices. From the colours you combine, to the typography you choose, even the simple web design choices can have a large impact on the success of your website. And these can even be the reason why your launch might fail. But once you know the rules, and know how to apply them to secure the best results for your company and branding, you might need to then think about breaking them! So is it ever OK to consider breaking the basic rules of web design? And what kind of results could this help to achieve? Well, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design professionals. We work with a variety of companies across Manchester, and the North West, including those in Blackburn and Chorley, to provide high quality web design solutions. And this is our guide to everything you should know about breaking and bending the web design rules.
Should you consider breaking the basic rules of web design?
The basic rules of web design govern a range of design choices that you might consider making. These include, among many others:
- the rule of three of colour combinations
- the two maximum rule for typography
- the size and positioning of the company logo
Breaking these basic rules of web design is something you should consider, only in specific circumstance, including:
- to attract attention
- to keep the design clean, especially above the fold
- to suit your brand
Breaking web design rules to attract attention
If you are following the rules of web design, but you decide to break this in a very obvious way to attract attention to a particular website feature, you can be much more successful. Consider for example:
- a grid style website with a piece of content that isn’t contained by the box
- a circular button in a grid style website
- a piece of text that is off centre, directing attention to the imagery instead
- using a third font for a specific piece of text or content, breaking the typography pattern
Keeping the web design clean, by breaking the rules
One of the most important rules of web design, is also one that is frequently broken. This is the rule that states that your information should all be on one home page or landing page, easy for users to access in one place. But with the rise of minimalist web design, this rule has been broken more frequently by large and small companies alike. With minimalist web design, all that is generally used above the fold, is the company logo, a large full screen image, and maybe a piece of text and a call to action button. This is effective for streamlining the attention of your potential customers, and increasing click throughs. However, this does mean that your users will need to scroll for longer.
For more information or advice, or for high quality, professional web design solutions, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.