Chapters 6 & 7 Redish

In chapters 6 & 7 in LGOTW, Redish discuses font choice, text and background coloring, and use of templates to provide continuity throughout the site.

Most of this I learned through a web design project that I did for another class. What Redish doesn’t mention is that along with providing continuity for your site, using a template also makes life MUCH easier to create a website. Even if you are coding the whole site from scratch, using one base page (that usually serves as the home page) to develop all of the sidebars, links, and basic layout makes it much easier to then go and add the main content, and tweak the pages where necessary.

Font choice, text, and background coloring make huge first impressions on web users. There have been times when I have clicked on a site and immediately left it, simply because it was either too hard to read, or too garish.

Text size is important – the web user should be able to read what is written easily. However, I would argue that font choice can be even more important. Some fonts are nearly illegible, no matter what size you make them.

The contrast between the colors of the background and the font is also very important. Aside from the fact that it is nearly impossible to read yellow text on a white background, color blindness is a big issue. Avoiding green and red together is important, as this is the most common form of color blindness. BUT, these are NOT the only two colors that people can have difficulties with. I am color blind with deep brown and black. I cannot distinguish a difference between the darkest shades of these colors. (but thankfully, most websites don’t combing these colors together. It sure makes bird-watching difficult though.)

However, using two very different contrasts (a light color and a dark color) is generally the safest way to go.