What’s so hot about Pinterest, that it has even the traditionalist internet users, who shy away from trying something new, wanting to try it out? In a web space already cluttered with numerous social networks, and dominated by the BIG TWO, will a new social network really command enough attention?  Only time will tell if Pinterest will have the wherewithal to create its own space in what is increasingly looking like saturated social space on the World Wide Web.

But there is also no doubt that Pinterest has begun luring social media fans with its concept and the features that it has on offer. Let’s take a look at what this social media platform is all about and what we can make of its features.

Here we go.

Pinterest in a Nutshell

Pinterest takes its name from a pinup board. The team behind Pinterest has made a virtual pinup board that helps organize all those inspiring and interesting images that you find on the World Wide Web. As it’s a social media platform, you can even share these images with your friends. In Pinterest parlance these images are called ‘Pins’ that can be added to a ‘Board’ customized and themed to suit your needs and requirements. You can create a ‘board’ on any and every topic that you can think off, without any limitations.

Pinterest can be called a voyage of discovery through the use of images. You can browse the pinboards created by other users who share similar interests and passion as yours, which helps you discover new things about your shared passion.

What you can do with Pinterest?

This is the key question isn’t it? Users no longer are happy just with a presence on a social media platform. What they are looking for is a way to practically use it to improve their lives in some form or the other. And Pinterest does help them do that in many different ways. If you are a photographer, you can build a whole portfolio with the help of Pinterest. If you are an architect, you can create a Board that has pictures of your best work. If you are a housewife, you can create a shopping list of things that you need to buy for your home through the week. The options are literally endless. At the end of the day, if don’t really have any clear purpose in mind, just pinning pictures of the really interesting stuff that you come across, not only on the internet but also in your daily life, is reason enough to use Pinterest.

Using Pinterest

The purpose is all well and good, but is it usable? Two words – It is. Here’s how you can pin stuff in Pinterest. It offers you something called the ‘Pin It Button’, in the form of a ‘drag and drop’ browser extension. So, in your travels through the web, if you come across an image that you like, all you need to do is click on the button and choose the pictures that you want to add to your Board. You will also be able to add some interesting text describing the picture. What’s more, the image doesn’t necessarily have to be from the internet. You can click a picture and use the Pinterest iPhone app to add the image to your Boards.

Taking a cue from the ‘Retweets’, you can even ‘Repin’ images that other users have posted on their boards.

The Social Perspective

Ok, so what’s the social angle to Pinterest? Well, it works on the belief that if you do something together, it is more fun. If you are pinning something on your Pinterest board, you are a Pinner, and you can find different Pinners to comment on their Pins or Repin an image that you like onto your board. You could even follow a board that you find interesting and get any new updates on that board. If you want to follow somebody on Pinterest, you don’t need to take permission of the Pinner, as it’s an open network. Also, as a Pinner, who is also on Twitter and Facebook, you can share your pins with the friends and followers on your respective networks on these two social medial platforms.

It’s not only about Pictures

Yes, the focus is on pictures, but you can pin videos also. You can even buy gifts on Pinterest and it’s also a great way to promote your small business. If you own a small business, it makes perfect sense for you to try out different avenues to ensure better and highly effective branding. Much like other social media platforms, a presence on Pinterest, will help you get in touch with people, who are not only looking for the kind of products and services you are selling, but also share your interests. It’s a win-win situation for your business.

The choice of the base color of any website is dependent on the purpose of the website. At times, the choice of the color might not entirely be in your hands, as a designer; the colors used in the web design might be dependent on the existing marketing collaterals of the company and also its logo. There are a number of clients who prefer choosing their colors for the design of their website; and rightly or wrongly, you will have to go along with it.

But, even if you have to go along with the color choice of the website owners, you can still ensure that you choose a color scheme that fits the needs and requirements of the website and its purpose. The standard color schemes that you can choose to use include, monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and double complementary.

Let’s take a look at each of these schemes in terms of their use in web design.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

A monochromatic color scheme involves the use of just one single base color in the various pages of the site. Of course, designers are able to use the various tints and shade of that color. You can choose to use different monochromatic color schemes for different pages of the site. There are some designers who take this route through the intuitive use of RGBA transparency. More importantly, you can choose to use a monochromatic design for one page, while in another you can go for analogous design. The use of multiple color schemes improves the visual appeal of your site and helps make it more engaging.

Analogous Color Scheme

You have a color wheel and there are colors adjacent to each other on that wheel. If you use colors lying adjacent to each other on that color wheel, you will be using the analogous color scheme. The idea is to use a large slice of the colors on the wheel and make them a part of the website’s design. The correct use of the analogous color scheme deepens the symbolism of the site and brings it out in all its glory.

Complementary Color Scheme

Choosing colors that are placed opposite each other in the color wheel, means you have chosen to go for a complementary color scheme. It gives rise to a unique combination of colors that if used wisely, will provide an interesting look and a solid foundation for the website design.  This doesn’t mean that such a color scheme must be bold; designers can tone it down so that the colors look more natural. Astute website designers couple complementary color schemes with artistic texture in order to create better visual impact.

Split Complementary, triadic and double complementary Color Schemes

As the names of these color schemes rightly suggests, these are just variations of the complementary scheme. If you want to use split complementary color scheme, you will need to choose two colors that lie adjacent to the complement of your chosen base color.  If you are after a triadic color scheme, it involves you choosing colors that are equally placed on the color wheel. This can easily be achieved if you choose colors that are placed one notch more on each side, with respect to the split complement.

Double complementary color scheme is just combining one complementary scheme with another one.

These are the standard color schemes and there are variants of the standard schemes that designers can also use. But, most designers are perfectly happy with the use of standards color schemes, as they make for a more focused approach towards website designing.

Universal web design is the kind of design that meets the needs and requirements of the widest possible audience. The principles of website designing that help give shape to universal web design include:
 

• Ensuring that it can be used by people with diverse abilities.
   
• Its needs to be able to accommodate a varied amount of individual preferences.
   
• The focus must be on simplicity and intuitiveness.
   
• It must be able to deliver pertinent information in a highly effective manner.
   
• It must tolerate a certain amount of error.
   
• It must require very little physical or mental effort on the part of the user to understand it and optimize its use.
   
• The design should be able to meet all contextual requirements of the user.

But sometimes even the best intentioned website designers can ignore the key aspects that can make or break universal website design. These are the kind of mistakes that should never be made as website visitors won’t be able to ignore them.

Let’s take a look at some of these mistakes.

Problem with Readability

If the textual content is not easily readable, the effectiveness of the website’s design goes down a few notches. This means that website visitors will have to strain themselves in order to read the content, which goes against the principles of universal website design. Some of the mistakes that make the content difficult to read include, small text size, using inappropriate font style, and improper color contrast. Other problems that can equally affect readability of text include are not focusing on user friendly headings and not giving enough importance to ample line or paragraph spacing.

Unconventional Looking Text Links

When it comes to text links, going by convention is the key. Otherwise, website visitors will find it difficult to determine a text link. The long standing convention in web browsing is that a hyperlinked text must have an underline. There are some smart designers who think it’s a good idea to not adhere to this convention and try and define a link a little differently, by highlighting it with a marked color contrast or using a darker color from the surrounding text. But, the whole idea behind underling a hyperlink is to help website visitors easily distinguish it. It’s a familiar differentiating factor that website visitors have come to expect and if they don’t find such links, they are going to be confused. A website design that confuses a visitor can never be considered universal.

A lot of visual noise

Have you heard a noise that doesn’t make a sound? No, this isn’t a joke, there is something called a visual noise that makes a website unappealing, unusable and inaccessible. If the website design looks scattered all over the place, it means that there is a lot of visual noise that is interfering with the website visitor’s ability to make sense of the website design. If the website has no focal point and a complete lack of visual hierarchy, the user will be left scrambling for answers on the website. A website’s design should be a coming together of diverse design elements that make perfect sense. If these design elements appear crammed together in the layout, the design looks disjointed and doesn’t appear to make much sense. The result is the kind of visual noise that we can do well without.

These three mistakes can cost universal web design big time, and a web design company must ensure that it doesn’t commit these cardinal mistakes. If they are avoided, the result is a universal web design; but if they are committed, the result is a non performing web design. The equation is very simple.

Website design is a coming together of various design elements in a manner that is not only perfect but also captivating. When it comes to the designing of a website, it’s the interaction of different elements of website design that determines their unity. If you want a unified layout, it must be something that works as a whole, rather than a layout that looks like having been designed in separate pieces. It must be remembered that the use of disparate elements only serves to discredit the website design as a whole as it doesn’t appear unified in more ways than one.

Today, designers work on the most advanced designing platforms and shape some brilliant designs, but the issue of unifying the various design elements still gives them pause for thought and they have to work hard at it. To ensure that the design of the entire website, including all its pages, works as a single unit, it is important to focus on two crucial principles.

Let’s take a look at them.

Contiguity

This principle is as obvious as they come, but it seems that because it is so obvious, that it is largely ignored by designers. Contiguity can be defined as a series of elements that are in close contact or proximity with one another and where one element is related to each other. The proximity of design elements on web pages is very important for ensuring that a particular web page looks like a single unit rather than something that is made up of disparate elements. Astute designers understand and seek to focus on the principle of contiguity and ensure that they set margins and padding for all design elements.

Let us try and illustrate this with a simple example. Say you have a column of text that has two paragraphs. Now, you want to put a heading for the second paragraph. What you must understand is that there is a thin line of difference between the words used, looking like a heading or a separator. It is the proximity of the text placed that determines how the reader perceives it. If the word is placed closer to the second paragraph it looks like a heading but if it isn’t, then it looks like a separator.

Repetition

Good design is also about bringing a set of similar items together. This helps form a group. So, designers must take care to follow the principle of repetition. It’s of paramount importance that designers repeat certain design elements such as colors, shapes, textures etc., in a particular web page or across various web pages of the website. Repetition promotes cohesion and ensures that the design elements can be unified in a particular group. This ensures that website visitors see the various design elements used on a web page as a single entity and not as a series of isolated shapes.

As a website visitor, you might have been captivated by the imagery and the visual appeal of certain website pages and praised its uniqueness; but what you might not have noticed is that repetition of visual elements is a recurrent theme throughout the website. That fact of the matter is that if you want your website to be eye catching, due importance must be given to repetition.

Keeping these principles in mind, will be a big step in the right direction as far as the unity of the website design is concerned. This will ensure that the design is able to meet the requirements of the client and the user in more ways than one.

What do some of the biggest and successful organizations have in common, apart from the fact that they are big and successful? The answer is that they have a great logo. Look up any popular organization and you will find a distinct and memorable logo behind it.

The logo can very well be considered the face of your business. So it needs to be original, exclusive, interesting and must be the perfect visual representation of all that your business/company/organization/corporate stands for. It must embody the company’s beliefs, values, mission, purpose and objective. It must be able to inspire trust and prompt instant recall. Yes, a logo does all these things, and a whole lot more.

As can be imagined, it’s going to be quite a task to ensure that your logo is able to improve the awareness of your brand amongst your target audience. But, keeping the tips given below in mind, the task can become a little easier.

Simplicity works Best

Some of the best logos are very simple. Take the case of the Apple logo; what could be simpler than an apple with a bite, the bite was given to ensure that people don’t confuse it with some other fruit. Some of the other logos that are as simple as they are recognizable are Nike, Sony, Yahoo, Google, and Dell amongst various others. Simplicity ensures that the logo can be easily recognized, wherever it’s placed. Such logos, because of the inherent simplicity of their design and purpose are able to make an impression that stays long after the people have seen your logo.

It should impress wherever and whenever it is used

Your logo is going to be used across different channels of communication, and must look good anywhere and everywhere. So, you must identify the various places in which your logo might appear such as brochure, websites, banner etc. and while designing a logo, you must ensure that your logo will look good if and when used in the places that you have identified. At times, you might have to decrease size of the logo, and at other times, you might want to enlarge its size by quite a bit. So, the use of fine lines,  choice of graphic format, fonts, color, texture should be such that it makes the right impression whatever its size and whatever the background on which its used.

The keyword is ‘Unique’

Your logo helps generate awareness about your brand and encourages brand recall. This is why it mustn’t resemble any other logo. It is the uniqueness of your logo that will allow it to create its own space in the minds of the audience. You must do everything you can, to ensure that your logo is different and has its own distinct identity. Here, it’s important not to take the easy way out and download those stocks images from the web and use them in your logo. Do not take a chance. You can take inspiration from various sources, but at the end of the day your logo should be your own creation and must be able to stand out from the crowd.

These are just three tips that should help you choose a logo that is memorable and has the longevity to keep impressing people for a long period of time.