Webpage Layout and Design

This weeks blog subject is layout and design and I thought it would be good to do a comparison of a good layout versus a bad layout. One thing that I noticed about the different websites I visited was that some of the design queues didn't follow some of the basic rules that I read about. I suppose that is because when it comes to designing, the mold can be changed or even broken. There are several times when I think a design is terrible but it sells so well that it becomes a trend.

Density was a design rule that I read about and it had to do with the amount of white space and the space between the text. Below is a screen shot of Fox News and you will notice that there are several article headlines that are crammed into a small space. As a reader I wouldn't want to look through each article to find one that interests me.

The next rule I explored and learned about was navigation and usability. Below is a screen shot of the home page of Yahoo. It uses the standard layout of having the sign in at the top right and the topics on the left. I am not a heavy user of Yahoo and to be honest I haven't been to Yahoo's homepage for months, but since I have I noticed how clean it was. It was easy to understand and easy to find my way around the site and that is the key when it comes to navigation and usability.

The error I found this week was from my work where the title of a Regional Demand Planner was misspelled. As you'll see below there are two "m's" in the word "demand." This is not a huge issue as the title of the planner is only visible through a communicator internally, but none the less the planner and I both got a laugh out of it.