Design Theory:
the system of your design in relation to the way your page wants to communicate and attract audiences.
Publication Design:
The layout of your publication; specifically in regards to online publication, the formatting and how it cohesively works with the content produced.
Interaction Design:
To broaden one’s focus as a publisher towards the way audiences interact with your work rather than solely observing the content itself.
Formatting and design is crucial to my page or any page despite how great the content and writing is on it’s own. In our current high-technological and fast-paced world, we have adapted to accessibility and highly interactive pages or platforms that provide or lead us to what we want in an aesthetically pleasing way. Humans have always had a yearning and attraction to the beauty of our surroundings and it gives us a purpose and drive to remain hooked to a piece of content or imagery. Especially now, publishers have to put in extra effort to understand their audiences while grasping current trends that attract more eyes to their work to further grow their audiences, and design theory is a part of this phenomena.
Lines, colours, shapes, space, balance, all cohesively work together to create a mesmerising visual that communicates the branding or personality of a persona that the publisher wants to convey. After the progression into awareness of how visuals persuade us into buying into ideas or purchases, there is a new set of rules where one must understand how to approach audiences in a strategic yet seemingly genuine way. People want the truth, and the truth can be efficiently communicated through the initial visual as people have less time to understand the nuances of each individual behind a screen.
This is where context comes in. Where did I begin all this? What is my intention behind communicating this? How will people approach my work? Or would they have any inclination to do so in the first place given my surface level appearance?
Just as one might start an essay with a powerful rhetorical question to give the reader an idea of their work while instilling a thought to ponder that leaves them begging for an answer, a page must do the same where it is inviting yet intruiging enough to keep a viewer on the site for longer.
Although design may be subjective, there is a common knowledge for what colours and shapes evoke in the majority of audiences, and thus you should utilize those tools as a tactic to selectively conjure a feeling into your readers without them realizing that it was your intention in the first place.
I tend to lean towards websites that hold a clean layout and makes me feel validated that I am reading content that is written for intelligent audiences. Usually these pages would pick simple colours like white, black, brown and let their words speak for themselves and the images usually in high quality with contrasting colours to the simple background so it’s not too loud.
I tried to mimic this tactic in my page but with a slight difference as my audience is more youthful and playful. I picked a light purple colour to attract more creative people but incorporate layouts that are simple with well written content to still keep the content professional and insightful.
