Basic Design Heuristics for Today’s Web Developer

A few basic design principles that every developer should have a fairly good understanding of can be picked up or gleaned from a quick run through of any print or Web design text.

Choice heuristics that are found in today’s best on-screen presentations, whether in Web, television or cinematic media, are the rule of thirds and the divine proportion.

The rule of thirds is widely known to be used in photography, and it more or less states that dividing an image into nine equal part can help one aesthetically lead the viewers eye to most important sections of the piece. Imagine overlaying a three by three grid on a photograph. The intersections of these gridlines can help you align the main features of your image.

The divine proportion is a similar guideline that comes in extremely handy for Web media. Also known as the golden ratio, the divine proportion is in effect if the ratio between the sum of two line segments and the larger segment is equivalent to the ratio between the smaller segment and the larger segment. When expressed algebraically, the divine proportion is equivalent to 1:1.61803… or 1:phi.

Shapes that are constructed with the divine proportion can be used to frame your Web site so that the smaller segment in the ratio makes up your sidebar or header, while the larger segment forms your content division or main section division.

Next, we’ll be covering some basic typography as applied to design, as developers will always be handling some type of … type.