Design: Visual Interface Design

This article is Part III of my series “Color Theory for Digital Displays.” It describes how you can apply color theory to application program user interfaces and Web pages and provides many guidelines for the effective use of color. Read More

Visual designers design and implement the aesthetics of a product, application, or Web site, including its use of images, colors, and fonts. How designers place visual elements on a page to create an overall look and feel is crucial to delivering an effective, attractive design.

In this article, I’ll share some visual-design principles that play a significant role in UX design, including scale, balance, contrast, color, hierarchy, dominance, and Gestalt principles. I’ll also explain why each principle is essential to achieving a well-balanced, functional design that supports a great UX experience. Read More

“A style guide is an artifact of design process. A design system is a living, funded product with a roadmap [and] backlog, serving an ecosystem.”—Nathan Curtis on Twitter

As Nathan Curtis described on Twitter, a style guide is a document that a UX designer creates to document a growing and ever-evolving set of design guidelines that arise from the design process. In creating a style guide, UX designers are basically documenting their own thought process as they design a Web site, application, or system. Thus, the essence of creating a style guide is documenting your own design decisions. Who is the audience for this document? In this article, I’ll answer many important such questions about style guides to help UX designers create effective documentation. Read More