The Basics

Anyone can make a web page. And anyone can make an ugly web page. Lots of people do! But the only reason that so many people make bad web pages is that they don't understand basic web design principles. There are five basic design principles:

1. Alignment

2. Proximity

3. Repetition

4. Contrast

5. Orientation

This tutorial will explore these design principles. We will use demonstrations of both good and bad web pages. Because we don't believe in pointing out "web pages that suck," all the examples have been expressly created for this tutorial... but they are based on real examples gleaned from the web.