For the last few months I’ve been wanting to dive into this new JavaScript framework since I saw their launch event in October of 2014. Famo.us includes an open source 3D layout engine fully integrated with a 3D physics animation engine that can render to DOM, Canvas, or WebGL In short, you can get native performance out of a web application, largely due to the way Famo.us handles the rendering of its content. Jenn Simmons of the Web Platform podcast recently had Famou.us CEO, Steve Newcomb on the podcast to discuss the mobile performance and their upcoming mixed mode. This was perfect timing, as Microsoft had just released ManifoldJS, a tool which allows you to package your web experience as native apps across Android, iOS, and Windows. I wanted to put these two technologies to the test. In short, I wanted to determine if Famo.us does actually have great mobile performance, as well as have an understanding of how straightforward the process was for packaging my web application as mobile app. What Problem do These Two Things Solve? The web isn’t necessarily known for creating high performance applications, which is a shame because it truly is capable of blazing fast interactive […]
* You might also be interested in the following articles:
We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork, and as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for seven years now1, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.
This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for July 2015. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!
Please note that:
All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
You can feature your work in our magazine2 by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendars series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?
A Flamboyance Of Flamingos
“July in South Africa is dreary and wintery so we give all the southern hemisphere dwellers a bit of colour for those grey days. And for the northern hemisphere dwellers a bit of pop for their summer! The Flamboyance of Flamingos is part of our ‘Wonderland Collective Noun’ collection. Each month a new fabulous collective noun is illustrated, printed and made into a desktop wallpaper…” — Designed by Wonderland Collective3313143 from South Africa.
“It’s finally vacation time: awesome weather, sunny beach days, the smell of summer… what a best way of getting ready for summertime than looking at this fresh wallpaper? Hope you guys enjoy! :)” — Designed by Printsome.com61 from United Kingdom.
“I hear everywhere that you should have a summer body. I think as long as you are healthy, it doesn’t matter what you look like or how fat/thin you are. Thinking of this, I made this happy pig enjoying the summer without worrying what everyone else thinks.” — Designed by Maria Keller261 from Mexico.
“Stepping back in time, for some of us 20 years back (ahem), we delve back into our childhood where the Rascal of Boys live. The cool kids wanted to be them, the once sweet girls wanted to kick them, and the posh kids with the fancy kicks were terrified of them. Johnny Camo the expert hide and seek terror, Buzz McFly with his remote controlled spaceship, Jordy Large, the big boy with the tiny brain, Super Boy (origin unknown) and Morty with his pet snake Justice. Together they fight for their rights to stay up late as the B-Team, operating from their hideaway tree house slash fortress of doom.” — Designed by Wonderland Collective3313143 from South Africa.
“Ever watched Joe’s Apartment when you where a kid? Well that movie left a soft spot in my heart for the little critters. Don’t get me wrong: I won’t invite them over for dinner, but I won’t grab my flip flop and bring the wrath upon them when I see one running in the house.So there you have it… 3 Roaches… bringing the smack down on that pesky human… ZZZZZZZAP!!”” — Designed by Wonderland Collective3313143 from South Africa.
“July 16, 1969 – Apollo 11 astronauts were launched into space hoping to be the first men to land on the moon and their photograph “Pale Blue Dot” of earth inspired this artwork. You don’t have to have faith or belief in a god to know that this is holy (Sanctus). Time is a finite entity. Only about five billion years to go till the sun explodes. I know it seems like a lot now, but it will soon go if we just squander it on frivolous nonsense and small talk, not only of time passing but time that won’t pass this way again.” — Designed by Richard George Davis380 from South Africa.
“July is one of the most beautiful months of the year. Enjoy every day, every hour, which gives us this month!” — Designed by Nikolay Belikov429 from Russia.
“This quote from Steven Johnson reminds us that a great idea can evolve thanks to the combination of your own idea with someone else’s. As diverse as a ice cream cone can be, people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up with innovative ideas.” — Designed by Claudette Ocando Röhricht485 from Germany.
Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.
We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork, and as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for seven years now1, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.
This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for July 2015. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!
Please note that:
All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
You can feature your work in our magazine2 by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendars series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?
A Flamboyance Of Flamingos
“July in South Africa is dreary and wintery so we give all the southern hemisphere dwellers a bit of colour for those grey days. And for the northern hemisphere dwellers a bit of pop for their summer! The Flamboyance of Flamingos is part of our ‘Wonderland Collective Noun’ collection. Each month a new fabulous collective noun is illustrated, printed and made into a desktop wallpaper…” — Designed by Wonderland Collective3313143 from South Africa.
“It’s finally vacation time: awesome weather, sunny beach days, the smell of summer… what a best way of getting ready for summertime than looking at this fresh wallpaper? Hope you guys enjoy! :)” — Designed by Printsome.com61 from United Kingdom.
“I hear everywhere that you should have a summer body. I think as long as you are healthy, it doesn’t matter what you look like or how fat/thin you are. Thinking of this, I made this happy pig enjoying the summer without worrying what everyone else thinks.” — Designed by Maria Keller261 from Mexico.
“Stepping back in time, for some of us 20 years back (ahem), we delve back into our childhood where the Rascal of Boys live. The cool kids wanted to be them, the once sweet girls wanted to kick them, and the posh kids with the fancy kicks were terrified of them. Johnny Camo the expert hide and seek terror, Buzz McFly with his remote controlled spaceship, Jordy Large, the big boy with the tiny brain, Super Boy (origin unknown) and Morty with his pet snake Justice. Together they fight for their rights to stay up late as the B-Team, operating from their hideaway tree house slash fortress of doom.” — Designed by Wonderland Collective3313143 from South Africa.
“Ever watched Joe’s Apartment when you where a kid? Well that movie left a soft spot in my heart for the little critters. Don’t get me wrong: I won’t invite them over for dinner, but I won’t grab my flip flop and bring the wrath upon them when I see one running in the house.So there you have it… 3 Roaches… bringing the smack down on that pesky human… ZZZZZZZAP!!”” — Designed by Wonderland Collective3313143 from South Africa.
“July 16, 1969 – Apollo 11 astronauts were launched into space hoping to be the first men to land on the moon and their photograph “Pale Blue Dot” of earth inspired this artwork. You don’t have to have faith or belief in a god to know that this is holy (Sanctus). Time is a finite entity. Only about five billion years to go till the sun explodes. I know it seems like a lot now, but it will soon go if we just squander it on frivolous nonsense and small talk, not only of time passing but time that won’t pass this way again.” — Designed by Richard George Davis380 from South Africa.
“July is one of the most beautiful months of the year. Enjoy every day, every hour, which gives us this month!” — Designed by Nikolay Belikov429 from Russia.
“This quote from Steven Johnson reminds us that a great idea can evolve thanks to the combination of your own idea with someone else’s. As diverse as a ice cream cone can be, people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up with innovative ideas.” — Designed by Claudette Ocando Röhricht485 from Germany.
Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.
Website designs with fixed width centered layouts are like a blast from the past that remind us of those good old days when a majority of web sites were based on the formerly popular 960px grid system – center-aligned and with distinctive borders. With the increasing popularity of wide screens, designers began to opt in favor of full-screen layouts that gave the content more dominant positions. Image and video backgrounds became the main visual driving force that seized the whole attention. However, some time later, when smaller screens of tablets and cell phones began to call the tune, responsiveness came to the fore so that designers started to pay attention to the viewport of a browser. By skillfully manipulating with this key factor in mind, developers managed to save mobile users from confusion and websites from crashes. Along with fluid width full-screen layouts, fixed width centered layouts naturally direct the whole attention towards the heart of the page where the content is located. Today’s article includes 20 great fresh examples of website designs that have successfully adopted this technique. The online portfolio of Normand Robert is encircled with a relatively huge gutters that give the design a powerful open feeling. […]
* You might also be interested in the following articles:
A balanced composition feels right. It feels stable and aesthetically pleasing. While some of its elements might be focal points and attract your eye, no one area of the composition draws your eye so much that you can’t see the other areas.
Balancing a composition1 involves arranging both positive elements and negative space in such a way that no one area of the design overpowers other areas. Everything works together and fits together in a seamless whole. The individual parts contribute to their sum but don’t try to become the sum.
An unbalanced composition can lead to tension. When a design is unbalanced, the individual elements dominate the whole and the composition becomes less than the sum of its parts. In some projects, unbalanced might be right for the message you’re trying to communicate, but generally you want balanced compositions.
Note: This is the seventh and final post in a series on design principles. You can find the first six posts here:
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
– Thomas Merton
Physical And Visual Balance
Balance is easy to understand in the physical world, because we experience it all the time. When something is unbalanced, it tends to fall over. You’ve probably been on a seesaw or a teeter-totter at some time in your life — you on one side and a friend on the other.
Assuming you were both about the same size, you were able to easily balance on the seesaw. The following image appears to be in balance, with two equally sized people equally distant from the fulcrum on which the seesaw balances.
The person on the left makes the seesaw rotate counterclockwise, and the person on the right makes it rotate clockwise by an equal amount. The force of each person acts in a different direction, and their sum is zero.
If one of the people was much bigger, though, the balance would be thrown off.
This image doesn’t feel right because we know the person on the left isn’t big enough to balance the person on the right. The clockwise force should be much greater, and the seesaw should be touching the ground on the right.
However, if the larger person slid in toward the center, then the seesaw would be balanced again.
Here, the force of the larger person is reduced by being closer to the fulcrum on which the seesaw balances. I’ll trust you’ve been on a seesaw before or at least watched others play on one and that you have a pretty good sense of what’s going on.
Visual balance is similar. Physical weight is replaced by visual weight. The direction in which the physical weight acts is replaced by visual direction.
As a reminder, below are definitions for visual weight and visual direction, although I’ll refer you back to the fourth post in this series13 for more details.
visual weight
This is the perceived weight of a visual element. It’s a measure of how much anything on the page attracts the eye of the viewer.
visual direction
This is the perceived direction of a visual force. It’s the direction in which we think an element should be moving if it were given a chance to move according to the forces acting on it.
You don’t use instruments to measure the forces. You don’t use formulas to calculate whether everything is in balance. Rather, you use your eye to determine whether a composition is balanced.
Why Visual Balance Is Important
Just as in the physical world, visual balance is a good thing. It’s desirable in and of itself. An unbalanced composition can feel uncomfortable for the viewer. Look back at the second of the three seesaw images — it looks wrong because we can tell that the seesaw shouldn’t be in balance.
Visual weight is a measure of the visual interest of an element or area in a design. When a composition is visually balanced, every part of it holds some interest. The visual interest is balanced, which keeps viewers engaged with the design.
Without visual balance, viewers might not see all areas of the design. They probably won’t spend any time in areas with less visual weight or interest. Any information in those areas could easily go unnoticed.
You would balance a design visually because you want to balance the points of interest in your composition, so that viewers spend time with all of the information you want to convey.
Four Types Of Balance
There’s more than one way to balance a composition. The images in the previous section show two of them. The first image is an example of symmetrical balance, and the second is an example of asymmetrical balance. Two other types of balance are radial and mosaic.
Symmetrical balance occurs when equal weights are on equal sides of a composition, balanced around a fulcrum or axis in the center. Symmetrical balance evokes feelings of formality (it’s sometimes called formal balance) and elegance. A wedding invitation is a good example of a composition that you’d likely want to be symmetrically balanced.
The downside of symmetrical balance is that it’s static and sometimes regarded as boring. Because half of the composition mirrors the other half, at least half of the composition will be rather predictable.
Asymmetrical balance results from unequal visual weight on each side of the composition. One side of the composition might contain a dominant element, which could be balanced by a couple or more lesser focal points on the other side. One visually heavy element on one side might be balanced by a handful of lighter elements on the other.
Asymmetrical balance is more dynamic and interesting. It evokes feelings of modernism, movement, energy and vitality. Asymmetrical balance offers more visual variety, although it can be more difficult to achieve because the relationships between elements are more complex.
Radial balance occurs when elements radiate from a common center. Rays of sunlight and ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed in are examples of radial balance. Maintaining a focal point (fulcrum) is easy because it’s always the center.
Because everything radiates from a common center, everything also leads to that center, making it a strong point of attraction.
Mosaic balance (or crystallographic balance) results from balanced chaos. Think Jackson Pollack paintings. The composition lacks distinct focal points, and the elements share a uniform emphasis. The lack of hierarchy leads to visual noise at first glance. Somehow, though, it all works together.
Symmetry And Asymmetry
Both symmetry and asymmetry can be used throughout a composition, independent of, yet while contributing to, the final balance. You can have symmetrical forms in an asymmetrically balanced composition and vice versa.
Symmetry is usually seen as beautiful and harmonized; however, it can also be seen as static and dull. Asymmetry tends to be more interesting and dynamic, despite not being regarded as intrinsically beautiful.
Symmetry
There are three primary types of symmetry.
Reflection symmetry (or bilateral symmetry) occurs when everything is mirrored around a central axis. It’s probably the first thing you think of when you hear the word “symmetry.” The axis can be in any direction or orientation, although it’s often vertical or horizontal.
Everything on one side of the axis is mirrored on the other side. Natural forms that grow or move across earth’s surface develop reflection symmetry. A human face and a butterfly are examples.
When the reflection is a perfect mirror image, the symmetry is said to be pure. Much of the time it won’t be perfect and each side will have slight variations. This is near symmetry, and it’s more common than pure symmetry.
The symmetry can even occur over multiple axes at the same time. For example, the left and right half of a composition could mirror each other, while the top and bottom also mirror each other. Snowflakes show reflection symmetry over more than two axes.
Rotational symmetry (or radial symmetry) occurs when everything rotates around a common center. It can occur at any angle or frequency, as long as there’s a common center. Natural forms that grow or move perpendicular to the earth’s surface develop rotational symmetry. The petals of a sunflower are an example. Rotation without reflection can be used to show motion, speed or dynamic action. Think of the spinning wheels of a moving car.
Translational symmetry (or crystallographic symmetry) occurs when elements are repeated over different locations in space. Repeating fence posts are an example. The repetition creates translation symmetry. It can occur in any direction or at any distance, as long as the basic orientation is the same. Natural forms develop translational symmetry through reproduction. You can create rhythm, motion, speed and dynamic action through translation symmetry.
Symmetrical forms are commonly seen as the figure, as opposed to the ground. A symmetrical form will carry more weight than a similarly sized and shaped asymmetrical form.
Symmetrical forms convey balance in and of themselves, but they could appear too stable and too balanced, leading to a lack of interest. Symmetrical forms also lead to passive space because the negative space is equal all around the form.
Asymmetry
Asymmetrical forms lack the balance of symmetrical forms, although you can asymmetrically balance an entire composition. Asymmetry is rather common in natural forms: you’re probably right- or left-handed; fiddler crabs have different sized claws; trees branches grow in different directions; clouds have random shapes.
Asymmetry creates more complex relationships between elements, and so it tends to be more interesting than symmetry. Because it’s more interesting, asymmetry can be used to draw attention.
Space around asymmetrical forms is more active. Unpredictable patterns are created, and overall you have more freedom of expression with asymmetry than with symmetry. The tradeoff is that it’s harder to achieve.
Much in the same way that similarity and contrast work together, you can combine symmetry and asymmetry27 to good effect. Balance symmetrical forms in an asymmetrical way, or balance asymmetrical forms symmetrically. Break up symmetrical forms with a random mark to add interest. Contrast symmetry and asymmetry in your composition to make elements get more attention.
Gestalt Principles
Throughout this series I’ve tried to point out how many design principles arise from gestalt principles. I also hope that as you’ve followed along you’ve seen how different design principles build on each other.
One of the gestalt principles specifically addresses symmetry and order and certainly applies to compositional balance. It’s hardly the only principle that applies, though.
The simplicity of symmetrical forms is predicted by the Law of Prägnanz. Gestalt principles such as focal points and similarity contribute to visual weight. Principles such as continuation, common fate and parallelism impart visual direction. I also mentioned that symmetrical forms are more likely to be seen as figure rather than ground.
I hope this idea that the principles of gestalt lead to many of the design principles that guide us has become clearer as you’ve read through this series. The design principles we follow didn’t arise out of thin air; they emerged from the psychology of the way we perceive our visual environment.
Examples
It’s time for screenshots. I have a few more websites than usual for this last article in the series, and I’ve grouped them according to the four types of balance.
As I’ve reiterated throughout the series, what follows is my opinion. This is how I see the balance in these designs. You might see it differently, which is fine. Thinking critically about the designs is more important than our agreeing about what we think.
Examples of Symmetrical Balance
The design of Helen & Hard’s entire website is symmetrically balanced. The screenshot here is from the “About”28 page, but the other pages of the website are similarly balanced.
Everything reflects around a vertical axis down the center of the page. The logo is centered, the navigation bar is centered, the circular images are centered, the heading is centered, and the three columns of text are centered.
The balance isn’t perfectly symmetrically. The columns have different amounts of text, for example.
However, notice the top of the page. Both the logo and navigation bar are centered, but they don’t appear to be visually centered. My eye wants the logo to be centered on the ampersand, or at least closer to it. The three menu items on the right side of the navigation bar have more letters than those on the left. My eye wants them to be the same and wants the center to be in between the “About” and “People” links.
I think moving these two elements out of center to make them look like they’re visually centered would balance the composition a little better.
The home page of Tilde31 is another design that’s symmetrically balanced. Like Helen & Hard, everything here revolves around a vertical axis running down the center of the page: the navigation, the text, the people in the image. It’s the same as you scroll down the page.
As with Helen & Hard, the symmetry isn’t pure. Centered lines of text aren’t mirror images, for one thing. Also, a couple of elements are off: the “Meet the Team” arrow pointing right and the text at the bottom of the page ending in another arrow pointing right.
Both are calls to action and both break the symmetry, calling extra attention to themselves. Notice how both arrows use colors that contrast with their background, further increasing the attraction of these elements.
Examples of Asymmetrical Balance
The home page of Carrie Voldengen’s portfolio exhibits an overall asymmetrical balance around a dominant symmetrical form. Looking at the overall composition, I see several discrete shapes.
The mass of the page is a large rectangle that’s composed of a grid of smaller rectangular images. On its own, this grid is symmetrical around both the vertical and horizontal axes. It feels very strong and stable. On its own, it’s very balanced and looks like it’s not going anywhere.
To the right, a block of text pulls down on the shape. It’s counterbalanced by text and the circular logo in the upper left. Both provide a relatively equal amount of visual weight acting on the grid in opposite directions.
The distance to an imagined fulcrum is about the same as the weights. The text on the right is larger and darker overall, but the blue circular logo gives more weight to its general area. The circle even connects to the top-left corner of the grid through a single color.
The text below the grid seems to hang from it, and it’s light enough on its own not to throw the composition out of balance.
Notice that the space also feels balanced. The areas down the left, along the top right and down the right, including a bit of the bottom right, all balance each other. The area on the left is larger than the area on the right, but the right has additional space on the top and bottom.
The images at the top of Hirondelle USA’s36 home page rotate. I grabbed a screenshot of this one specifically to talk about the asymmetrical balance established at the top of the page.
The column in the image is slightly off center, and it anchors the composition with a strong vertical line — it’s an object we know weighs a lot. The railing on the left provides a strong connection with the left edge of the screen. It, too, feels anchored. It’s hard to imagine any design element on the page throwing either out of balance.
The text above the railing feels supported by the railing; however, it’s also visually balanced by the image of the boy on the right. You might view the railing as hanging off the left side of the pole, pulling it out of balance, but I think the intrinsic interest of the boy as well as the darker values in the background behind him counterbalance both the rail and the text on the left and keep things in balance.
There’s a sense of translation symmetry as the gold lines of text repeat in the upper left and lower right of the image, as well as in the button further down the page. The white text is repeated as well.
Examples of Radial Balance
The home page of Vlog.it39 exhibits radial balance, which I hope is clear from the screenshot. Other than the shape in the top-right corner, everything revolves around the center of the page, as the three rings of images rotate around the center circle.
What you can’t see in the screenshot is how the page loads. A line is drawn from the lower-left corner to the center of the page. From that point on, just about everything that appears on the page does so by revolving around the center or radiating from it, like ripples in a pond.
The smaller circle in the upper right adds a little translation symmetry and some asymmetry, increasing visual interest in the composition.
Opera’s Shiny Demos42 home page isn’t circular, but the text links all seem to emanate from a common or near common center. It’s easy to imagine the whole shape spinning around one of the squares in the middle or maybe one of the corners where four squares meet.
The Shiny Demos heading in the upper left and the Opera logo in the lower right counterbalance each other and also appear to radiate from the same center as the text links.
It’s a good example of how radial balance doesn’t necessarily require the use of circles.
Examples of Mosaic Balance
You might expect mosaic balance to be the least used online, especially after I offered Jackson Pollack paintings as an example of mosaic balance. Many more examples are online than you might realize.
The home page of Rabbit’s Tale45 is a good example. There’s certainly a random and chaotic feel with the letters strewn about, but the balance in the composition works.
There are close to equal areas of color and space on both sides (right and left) to balance each other. The rabbit in the middle even serves as a fulcrum. It might also stand out a little after you’ve seen it, but overall the elements don’t call attention to themselves individually.
I’m not going to try to figure out which elements counterbalance each other, one element at a time, but hopefully you agree that there’s an overall balance. If anything, the chaos is weightier on the right, but not to the point of throwing off the balance.
Content-heavy websites such as news and magazine websites exhibit mosaic balance as well. You might recognize the home page of The Onion48. In the screenshot, I’ve removed the background image behind the top of the page.
There’s a lot to look at. The layout isn’t symmetrical. The columns aren’t equal in size. It’s hard to identify what counterbalances what. The blocks of content have different amounts of content inside and, consequently, are different sizes. Nothing radiates from a common center.
There’s a bit of chaos and randomness in the different-sized blocks, some denser than others. Because the stories on the website change daily, a different chaos will appear each day. Overall, it works.
Perhaps it’s a stretch to say that it’s a mosaic balance, but again I would argue that it is and that many websites exhibit this sort of chaotic balance, although something tells me that much of the chaos we see online wasn’t planned.
Summary
It’s taken a while to get here, but that concludes our series on design principles. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, learned something new or found the series to be a good review of fundamental design principles.
As you can guess, I think the fundamentals are important. I started this series to show how all of these principles arise out of human perception and gestalt theory. I didn’t make them up. The principles are based on how we all perceive and interpret our visual environment.
For example, one reason we notice focal points is because they contrast with the elements around them. They stand out as different. That’s important when you need to quickly determine friend from foe. That ability was important for our survival as a species, and so our eyes developed to make the determination quickly.
However, design principles aren’t hard and fast rules. They’re guidelines. There’s no one right way to communicate that two elements are similar or different, for example. You don’t need to follow any of these principles, although you should understand them and have a reason for breaking them.
Again, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and I hope even more that something in the series has given you more control over the visual communication in your designs.
A balanced composition feels right. It feels stable and aesthetically pleasing. While some of its elements might be focal points and attract your eye, no one area of the composition draws your eye so much that you can’t see the other areas.
Balancing a composition1 involves arranging both positive elements and negative space in such a way that no one area of the design overpowers other areas. Everything works together and fits together in a seamless whole. The individual parts contribute to their sum but don’t try to become the sum.
An unbalanced composition can lead to tension. When a design is unbalanced, the individual elements dominate the whole and the composition becomes less than the sum of its parts. In some projects, unbalanced might be right for the message you’re trying to communicate, but generally you want balanced compositions.
Note: This is the seventh and final post in a series on design principles. You can find the first six posts here:
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
– Thomas Merton
Physical And Visual Balance
Balance is easy to understand in the physical world, because we experience it all the time. When something is unbalanced, it tends to fall over. You’ve probably been on a seesaw or a teeter-totter at some time in your life — you on one side and a friend on the other.
Assuming you were both about the same size, you were able to easily balance on the seesaw. The following image appears to be in balance, with two equally sized people equally distant from the fulcrum on which the seesaw balances.
The person on the left makes the seesaw rotate counterclockwise, and the person on the right makes it rotate clockwise by an equal amount. The force of each person acts in a different direction, and their sum is zero.
If one of the people was much bigger, though, the balance would be thrown off.
This image doesn’t feel right because we know the person on the left isn’t big enough to balance the person on the right. The clockwise force should be much greater, and the seesaw should be touching the ground on the right.
However, if the larger person slid in toward the center, then the seesaw would be balanced again.
Here, the force of the larger person is reduced by being closer to the fulcrum on which the seesaw balances. I’ll trust you’ve been on a seesaw before or at least watched others play on one and that you have a pretty good sense of what’s going on.
Visual balance is similar. Physical weight is replaced by visual weight. The direction in which the physical weight acts is replaced by visual direction.
As a reminder, below are definitions for visual weight and visual direction, although I’ll refer you back to the fourth post in this series13 for more details.
visual weight
This is the perceived weight of a visual element. It’s a measure of how much anything on the page attracts the eye of the viewer.
visual direction
This is the perceived direction of a visual force. It’s the direction in which we think an element should be moving if it were given a chance to move according to the forces acting on it.
You don’t use instruments to measure the forces. You don’t use formulas to calculate whether everything is in balance. Rather, you use your eye to determine whether a composition is balanced.
Why Visual Balance Is Important
Just as in the physical world, visual balance is a good thing. It’s desirable in and of itself. An unbalanced composition can feel uncomfortable for the viewer. Look back at the second of the three seesaw images — it looks wrong because we can tell that the seesaw shouldn’t be in balance.
Visual weight is a measure of the visual interest of an element or area in a design. When a composition is visually balanced, every part of it holds some interest. The visual interest is balanced, which keeps viewers engaged with the design.
Without visual balance, viewers might not see all areas of the design. They probably won’t spend any time in areas with less visual weight or interest. Any information in those areas could easily go unnoticed.
You would balance a design visually because you want to balance the points of interest in your composition, so that viewers spend time with all of the information you want to convey.
Four Types Of Balance
There’s more than one way to balance a composition. The images in the previous section show two of them. The first image is an example of symmetrical balance, and the second is an example of asymmetrical balance. Two other types of balance are radial and mosaic.
Symmetrical balance occurs when equal weights are on equal sides of a composition, balanced around a fulcrum or axis in the center. Symmetrical balance evokes feelings of formality (it’s sometimes called formal balance) and elegance. A wedding invitation is a good example of a composition that you’d likely want to be symmetrically balanced.
The downside of symmetrical balance is that it’s static and sometimes regarded as boring. Because half of the composition mirrors the other half, at least half of the composition will be rather predictable.
Asymmetrical balance results from unequal visual weight on each side of the composition. One side of the composition might contain a dominant element, which could be balanced by a couple or more lesser focal points on the other side. One visually heavy element on one side might be balanced by a handful of lighter elements on the other.
Asymmetrical balance is more dynamic and interesting. It evokes feelings of modernism, movement, energy and vitality. Asymmetrical balance offers more visual variety, although it can be more difficult to achieve because the relationships between elements are more complex.
Radial balance occurs when elements radiate from a common center. Rays of sunlight and ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed in are examples of radial balance. Maintaining a focal point (fulcrum) is easy because it’s always the center.
Because everything radiates from a common center, everything also leads to that center, making it a strong point of attraction.
Mosaic balance (or crystallographic balance) results from balanced chaos. Think Jackson Pollack paintings. The composition lacks distinct focal points, and the elements share a uniform emphasis. The lack of hierarchy leads to visual noise at first glance. Somehow, though, it all works together.
Symmetry And Asymmetry
Both symmetry and asymmetry can be used throughout a composition, independent of, yet while contributing to, the final balance. You can have symmetrical forms in an asymmetrically balanced composition and vice versa.
Symmetry is usually seen as beautiful and harmonized; however, it can also be seen as static and dull. Asymmetry tends to be more interesting and dynamic, despite not being regarded as intrinsically beautiful.
Symmetry
There are three primary types of symmetry.
Reflection symmetry (or bilateral symmetry) occurs when everything is mirrored around a central axis. It’s probably the first thing you think of when you hear the word “symmetry.” The axis can be in any direction or orientation, although it’s often vertical or horizontal.
Everything on one side of the axis is mirrored on the other side. Natural forms that grow or move across earth’s surface develop reflection symmetry. A human face and a butterfly are examples.
When the reflection is a perfect mirror image, the symmetry is said to be pure. Much of the time it won’t be perfect and each side will have slight variations. This is near symmetry, and it’s more common than pure symmetry.
The symmetry can even occur over multiple axes at the same time. For example, the left and right half of a composition could mirror each other, while the top and bottom also mirror each other. Snowflakes show reflection symmetry over more than two axes.
Rotational symmetry (or radial symmetry) occurs when everything rotates around a common center. It can occur at any angle or frequency, as long as there’s a common center. Natural forms that grow or move perpendicular to the earth’s surface develop rotational symmetry. The petals of a sunflower are an example. Rotation without reflection can be used to show motion, speed or dynamic action. Think of the spinning wheels of a moving car.
Translational symmetry (or crystallographic symmetry) occurs when elements are repeated over different locations in space. Repeating fence posts are an example. The repetition creates translation symmetry. It can occur in any direction or at any distance, as long as the basic orientation is the same. Natural forms develop translational symmetry through reproduction. You can create rhythm, motion, speed and dynamic action through translation symmetry.
Symmetrical forms are commonly seen as the figure, as opposed to the ground. A symmetrical form will carry more weight than a similarly sized and shaped asymmetrical form.
Symmetrical forms convey balance in and of themselves, but they could appear too stable and too balanced, leading to a lack of interest. Symmetrical forms also lead to passive space because the negative space is equal all around the form.
Asymmetry
Asymmetrical forms lack the balance of symmetrical forms, although you can asymmetrically balance an entire composition. Asymmetry is rather common in natural forms: you’re probably right- or left-handed; fiddler crabs have different sized claws; trees branches grow in different directions; clouds have random shapes.
Asymmetry creates more complex relationships between elements, and so it tends to be more interesting than symmetry. Because it’s more interesting, asymmetry can be used to draw attention.
Space around asymmetrical forms is more active. Unpredictable patterns are created, and overall you have more freedom of expression with asymmetry than with symmetry. The tradeoff is that it’s harder to achieve.
Much in the same way that similarity and contrast work together, you can combine symmetry and asymmetry27 to good effect. Balance symmetrical forms in an asymmetrical way, or balance asymmetrical forms symmetrically. Break up symmetrical forms with a random mark to add interest. Contrast symmetry and asymmetry in your composition to make elements get more attention.
Gestalt Principles
Throughout this series I’ve tried to point out how many design principles arise from gestalt principles. I also hope that as you’ve followed along you’ve seen how different design principles build on each other.
One of the gestalt principles specifically addresses symmetry and order and certainly applies to compositional balance. It’s hardly the only principle that applies, though.
The simplicity of symmetrical forms is predicted by the Law of Prägnanz. Gestalt principles such as focal points and similarity contribute to visual weight. Principles such as continuation, common fate and parallelism impart visual direction. I also mentioned that symmetrical forms are more likely to be seen as figure rather than ground.
I hope this idea that the principles of gestalt lead to many of the design principles that guide us has become clearer as you’ve read through this series. The design principles we follow didn’t arise out of thin air; they emerged from the psychology of the way we perceive our visual environment.
Examples
It’s time for screenshots. I have a few more websites than usual for this last article in the series, and I’ve grouped them according to the four types of balance.
As I’ve reiterated throughout the series, what follows is my opinion. This is how I see the balance in these designs. You might see it differently, which is fine. Thinking critically about the designs is more important than our agreeing about what we think.
Examples of Symmetrical Balance
The design of Helen & Hard’s entire website is symmetrically balanced. The screenshot here is from the “About”28 page, but the other pages of the website are similarly balanced.
Everything reflects around a vertical axis down the center of the page. The logo is centered, the navigation bar is centered, the circular images are centered, the heading is centered, and the three columns of text are centered.
The balance isn’t perfectly symmetrically. The columns have different amounts of text, for example.
However, notice the top of the page. Both the logo and navigation bar are centered, but they don’t appear to be visually centered. My eye wants the logo to be centered on the ampersand, or at least closer to it. The three menu items on the right side of the navigation bar have more letters than those on the left. My eye wants them to be the same and wants the center to be in between the “About” and “People” links.
I think moving these two elements out of center to make them look like they’re visually centered would balance the composition a little better.
The home page of Tilde31 is another design that’s symmetrically balanced. Like Helen & Hard, everything here revolves around a vertical axis running down the center of the page: the navigation, the text, the people in the image. It’s the same as you scroll down the page.
As with Helen & Hard, the symmetry isn’t pure. Centered lines of text aren’t mirror images, for one thing. Also, a couple of elements are off: the “Meet the Team” arrow pointing right and the text at the bottom of the page ending in another arrow pointing right.
Both are calls to action and both break the symmetry, calling extra attention to themselves. Notice how both arrows use colors that contrast with their background, further increasing the attraction of these elements.
Examples of Asymmetrical Balance
The home page of Carrie Voldengen’s portfolio exhibits an overall asymmetrical balance around a dominant symmetrical form. Looking at the overall composition, I see several discrete shapes.
The mass of the page is a large rectangle that’s composed of a grid of smaller rectangular images. On its own, this grid is symmetrical around both the vertical and horizontal axes. It feels very strong and stable. On its own, it’s very balanced and looks like it’s not going anywhere.
To the right, a block of text pulls down on the shape. It’s counterbalanced by text and the circular logo in the upper left. Both provide a relatively equal amount of visual weight acting on the grid in opposite directions.
The distance to an imagined fulcrum is about the same as the weights. The text on the right is larger and darker overall, but the blue circular logo gives more weight to its general area. The circle even connects to the top-left corner of the grid through a single color.
The text below the grid seems to hang from it, and it’s light enough on its own not to throw the composition out of balance.
Notice that the space also feels balanced. The areas down the left, along the top right and down the right, including a bit of the bottom right, all balance each other. The area on the left is larger than the area on the right, but the right has additional space on the top and bottom.
The images at the top of Hirondelle USA’s36 home page rotate. I grabbed a screenshot of this one specifically to talk about the asymmetrical balance established at the top of the page.
The column in the image is slightly off center, and it anchors the composition with a strong vertical line — it’s an object we know weighs a lot. The railing on the left provides a strong connection with the left edge of the screen. It, too, feels anchored. It’s hard to imagine any design element on the page throwing either out of balance.
The text above the railing feels supported by the railing; however, it’s also visually balanced by the image of the boy on the right. You might view the railing as hanging off the left side of the pole, pulling it out of balance, but I think the intrinsic interest of the boy as well as the darker values in the background behind him counterbalance both the rail and the text on the left and keep things in balance.
There’s a sense of translation symmetry as the gold lines of text repeat in the upper left and lower right of the image, as well as in the button further down the page. The white text is repeated as well.
Examples of Radial Balance
The home page of Vlog.it39 exhibits radial balance, which I hope is clear from the screenshot. Other than the shape in the top-right corner, everything revolves around the center of the page, as the three rings of images rotate around the center circle.
What you can’t see in the screenshot is how the page loads. A line is drawn from the lower-left corner to the center of the page. From that point on, just about everything that appears on the page does so by revolving around the center or radiating from it, like ripples in a pond.
The smaller circle in the upper right adds a little translation symmetry and some asymmetry, increasing visual interest in the composition.
Opera’s Shiny Demos42 home page isn’t circular, but the text links all seem to emanate from a common or near common center. It’s easy to imagine the whole shape spinning around one of the squares in the middle or maybe one of the corners where four squares meet.
The Shiny Demos heading in the upper left and the Opera logo in the lower right counterbalance each other and also appear to radiate from the same center as the text links.
It’s a good example of how radial balance doesn’t necessarily require the use of circles.
Examples of Mosaic Balance
You might expect mosaic balance to be the least used online, especially after I offered Jackson Pollack paintings as an example of mosaic balance. Many more examples are online than you might realize.
The home page of Rabbit’s Tale45 is a good example. There’s certainly a random and chaotic feel with the letters strewn about, but the balance in the composition works.
There are close to equal areas of color and space on both sides (right and left) to balance each other. The rabbit in the middle even serves as a fulcrum. It might also stand out a little after you’ve seen it, but overall the elements don’t call attention to themselves individually.
I’m not going to try to figure out which elements counterbalance each other, one element at a time, but hopefully you agree that there’s an overall balance. If anything, the chaos is weightier on the right, but not to the point of throwing off the balance.
Content-heavy websites such as news and magazine websites exhibit mosaic balance as well. You might recognize the home page of The Onion48. In the screenshot, I’ve removed the background image behind the top of the page.
There’s a lot to look at. The layout isn’t symmetrical. The columns aren’t equal in size. It’s hard to identify what counterbalances what. The blocks of content have different amounts of content inside and, consequently, are different sizes. Nothing radiates from a common center.
There’s a bit of chaos and randomness in the different-sized blocks, some denser than others. Because the stories on the website change daily, a different chaos will appear each day. Overall, it works.
Perhaps it’s a stretch to say that it’s a mosaic balance, but again I would argue that it is and that many websites exhibit this sort of chaotic balance, although something tells me that much of the chaos we see online wasn’t planned.
Summary
It’s taken a while to get here, but that concludes our series on design principles. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, learned something new or found the series to be a good review of fundamental design principles.
As you can guess, I think the fundamentals are important. I started this series to show how all of these principles arise out of human perception and gestalt theory. I didn’t make them up. The principles are based on how we all perceive and interpret our visual environment.
For example, one reason we notice focal points is because they contrast with the elements around them. They stand out as different. That’s important when you need to quickly determine friend from foe. That ability was important for our survival as a species, and so our eyes developed to make the determination quickly.
However, design principles aren’t hard and fast rules. They’re guidelines. There’s no one right way to communicate that two elements are similar or different, for example. You don’t need to follow any of these principles, although you should understand them and have a reason for breaking them.
Again, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and I hope even more that something in the series has given you more control over the visual communication in your designs.
Prototyping is one of the best things that can happen within a project, yet it is extremely underutilized. Prototyping makes a project better suited to users, elevates user experience, increases the quality of your final code, and keeps clients happy.
The problem is that developers often see prototyping as a waste of time, since high-quality prototypes take considerable effort to make. I want to show you that by using WordPress, highly interactive prototypes with great visuals are not at all that difficult to make.
First, we’ll look at some basic prototyping concepts, then set up a test server from scratch. We’ll continue by converting an HTML template to a WordPress theme and learning how to use its items to create what we need. We’ll also learn how to add front-end and server-side functionality to our prototype.
While all this seems complex, beginners should be able to follow along easily, including the “create your own server” section, which is a cinch!
About Prototyping
“[A] prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.”
This sentence neatly sums up the pros and cons of a prototype. The advantage of creating a prototype is that it lets you test an idea and learn from the process. It allows you to make a reasonable assumption about the feasability of your project before you put in hundreds of hours of work.
One of the downsides is that prototypes are made so that we may learn from them. Often, designers and coders look on this as wasted time. Why make a protoype when we could be working on the real thing? Who is going to pay us for the time we spend prototyping?
To be honest, these are tricky questions. For smaller projects, no one will pay you for it, but your project will be better for it; this, in turn, leads to bigger and better projects. In most cases, the time you spend prototyping is regained while building the product anyway!
It also appears that designers like to prototype a lot more than developers. The root of the issue here is speed. A designer could prototype a design a lot faster than a developer, since the latter needs to build a quick framework, implement a design and do a lot of fiddly things which take time.
Fidelity And Functionality
We can approach prototypes by looking at two key features: fidelity and functionality. Fidelity refers to how detailed the prototype is visually, while functionality refers to the level of interaction possible within the system. Let’s look at how levels of fidelity and functionality in prototypes pair up.
Low-Functionality, Low-Fidelity
These prototypes are easy to make. They could be simple drawings, or Balsamiq mock-ups5. There is minimal interaction — or none at all — and visually the prototype has very little to do with the final product.
Increasing the fidelity while keeping functionality low is also quite common. A good example would be a Photoshop design file which could contain final design elements. Again, there is next to no interaction here but plenty of visual detail, enough to put it close to the final product in terms of design.
These prototypes are a bit more difficult but you can still make them without too much effort. Before you create the login/forgot password form for a large website, you might want to test if everything works by just dropping in a form and business logic strictly in HTML and PHP — no CSS, JavaScript or consideration of the context of the form.
Using front-end frameworks like Bootstrap14 or Foundation15 can can increase your fidelity somewhat, but you’d need to write a good amount of CSS to make it your own.
I would still consider these low-fidelity mock-ups because each front-end framework looks generic by default. That’s fine for testing the principle, but it doesn’t increase fidelity to a point where more sensitive clients would be able to visualize what the final product will be like.
High-Functionality, High-Fidelity
Prototypes like this are rarely seen because creating them can take more time than is worth it. Why create something so similar to the website-to-be when you could be working on the actual site?
High-functionality, high-fidelity prototypes contain a high degree of interactivity while also being a much closer facsimile of the final product. Users can follow links, submit forms and do many other things that help them see what the end result will be like.
The real trick is managing the time spent on making such prototypes — which is where WordPress comes in.
Which One To Use
There is, of course, no simple answer to this question. A high-fidelity, high-functionality prototype is closest to the real thing, but it takes time to make; for simpler projects, it may not be worth the time.
Low-fidelity, low-functionality prototypes are simplistic and cannot be interacted with, but for small projects and close-knit teams, perhaps they’re all that is needed.
Several factors need to be considered:
How well your team works together
How large your project is
How visually and technically oriented your client is
How well you understand the product you are building
How many people will be involved other than programmers and designers
In my experience, the most important factors are the client and the project’s complexity. Even if I understand the project well, I would like a high-fidelity, high-functionality prototype just in case. One of the fundamental mistakes you can make in projects is thinking you know them well.
For complex, large-scale projects you should always create prototypes with a high degree of freedom. The more systems and subsystems you need to build, the more intertwined they become and the more places things can go wrong.
The client can be an even bigger factor. Often, clients do not know what they want. They may not be design- or code-oriented, which means they will equate a low-fidelity prototype with bad design and missing features — even if you tell them what the prototype is for. As a result, a clearer visual aid is sometimes called for to enhance communication.
Since I will be talking about high-fidelity and high-functionality prototypes from now on, I will be calling them high-quality prototypes. This is not at all a reflection on other prototypes; a low-fideltiy, low-functionality prototype can also be created with high quality.
Considerations For High-Quality Prototypes
There are a number of considerations when making high-quality prototypes. What platform they should be built on, what functions need to be added (or not added), how intricate should we make the design, and so on.
The Platform
The platform chosen should be one which allows you to work fast and quickly add features as well. Bootstrap, Foundation and other frameworks are great, but they offer very little functionality, since they are purely front-end. Using them can still be a good idea, but not on their own.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have PHP frameworks like Laravel, which is excellent for creating high-quality modular code. This is out of the question, though, since we have to write too much business logic ourselves just to get a site up and running.
WordPress strikes a good balance here because it is essentially a bag of useful functions combined with a reasonably flexible way to template pages quickly. I want to stress that you should use a platform you feel comfortable with. If you’re amazing at using Laravel, by all means go with it.
The Design
You can create a simple design framework for yourself, but that also takes quite some time. This is the place to use front-end frameworks to lighten your workload.
What I recommend is getting a good pre-made HTML admin template. Many of these templates use Bootstrap or Foundation anyway, and put a bunch of elements at your fingertips. In addition, they’ve already styled the elements of their frameworks into something less generic, which is just what we need. With a little work they can be converted to WordPress themes and will facilitate extremely quick prototyping.
I don’t use bespoke WordPress themes because they are for presenting content, not creating application architecture. You won’t be able to create a menu or a form anywhere easily, and your code will likely be a mess by the end.
Depth Of Functionality
Depth of functionality is all about interactivity. Since you have control over a CMS you can, in theory, make things work properly — login forms could genuinely log you in. You probably don’t want to spend your time coding in all the functionality. That isn’t really the point here.
For example, is the login form really important? Everyone knows how logging in works. Perhaps the form can be allowed to be blank, and the login button logs you in immediately as a test user.
If you are building a finance management app, however, you may want to spend some time making sure that the “Add transaction” form works as expected. Real data can be listed and submitted adding a great deal of depth to your prototype.
Prototyping With WordPress
I think WordPress is a great choice for prototyping because of the flexibility of templating and the number of functions you have at your disposal. Logging in and out, adding metadata, querying items — a lot of base functionality is already there.
I like to choose a pre-made HTML admin theme that looks close to what we’ll be doing in the final iteration of the design. You can find a large number of premium admin themes on Themeforest19 but you can also grab some good free ones via a quick Google search. For my examples I will be using a free admin theme called AdminLTE20.
When choosing an admin theme try to gauge what features you will need. Concentrate on the rapid aspect of prototyping, not making sure that your prototype looks like the final design.
A Complete Example
When I started this article, I wanted to provide a complete example of how I use WordPress to prototype. I ended up recording a video of the process and writing about it in a bit more detail. The video below will walk you through my process of creating a prototype of the Twitter front page.
Following the video I’ll go into even more detail, giving you some instruction about setting up test servers, using the WordPress menu system to populate menus, and much more. I recommend watching the video first, and then looking at the details below, as they will be a lot clearer.
Prototyping is one of the best things that can happen within a project, yet it is extremely underutilized. Prototyping makes a project better suited to users, elevates user experience, increases the quality of your final code, and keeps clients happy.
The problem is that developers often see prototyping as a waste of time, since high-quality prototypes take considerable effort to make. I want to show you that by using WordPress, highly interactive prototypes with great visuals are not at all that difficult to make.
First, we’ll look at some basic prototyping concepts, then set up a test server from scratch. We’ll continue by converting an HTML template to a WordPress theme and learning how to use its items to create what we need. We’ll also learn how to add front-end and server-side functionality to our prototype.
While all this seems complex, beginners should be able to follow along easily, including the “create your own server” section, which is a cinch!
About Prototyping
“[A] prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.”
This sentence neatly sums up the pros and cons of a prototype. The advantage of creating a prototype is that it lets you test an idea and learn from the process. It allows you to make a reasonable assumption about the feasability of your project before you put in hundreds of hours of work.
One of the downsides is that prototypes are made so that we may learn from them. Often, designers and coders look on this as wasted time. Why make a protoype when we could be working on the real thing? Who is going to pay us for the time we spend prototyping?
To be honest, these are tricky questions. For smaller projects, no one will pay you for it, but your project will be better for it; this, in turn, leads to bigger and better projects. In most cases, the time you spend prototyping is regained while building the product anyway!
It also appears that designers like to prototype a lot more than developers. The root of the issue here is speed. A designer could prototype a design a lot faster than a developer, since the latter needs to build a quick framework, implement a design and do a lot of fiddly things which take time.
Fidelity And Functionality
We can approach prototypes by looking at two key features: fidelity and functionality. Fidelity refers to how detailed the prototype is visually, while functionality refers to the level of interaction possible within the system. Let’s look at how levels of fidelity and functionality in prototypes pair up.
Low-Functionality, Low-Fidelity
These prototypes are easy to make. They could be simple drawings, or Balsamiq mock-ups5. There is minimal interaction — or none at all — and visually the prototype has very little to do with the final product.
Increasing the fidelity while keeping functionality low is also quite common. A good example would be a Photoshop design file which could contain final design elements. Again, there is next to no interaction here but plenty of visual detail, enough to put it close to the final product in terms of design.
These prototypes are a bit more difficult but you can still make them without too much effort. Before you create the login/forgot password form for a large website, you might want to test if everything works by just dropping in a form and business logic strictly in HTML and PHP — no CSS, JavaScript or consideration of the context of the form.
Using front-end frameworks like Bootstrap14 or Foundation15 can can increase your fidelity somewhat, but you’d need to write a good amount of CSS to make it your own.
I would still consider these low-fidelity mock-ups because each front-end framework looks generic by default. That’s fine for testing the principle, but it doesn’t increase fidelity to a point where more sensitive clients would be able to visualize what the final product will be like.
High-Functionality, High-Fidelity
Prototypes like this are rarely seen because creating them can take more time than is worth it. Why create something so similar to the website-to-be when you could be working on the actual site?
High-functionality, high-fidelity prototypes contain a high degree of interactivity while also being a much closer facsimile of the final product. Users can follow links, submit forms and do many other things that help them see what the end result will be like.
The real trick is managing the time spent on making such prototypes — which is where WordPress comes in.
Which One To Use
There is, of course, no simple answer to this question. A high-fidelity, high-functionality prototype is closest to the real thing, but it takes time to make; for simpler projects, it may not be worth the time.
Low-fidelity, low-functionality prototypes are simplistic and cannot be interacted with, but for small projects and close-knit teams, perhaps they’re all that is needed.
Several factors need to be considered:
How well your team works together
How large your project is
How visually and technically oriented your client is
How well you understand the product you are building
How many people will be involved other than programmers and designers
In my experience, the most important factors are the client and the project’s complexity. Even if I understand the project well, I would like a high-fidelity, high-functionality prototype just in case. One of the fundamental mistakes you can make in projects is thinking you know them well.
For complex, large-scale projects you should always create prototypes with a high degree of freedom. The more systems and subsystems you need to build, the more intertwined they become and the more places things can go wrong.
The client can be an even bigger factor. Often, clients do not know what they want. They may not be design- or code-oriented, which means they will equate a low-fidelity prototype with bad design and missing features — even if you tell them what the prototype is for. As a result, a clearer visual aid is sometimes called for to enhance communication.
Since I will be talking about high-fidelity and high-functionality prototypes from now on, I will be calling them high-quality prototypes. This is not at all a reflection on other prototypes; a low-fideltiy, low-functionality prototype can also be created with high quality.
Considerations For High-Quality Prototypes
There are a number of considerations when making high-quality prototypes. What platform they should be built on, what functions need to be added (or not added), how intricate should we make the design, and so on.
The Platform
The platform chosen should be one which allows you to work fast and quickly add features as well. Bootstrap, Foundation and other frameworks are great, but they offer very little functionality, since they are purely front-end. Using them can still be a good idea, but not on their own.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have PHP frameworks like Laravel, which is excellent for creating high-quality modular code. This is out of the question, though, since we have to write too much business logic ourselves just to get a site up and running.
WordPress strikes a good balance here because it is essentially a bag of useful functions combined with a reasonably flexible way to template pages quickly. I want to stress that you should use a platform you feel comfortable with. If you’re amazing at using Laravel, by all means go with it.
The Design
You can create a simple design framework for yourself, but that also takes quite some time. This is the place to use front-end frameworks to lighten your workload.
What I recommend is getting a good pre-made HTML admin template. Many of these templates use Bootstrap or Foundation anyway, and put a bunch of elements at your fingertips. In addition, they’ve already styled the elements of their frameworks into something less generic, which is just what we need. With a little work they can be converted to WordPress themes and will facilitate extremely quick prototyping.
I don’t use bespoke WordPress themes because they are for presenting content, not creating application architecture. You won’t be able to create a menu or a form anywhere easily, and your code will likely be a mess by the end.
Depth Of Functionality
Depth of functionality is all about interactivity. Since you have control over a CMS you can, in theory, make things work properly — login forms could genuinely log you in. You probably don’t want to spend your time coding in all the functionality. That isn’t really the point here.
For example, is the login form really important? Everyone knows how logging in works. Perhaps the form can be allowed to be blank, and the login button logs you in immediately as a test user.
If you are building a finance management app, however, you may want to spend some time making sure that the “Add transaction” form works as expected. Real data can be listed and submitted adding a great deal of depth to your prototype.
Prototyping With WordPress
I think WordPress is a great choice for prototyping because of the flexibility of templating and the number of functions you have at your disposal. Logging in and out, adding metadata, querying items — a lot of base functionality is already there.
I like to choose a pre-made HTML admin theme that looks close to what we’ll be doing in the final iteration of the design. You can find a large number of premium admin themes on Themeforest19 but you can also grab some good free ones via a quick Google search. For my examples I will be using a free admin theme called AdminLTE20.
When choosing an admin theme try to gauge what features you will need. Concentrate on the rapid aspect of prototyping, not making sure that your prototype looks like the final design.
A Complete Example
When I started this article, I wanted to provide a complete example of how I use WordPress to prototype. I ended up recording a video of the process and writing about it in a bit more detail. The video below will walk you through my process of creating a prototype of the Twitter front page.
Following the video I’ll go into even more detail, giving you some instruction about setting up test servers, using the WordPress menu system to populate menus, and much more. I recommend watching the video first, and then looking at the details below, as they will be a lot clearer.
The SVG format provides various options for realizing complex graphical content. Among other things, you can create textures and add them to shapes using the element. Especially when using simple and common textures, the effort marking them up via SVG is, compared to the result, unreasonably high. Hence, the JavaScript library Texture.js provides such textures that mostly consist of lines and dots for SVG elements. With only a few lines of JavaScript, you can apply different textures to each shape of an SVG. Textures.js is Based on D3.js Textures.js is based on the JavaScript library D3.js and must, therefore, be embedded along with D3.js in the HTML document. D3.js helps visualizing data of any type. You can choose HTML or SVG elements and design them to your needs. D3.js and Textures.js allow you to select single shapes within an SVG, and Texture.js eventually adds a pattern to them. Create an SVG and Add a Texture First, you need an SVG. After embedding it in the HTML document, you can design it (almost) entirely to your needs. Only the filling is defined by Textures.js later on. If you determine a filling, it won’t be overwritten by the texture. <svg width=”225″ […]
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I’m working on a silly Polymer project right now, which parses a Pokémon database and returns a picture of a Pokémon, then speaks the creature’s name over your speakers. Here’s the source code for my project. It’s my first time using Polymer, and I’m certainly getting snagged in a few spots. Most recently, it was trying to return member functions of a Polymer object that I created. Took me forever to figure this out, so I wanted to share it with you in this tutorial. Sidenote: you can also search for my more detailed write-up on Web Components here. The Wrong Way I have a Web Component which looks like this: 1 If I try to access it by its ID…. 1 2 var temp = document.querySelector(“#radial-button-template”); // returns But I cannot access any of the function it. They return “undefined”. So if I tried this: 1 2 var temp = document.querySelector(“#radial-button-template”); temp.getFirstElement // returns undefined Why is This Happening? The reason behind this is due to the Shadow DOM’s encapsulation. It is both a gift and a curse. In this case, I am accessing the element, and not the shadowRoot, which will expose the public methods […]
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