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As DA01 mentions, having a focal point doesn't necessarily mean the page will be unbalanced. It's good to have at least one focal point in the sense of accentuating the main message(s), for example a call to action. Now, elements can be distributed differently across a design and still be balanced (if you are using a grid, then you start with a certain ...

I asked a similar question on the usefulness of the Golden Ratio on the User Interface site. Unfortunately, there isn't any compelling and objective evidence that the Golden Ratio actually does what everyone says it does, despite the plethora of blog posts about it. That said, I don't think that using the Golden Ratio hurts a design. It's an eye-pleasing ...

You should probably consider establishing upper and lower limits and making the area of concern flash (possibly a red or yellow background with a black line flashing back to the normal waveform) if values go above or below those limits. For example: ETCO2 values above or below baseline (35-45mmHg) HR below 60 (considered bradycardic) or above 120 ...

I think the question is really one of your particular site and the client's need for the visual effect of a gradient. I think the current trend is (using HSV as a visual construct) to pick just one hue, and use saturation or value to shift it across the spectrum. In most cases, the scale of the gradient is also pretty large; small enough for you to see it ...

The visual flow of an interface does matter, and here's why: Every interface screen should have a primary action or actions that are to be performed. The visual flow should naturally draw the eye to the primary action. The less distance the eye has to travel, the easier an interface is to comprehend and use. Studies (pdf) on form design bear this out as ...

Using golden ratio it is a good practice, because it is a constant proportion, but at the same time it increase in exponential matter, becoming interesting respect to other proportions. You shouldn't feel compelled to use it, but it is a great guideline in defining a design project. If you talk about modern, on the internet, you cannot just apply the golden ...

From kindergarten to elementary school the majority of my (and other kids') drawings had a thing called "corner Sun" which was a quarter of the Sun filling the upper-left corner. At first this analogue might sound far–fetched or tongue–in–cheek, but I think the concept of corner Sun points to the source where the idea of ideal drop shadow comes from. Now, I ...

In your designs of your own devising, be consistent. If one object has a top-left light source, then all of your objects should have a top left light source. In designs of others's devising, you need to be consistent with their format. In the case of Apple's Mac OS X (per the HIG), drop shadows come from the top-center, and actually a bit on the front ...

There's always the grid: 3 across, 2 high, with 1/16-1/8" gap between each. Make all photos a uniform size. If you can take it to the edges of the sheet, bleed them at top and L/R (don't know what a bleed is? see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_%28printing%29 ). Look for large forms or shapes in the poses of the models and try and arrange the photos so ...

The Logo is often on the top because it's better to remember, the first thing you see is the first to remember. If the logo is good enough to stand alone, its irrelevant where the name stands. This could be a benefit, if you can place the name everywhere you can change the place for every format. Beneath or above the Logo on the web and for letters it ...

If you enjoy math, put it to use developing grid and proportion systems. Experiment with various geometries all you like (I hinted at that in this answer). In the end, it comes down to having or developing an eye for the end result but experimenting will help. Try classical systems like pentagons, golden triangles, golden rectangles, circles, etc. Grid ...

If removing the rotation is not feasible (or allowed). I think I would try to get away with reducing the darkness of the shadow. A less intense shadow will do a great deal to "lighten" the footprint overall. Much less eye-catching in my opinion and less dominant in any layout. All i did was drop it to 10%.

There is no convention and no rule on this. The fact that it's common to have the type below the graphic is partly that it's currently fashionable and partly a design decision based on what the client or the design feels should have prominence. There is only one case where going with what's conventional is actually required in a design, and that's when you ...

When you design about composition it is good to learn from the classic graphic design info that you can find about print (for example Typography, Grids, Kerning, White-Space, Golden Ratio). They will give you a correct linearity and order that you need in order to design "whatever". The difficulties in web design is that nothing it is displayed in the same ...

I don't know the answer, but I'm fairly sure that its use is massively outweighed by the 1:(square root of 2) ratio, approximately equal to 1.414, used for ISO paper sizes globally and thus all kinds of posters, leaflets, flyers, brochures, magazines, etc. Or simple ratios like 1:2, 1:3, 2:3 etc, which often occur in layouts based on columns or grids.

You can study each single principle in depth (it is useful), but the only way that you are to achieve good design: it is experience. 1) Trying to make something everyday, and make it judge by others (it is good if "others" are people expert in design so they can give you an objective point of view, and not a subjective point of view based on taste). 2) Look ...

I come more from the 3D CG realm, and when doing 3D work, you are attempting to create something that very much resembles reality. Rarely do shadows consistently fall in the same direction, not only because the shape of the objects can alter shadows a bit, but also because no light source behaves that way since their light is emitted radially from a single ...

I think with a lot of company's (nowadays anyway, it seems), their aim is to become recognisable by just the image/icon, like Apple and WWF; so to have the text above would detract from the overall concept of branding that image. Text above and below wouldn't be as bad and I think I see that more often than the example you have provided.

Here is a possible solution if you are open to using Photoshop. Assemble the "grid" of architecture photographs first, in any arrangement, and merge them into one layer. Either convert that layer to grayscale or turn down the saturation. Then, take the photo of the architect, paste it into a layer above the first one, and change the blending mode to ...

This question is currently a bit ambiguous and difficult to answer, but I'll give it my best shot. Less is more While designing a website, one of the top priorities is to design it with your audience in mind, as they will be the ones using it after all. I'd say in some rare exceptions you can get away with making a website more complicated, but I'd say 9 ...

To balance the design further I would pull the smaller text to the left so the distance from the left edge of box 1 to text is the same distance as the right edge of box 2 to text. I would also make the distance from the box bottoms to the text top equal to the box heights.

As most people look at any page, there eyes naturally start on the left and move to the right. This is because of the way that English is oriented, moving left to right. If you look at eye tracking heat maps, you will notice that unless there is something highly noticeable, peoples eyes tend to stay on the left side of the screen, however. All you need to ...

Using percentage widths in your CSS can maintain column or element ratios: width: 61.8%; Just make sure you're aware of how CSS treats percentage widths and heights: http://www.impressivewebs.com/width-100-percent-css/

You may use the principle of proximity to highlight the different relationships between pictures. For example, you may group pictures from the video footage with limited white space between images on one side, to indicate a close relationship, and add the picture of the old man on the other side, with larger white space between the old man and the group, to ...

The concept of balance is less subjective than you think, unless you consider all perceptions subjective! :) Here's how to develop an eye for it: browse around your local area and/or Flickr, Google images, or any other source of photographs of the real world and look at photographs of objects that are clearly balanced (stable) and unbalanced (ready to fall ...

The first problem with your layout isn't the left-to-right reading order. It's that there is a vast, empty ocean between the text and the box. The second is that neither the top, the center nor the bottom of the box align with the top, center or bottom of your text. The result is that they just aren't visually connected, so they look like two completely ...

What about a transparent png icon with a background color applied via CSS? Images would all be the same size but you could alter colors based on transparent areas of the PNG. This is a jpg representing the idea.... But the actual png would have the actual icon transparent: <img src="smile.png" width="100" height="100" border="0" class="evaluser0" ...

An alternative might be to apply rounded corners to your photos? Add a hover to the image to display the caption. The roundness keeps in sync with your nice icons and great font choice for the page heading. On hover display caption

The color issues are challenging, but the scaling issues are tough as well. Given you know you want to print it at about 40" across (let's say 40"x40" for the sake of discussion), what size (printed) does each individual image of the mosaic need to be in order to be discernable at close range? And what is the desired viewing distance for the entire printed ...

This is a good question indeed. But I would say 'No'. And why not? Well, as graphics designer (I sometimes hate that word) we have the ability to guide the end-user, as Ryan suggested (and I agree with him on " that the end-user's experience is the most important"; we create for them not for other designers). There are no set-in-stone rules (only ...