Form and Content

I will now attempt to tackle the subject of form and content in a blog, whilst both are of equal importance, form is something that can significantly improve a blog even if the content is of a low quality. Aesthetics is a word being thrown around a lot in class at the moment and my interpretation of this word is the level at which the item is pleasing to the human eye. Crusing around the net I discovered that one site defined the word aesthetics as something with an artistically beautiful or pleasing appearance. This definition matches pretty well with my own definition of the word and aesthetics is something which I constantly strive for on my own blogger.

In my opinion a blog or website is less likely to be viewed if it is unnatractive on first appearance. A web site for the band MUSE is one which consistently catches my eye due to its innovative design and straight away this raises the appeal of the band despite whether the person visiting the page has heard any of their material. Its font and colours complement each other perfectly and the way in which the page loads immediately catches the eye in an ultra smooth fashion. I'm a big fan of simplicity in web pages, if a page looks good without having an abundance of information then its gone a long way to impressing me. A good example of this can be made by comparing the google and yahoo pages. Both are similar websites content wise but yahoo is far more cluttered looking than google, causing much confusion when attempting to perform a simple search. For this reason I think Google not only looks better but its simplicity wins me over.

Some also importatant factors in web design are the legibility of the content: it is important to ensure the background colour is picked to enable to viewer to read the text with the greatest of ease. Another factor is the bandwidth of the user visiting the page: A page that has too much different types of media that takes a while to load is going to infuriate someone using a lower bandwidth and thus detract them from visiting the page again. Media on the net is different from print media becuase its interative, in a book you turn to a specfic page to find what your after using the index, on the net you simply click on the link that relates to what you want to see and you are taken there almost straight away. This interactive quality highlights the importance of easy navigation in a website, a user must be able to find what they are after with the aid of headings and sub-headings.

At the end of the day a good web site is something that is not only nice to look at but offers you things that print media can't. It reminds you why we use the internet.