Design Challenges

Design for a purpose

I was just watching Hotel Rwanda, excellent movie. It draws a lot of emotion from the viewers. It got me thinking, how did they achieve this, simple, they designed the scenery with purpose. They incorporated a very moving soundtrack to go specifically with each scene.

In Web design, however, a visual is all you have for the most part, unless you are designing a moving image/animation. So how do you draw the right emotion. The answer is not as difficult as it might seem, you use your creativity.

Picking the right photograph or combination of photographs is all that you need. Think about all those calendars you see around your office, most of them are a simple photo. But what do you do when you are asked to designed more specifically? Then you must be carefull to pick the right colors to obtain the right emotion. For example, light blue is a soothing color, think about how you react when you see a light blue sky. How about a sunrise versus a sunset, use this kind of visuals when you are designing for the space; think about what emotions you want to achieve from your viewers before you actually open Photoshop aqnd start playing away.