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On the modern internet, users are often presented with a barrage of advertisements in a number of different forms. Sometimes blinking and flashing at high speeds or in fluorescent colors, and sometimes even incorporating loud sounds or music, advertisements can have an effect on site visitors that’s opposite of what the creator has intended; that is, annoyed viewers simply leave the page to get away from all of the ads. This environment is creating an ever-increasing need for discreet advertisements that portray powerful messages without bothering their viewers. An important consideration for website owners in all fields as well as consultants from web designers to SEO experts to internet marketers and beyond, the mood and personality of an advertisement can have a substantial impact on its success.

Simply creating a straightforward ad that doesn’t attempt to take over a site visitor’s attention by force can go a long way towards preserving positive feelings about a brand or product, but not all successful ads have to keep their look and feel calm and understated. Attractive ads that truly represent the item being advertised, in a context appropriate for its target demographic, can be used to impress potential clients without creating visual conflict. As web design specialists become increasingly talented at using the opportunities of the medium of the internet to their fullest extent, a number of new ways to advertise discreetly are being developed.

A popular choice for working with large-format advertisements that allow for plenty of coveted room and can be as comprehensive as a designer or SEO specialist could possibly hope is the concept of page-peel ads, or simply, peel ads. Creating a small, perceivable, yet non-obtrusive corner curl on a given page, this design feature allows a site visitor to mouse over the corner, which “peels” the existing page back, exposing the advertisement beneath. This inventive function creates visual interest for visitors and allows them to explore the advertisement on their own terms, resulting in more targeted impressions over time.

The basic roll-over concept employed in peel ads can also be used for designing less complex but similarly effective on-screen advertisements. Creating a roll-over function for a given block of content, whether it’s a piece of text, an image, a title, or any other element, designers can create contextual ads that open in a small window or bar, akin to a tool tip. Designing these discreet yet powerful ads is fairly straightforward; a paragraph about Austin Texas on a travel page might be enhanced with an image-based advertisement design that’s called up whenever a visitor places their cursor over the Austin Tx city name.

If exposed to enough viewers, the most invasive ads created might still, eventually, create a positive impression or lead to a sale or membership. But in the vast majority of cases, appeasing the internet audience with stylish and discreet ads that communicate without “yelling” is a sure way to win on the web.

Website Design
NuArtisan
7000 N Mo Pac Expy Ste 200
Austin, TX 78731
(512) 712-5359

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If you’ve spent much time in museums or galleries or have shared the company of professional designers, artists, or critics, you’ve likely heard the term “aesthetics” thrown around in a number of ways to convey a seemingly chaotic assortment of ideas. Aesthetics is often misunderstood or misapplied to the topic at hand, but this mostly reflects its status as an over-arching philosophical concept that can be difficult to apply to individual, specific objects and situations. In its purest form, aesthetics is the philosophy of beauty; it is a field which encourages us to investigate and open our senses to the appeal of beautiful and attractive things. Many people are intent on considering aesthetics as a viewer, while others, especially modern web designers, are concerned with the creation of aesthetically pleasing things. In the consideration of aesthetics on the web, the notion of “micro aesthetics” can play an important role in both understanding why attractive pages are attractive, as well as how to achieve this attractive quality.

Micro aesthetics as a concept began to garner specific attention in the early twentieth century, and was largely pioneered by Max Bense. Interested in the reasoning behind human pleasure as well as the natural sciences, Bense explored the realm of aesthetics and developed a key distinction between two common and important processes in assessing the visual appeal of an object. He defined micro aesthetics as that approach which looked for beauty in what amounts to the details; the specific spacing between letters, the width and length of a given artistic element, the number of objects or elements themselves, and the ratio of specific design aspects to their fellow pieces are all examples of micro aesthetic subjects.

In the field of web design, as with any online endeavor whether working with search engine optimization or complex scripting, the details matter. In Search Engine Optimization, the precise positioning of keywords is an essential factor, and no code is acceptable without its prescribed syntax. These details, on their own, cannot of course create the whole object itself, yet the object itself is meaningless and ineffectual without due consideration of the details. Many aspects of sound design from a micro aesthetic perspective are familiar, gleaned through several years of exposure to positive examples. The notion that within a field of yellow daisies, a red blossom will have a pleasing and impacting effect on the viewer is one such example.

But not all principles are so overt. The understanding of how many petals are ideal on any given daisy, or of the most attractive threshold of space between a set of varicolored borders, is not as quickly forthcoming. Though micro aesthetics have particular variations from region to region, there are many universals that can guide designers whether they’re working in Austin Texas or around the world in Papau New Guinea. While the two locales may have differing ideas about the proper width of certain objects, a tangled mess of lines is bound to be just as unattractive in Austin TX as it is among the islanders of the Pacific.

Careful consideration of micro aesthetics and an exploration of the most pleasing individual elements of design are both rewarding for solid web design success as well as a more full-bodied enjoyment of beauty.

For great Austin Web Design visit:

NuArtisan
7000 N Mo Pac Expy Ste 200
Austin, TX 78731
(512) 712-5359