These rules offer you a guide to the best and easiest ways of combining the different elements of a design into an attractive and functional website.

A good web design company understands the concept of quality over quantity, and takes the effort to make each web page as functional and aesthetically appealing as possible.

As you work to help your web design company to build a site design that is both useful and look good, make sure you keep the elements of design that follow in mind.

Web Design Balance

The fundamental concept behind Web design balance is an appropriate layout of the heavy and light design elements on any page. The layout of the page will eventually determine how well balanced your design is.

It is important to ensure that each page achieves balance throughout, and not only in the top part of the page.

It is not uncommon for your web design company to give you guidelines to follow such as making sure the text and other elements are all centered on the page or that you should arrange everything according to a preset grid system to help you achieve the required balance.

The three main types of balance that you may consider as you design your page are:

Symmetrical. Symmetry can be achieved by repeating everything that you do on one side of the page on the other. A heavy design element on the right should be matched by a similar one of the left. The elements should not be exactly the same, however, because that would make your page look uninteresting and uninspired.

Asymmetrical. Building a website with an asymmetrical design theme can be difficult. However, with the right combination of colors, texture and overall layout, the result can be very aesthetically pleasing.

Discordant. Web sites that are discordant are usually associated with action or movement and thus should be used accordingly. They tend to cause some distress in viewers and thus are best used only for websites that contain special or unusual content.

Web Design Contrast

Web design contrast is not limited solely to the interaction between different colors on your web page, but also includes the interactions between texture, shape and size.

Image contrast can be achieved through changing the size of the images as well the positioning of bright or dark images. Contrasting text can also be achieved by varying the size, weight and type of fonts used. The font used for links, in particular, should be properly contrasted so that they stand out.

Remember not to overdo the contrasts on your web page, however, because that will make your site extremely unappealing to readers.

Web Design Emphasis

Web design emphasis is the creation of certain key areas of interest which attract the attention of the reader.

Web design companies often caution designers against trying to make everything on the page stand out. Trying to emphasize everything on a page will make the design too uniform and difficult for the reader's mind to encompass.

Therefore you should only emphasize key elements in your design, allowing them to guide your reader to regions of interest or information on your page.

Semantic markup, varying font and image sizes, contrasting colors all are ways through which you can alter the emphasis placed on each element of your design.

Web Design Rhythm

Web design rhythm involves the use of repeating elements throughout your web site designs in order to achieve consistency and cohesion on each page.

Some elements of your design will benefit from repetition throughout the web site as this will ultimately create a rhythm that is attractive to readers.

Repeating the title of each page, creating a background that makes use of repetitive patterning and using the same navigation controls throughout the site are all excellent methods of creating a successful rhythm in your overall design.

Web Design Unity

The basic concept behind web design unity is the grouping of similar design elements together and the separation of differing elements.

By organizing your web site in this fashion, you can create a site that is coherent and efficiently organized. Proper placement of individual elements in the layout of each page is essential to achieving web design unity.

Examples of this include varying the distance between elements in your layout, changing the values for margins and padding and varying the amount of empty space surrounding text objects.

By taking of all these design elements into consideration when creating your web site, you can ensure the pages you create are all attractive, useful and attention grabbing.

By applying them in to appropriate fashion, you will be able to complete your web design projects to the satisfaction of your customers.