Aaron's Driving School

It’s not common these days to come across a website without at least one or two images scattered here and there, and in many cases they are integral parts of quality websites, serving as banners, backgrounds, or augmenting the content. So how exactly can you go about buffing up your site with some visual flair?

Perhaps the best way is to start with the don’ts, before we move on to the dos. If you’re going to have a background image, make it relatively plain, or at least set a solid colour in front of it – there’s nothing worse than hideous swirls of black and white in the background and black text on the front, as it is completely unreadable and offputting. Equally be sure to avoid rainbow or similarly lurid, multicoloured ideas… unless, again, you’re going to put a solid background colour behind the text. Photographs can work, but again, adhere to readable contrasts as we talked about in the earlier instalments.

One of the best places for a nice, inviting image is the header – you can have a decorated textual banner with your website’s name or otherwise, or just a nice banner-sized photo to adron the top of your page. Again, don’t go for anything too big – it can be as wide as it likes, but should not be so tall that viewers have to start scrolling to read your content (and keep it in proportion as well!) Something like this works:

As for images in your content, it’s always wise to have just one smallish image in your articles, to break up the text. After all, one important thing about writing for the internet you should consider is that you’re not writing a novel (unless of course you have a fiction site!), but rather something easily informative and straight to the point. Use moderation at all times though, and nothing that contrasts too much with your design colours, otherwise you will be repelling rather than enticing readers!

Should you use images? Absolutely! Just be careful when you do – terrible use of images can ruin a website’s visual appeal. However, apply a bit of common sense and you should be flying.