Visual Perception?
Among other kinds of perception for webdesign visual perception is the one to pay most attention to.
Often web and screen designers don't have the time or patience to work through books and on-line articles about visual perception, colour theories or typography in general.
In a very few seconds an impression is created in the brain from the informations that have been collected by the eye's and been filtered by the nerves.
Few seconds to judge about the things seen and make a decision - in former times e.g. to run away from a dangerous animal, today to quite a website.... or to stay ... And as information always has to be presented visually online the way it's presented and percepted is extremely important.
Why look at the examples?
Apart from structure, navigation and general design aspects (layout, readabilityy, etc.) colour and proportions, filled or empty spaces have a strong influence on perception.
All elements on a page influence eachother - more or less. The examples show you obvious effects. You might never use same patterns or strong colours but bear in mind that all influences are always there and that eye-strength, boredom, reading difficulty is mostly caused by inappropiate design.
I urgently recommend studying and experimentation with colours, texts and layouts as it will help to develop a secure feeling about perception and make design decision easier and founded.
What to find here
Many examples I show on the following pages are stated examples on the field of research at visual perception and are named after the persons who 'discovered and investigated' them first.
I added a whole lot more and developed some of them for other or better demonstrations.
I focused on practical examples to demonstrate topics I find important and interesting for screen design.
the examples are not strictly categorized as usually many aspects of perception rules can be found together.
Walkthrough
let the pages load on the whole before you start to click - the pages are quite large in filesize (150kb each) because I wanted to pack a of infos and examples into one page instead of making 50 seperated pages.
I tried to use the interactive possibitlies of navigating, interacting on webpages to demonstrate on or the other effect better.
the examples' pages use a neutral grey background because that lilac here would have meant an additional influencing colour on your brain...
there is also the option to switch on/off a 'relax layer' to neutralize the eyes irritation caused by colours and patterns of the examples :-)
you first should notice what you see before you look at the effect text box. then you can read the explanation and if you are further interested also the short advice / tips for practice usage.
Further Information
There are many resources around online and in print and there are unnumerous chapters in web design books, art books, scientific magazines.
Some deal with the neurology of the eye and brain, others investigate the matter from physics (visible light waves, colour temperatures, etc.), from psychology, philosophy, from esoterical points of view or symbolism of colours in different cultures and ages.
I might make a link list in the future here if I get feedback on this issue. :-).
Here a few books I like on the whole every time I read them again:
Donald D.Hoffman 'Visual Intelligence. How we create what we see.' (-> website )
Margarete Bruns: 'Das Rätsel Farbe - Materie und Mythos', Reclam, Stuttgart 1997
Otl Aicher: 'typographie', 1988 Druckhaus Maack, Lüdenscheid (my typobible!)
Karin v.Maur: 'Vom Klang der Bilder', 1999 Prestel, München
Antonio R.Domasio: 'Descartes' Irrtum - Fühlen, Denken und das menschliche Gehirn', 1997 DTB, München
various books by Ernst Gombrich, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Roland Barthes, Paul Virilio, Umberto Eco (not the novels :-), Wolfgang Goethe, Ludwig Wittgenstein, books about art and history, colour, brain, psychology, multimedia, education, ...
Feedback
this area should grow if I see there is enough interest "out there"...
I will add some more samples about grouping elements and movement effects until July 2001.
if you have discovered a certain effect on your own or have special interest in some or questions about visual perception, or have better explanations or ideas how to improve my demos, please drop me some lines of feedback!
SOON
SOON