The Importance of White Spacing in Web Design

We throw in a lot of cool elements when designing a website. We often forget the one aspect in web designing that has a lot of advantage and gives a better look to the overall appearance- The white Space! It is also known as negative space. But there is a lot of positive stuff that goes around this negative spacing. Let us discuss some here.

What is Whitespace?

You would think that whitespace does not need an introduction since the name suggests what it is. But whitespace does not necessarily be white. The name comes from the olden days of graphic design where almost every creation was done on white paper. It is nothing but the empty space around and between the elements of a design or a page layout. This can include images, margins, and space between columns, space around graphics and the space between lines of type.

Why is Whitespace important?

Though white space is technically nothing but just a blank, we should learn to give more credit to it. Whitespace has a lot of good things to offer. The number one advantage will be the sophistication and class it brings to the web page. What would you prefer- a crowded web page or a neat web page which is pleasant to look at? When the user opens a page, he/she should feel comfortable to read it and stay on that page for a while. If you are designing a web page packed with really good information but not spaced properly, there is no point designing one. While presenting something on paper, the space is limited and you want to make the most out of the space available because here more space costs money. But if you think for a second and leave a little more spacing then it shows you are more concerned about the content rather than the cost of designing a page and it looks neat and readable.

What else can Whitespace do?

It also offers other benefits such as,

• Better clarity and readability
• Comfortable reading experience
• Professional Appearance
• Main focus on Content
• Sufficient separation for important elements
• Overall appearance

Big branded companies like Pottery Barn and Apple leave ample spacing in their web sites to make it look attractive and classy. These websites usually receive lot of traffic compared to a cluttered website.

On a smaller level white space plays an important part when it comes to the design, formatting and usability. Adding more white space to a web page makes the content stand out and it is easily comprehensible. There is no rule book on how much white space should be used on a website. Each design is unique. So the amount you use will vary for each design. It also depends upon the developer’s perception of spacing and the final product of the website. At the end of the day, to get it right you just have to try it again and again, perform some trial and error methods till you get it right and then incorporate it on the web page for a clean, stylish look.

This infographic discusses what whitespace is and it’s important role in web design.

img alt="The Importance of Whitespace in Web Design" border="0" src="http://googledrive.com/host/0B6ktZzNhkH6JMmd2a29fMGoxRWc/importance-whitespace-web-design.jpg" title="The Importance of Whitespace in Web Design" />

Image: Hall Internet Marketing Home

Happy 3rd Birthday Google+

June 28th 2014 marks the 3rd birthday of Google’s social networking platform Google+. At only three years old, it is still in its infancy yet it has faced the harshest of criticisms and ridicule at times of all the social networks. Heralded as Google’s competitor to Facebook, Google+ has not taken off as some would have predicted, especially with the might of corporate Google behind it. Nonetheless, the social network is still in the growth stage and has been tweaked in terms of design and functionality many times since its inception. Google+ has an attractive interface as many have commented but the problem is that few have all their peers on it in comparison to the likes of Facebook. Too often Google+, the social network is a place used by digital markets solely for search engine optimization purposes.

This infographic charts Google’s history with the world of social networking, what has worked and what hasn’t. It also compares Google+ to its largest rival Facebook in terms of different variables which makes interesting reading and it also attempts to address what is in the future for the social network.

Image: DPFOC

How to Make a Triple-Decker Nutella Sandwich

One thing a lot of people know how to make is a Nutella sandwich where they combine it with bananas and then put it all on a couple of slices of bread. But do you know how to make a triple-decker Nutella sandwich?

It’s quite easy really. You don’t have to be a genius to put this sandwich together. All you really need is some Nutella, a banana and a few slices of Wonder Bread. Yeah, it needs to be Wonder Bread. It specifically states that, and nothing else will do the trick. So now that you have the ingredients, it is time to learn how to make a triple-decker Nutella sandwich.

A triple-decker Nutella sandwich infographic designed by Michelle Lee from Markam, Canada, and it will totally teach you how to make one.

Image: Michelle Lee

The History of Nutella

Mr. Pietro Ferrero, an Italian pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company, invented this decadent treat. Even more incredible is the fact that he invented it in 1940’s while World War II ravaged Italy. Somehow he managed to acquire a limited supply of chocolate during food rationing. To extend his short supply, he mixed the chocolate with hazelnuts which grew in overabundant supply in the Piedmont region of Italy.

Ferrero produced the chocolate-hazelnut spread and baked it in a loaf of bread. He then wrapped the loaf in tinfoil and marketed it. He called the chocolate loaf “Pasta Gianduja” after a carnival character famous to the region. So mothers began purchasing the loaf for their children and served it to them slice by slice. Children being children, however, they discarded the bread and went straight for the chocolate.

Always one to recognize a golden opportunity, Mr. Ferrero dispensed with the bread and began to sell the chocolate paste in a jar. He renamed the product “Supercrema Gianduja”. The produce became a huge hit almost instantly. Italians discovered it to be an inexpensive way to enjoy a decadent treat. During the 1940’s and 1950’s a kilo of chocolate was 6 times the cost of one kilo of Supercrema Gianduja. It grew in popularity so fast, that Italian food stores started a service called “The Smearing”. Children could go to their local food store with a slice of bread for a free “smear” of the super cream. In the 1960’s the product was renamed to Nutella.

Its popularity has now spread to encompass the entire world. Many years ago, one could only find the product at Italian specialty stores as imports. Today, it is available in the peanut butter aisle in grocery stores across North America, and, it outsells all brands of peanut butter combined!

A jar of Nutella will cost you almost $5.00 in the store. And if you think that’s expensive – think again. It takes Ferrero three hours to produce one batch of Nutella. It is a highly refined, amazing process, making the shelf price a fair value for the quality and care it takes to make the product.

In 2014, Nutella® celebrates its 50th birthday. It has been 50 years shared with you. It’s been 50 years full of stories around the world. To make this celebration really special tell yours Nutella stories on Nutellastories.com.

How Much Time We Have?

How will you spend it?

Image: Funders and Founders

How Men and Women See Colors

SHE SAYS: “Honey, which shade of blue do you prefer? Aqua, cobalt or navy?”

HE SAYS: “Huh? They all look the same to me.”

It’s now a scientific fact! Men and women do not see colors the same way because the male and female brains process information about color differently.

While men are more attuned to seeing fine detail and objects that move rapidly, women are better at differentiating between colors, reports HealthDay News of a study conducted by researchers at Brooklyn College and Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Study participants, all of whom were over the age of 16, had normal color vision and perfect 20/20 vision (either natural or corrected), were asked to view and identify colors across the spectrum from red to violet.

The results:

• In order for men to see the same color hue as women, they had to view a slightly longer wavelength.
• Men had more trouble than women discerning specific colors in the center of the spectrum.
• Men were better able than women to see images that changed rapidly.

“As with other senses, such as hearing and the olfactory system, there are marked sex differences in vision between men and women,” study leader Israel Abramov said in a news release.

Image: KISSmetrics

Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet 2014

If you are an inbound marketer, seo expert, web designer, blogger or a small business owner then you probably use social media everyday. Here is a super useful infographic that will make your job easier! This is the updated version of Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet – 2014.

There are many other sizing infographics, cheat sheets on the web but most of them are very complicated. So this is a clean and a plain version which includes only the most used sizes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus.

Image: Infinpixels

What Do 7 Billion People Do?

The occupations of the world’s population today.

Image: Funders and Founders

2014 World Cup Draw Infographic

The 2014 World Cup take place in Brazil, beginning with the opening game on 12th June and ending with the World Cup final on 13th July. It is the 20th World Cup tournament to be staged, the second to be held in Brazil (following on from the 1950 World Cup), and the fifth finals to be held in South America, adding to the tournaments held in 1930, 1950, 1962 and 1978.

See also: World Cup Brazil 2014

The 20th FIFA World Cup draw was held on 6th December 2013. There was a lot of confusion around how the draw would be decided upon this year due to the fact there were more European teams involved than any other continent. With that in mind I decided to simplify how the draw will work in graphic form.

Image: Titanbet.com

Beats by Dre | The Game Before The Game

Before the goals, before the glory, there is an unseen game played in the locker room. Watch how the best prepare for greatness with Beats SOLO2 and Studio. This is how the game is won.

2014 FIFA World Cup – Time Zone

When the World Cup starts, every fan around the globe has to adjust their schedule to Brazil’s, which means they have to make a little extra effort to watch their team’s matches.

Google Is Making It Easier to Keep Up With the World Cup

Google is going for the goal in its coverage of this year’s FIFA World Cup.

Google launched a World Cup website — as a part of its Google Trends section — on Wednesday to make it easier for fans to get the latest stats, player news and live game updates in one spot. Users who now search for “World Cup” or “World Cup USA” in Google will see this data pop up at the top of the results page.

World Cup Brazil 2014

A uniform guide for the 32 National Football finalists in World Cup 2014 along with some nice trivia for the past world champions. Enjoy!

See also: 2014 World Cup Draw Infographic

Image: Ilias Sounas

Why is PHP a Better Option for Web Design?

When it comes to web designing, PHP is one of the most favored tools owing to a number of reasons. PHP comes up with certain unique features that make it one of the most adored, preferred as well as appropriate options for the purpose of web designing. The language itself thus, has made PHP developers highly sought-after professionals in the fraternity of web development as well as designing companies. Let us discuss the efficacy of PHP as a web designing tool.

First of all, PHP development does not take much of a time when compared with other tools as the language requires a much lesser number of coding, thus making the task less tedious. The language also proves to be extremely useful as well as effective, especially when it comes to CMSs like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and so on, which are of late so much popular among the customers.

There is stiff competition out there in the market in the world of website designing or development, especially with so many companies joining the bandwagon. Hence, in order to survive this rigid competition and to make things in a bit different way, companies are coming up with sites that are not only visually appealing but SEO friendly as well. This is to make sure that these sites help in bringing more and more business leads along with greater revenue. Here is where PHO scores over other languages. The language is astoundingly compatible with SEO when compared to other designing methods or languages.

The language is designed to seamlessly integrate as well as coordinate with various visible applications and this is a very pertinent dynamics, especially taking into view today’s business requirements. The language is also great when it comes to building its own memory, for an efficient and prompt use down the line.

PHP is also capable of working on a wide range of operating platforms as well as environments, including the MS Window, Linux, etc. and this makes the language extremely desirable in today’s context.

You will be able to find a fairly large community of PHP supporters as well as discussion groups and these groups help in solving issues whenever they crop up. The issues these groups sort out include bugs, problems with codes as well as information. All these increase the credibility of the language, making it a safe as well as a stable platform to use, especially for the beginners.

In PHP, you get a language that is designed specifically for the purpose of web designing with an inbuilt integration option with one of the most popular open source MySQL database. PHP has the following unique features that make the language, such an indomitable web designing language:

It is easy for the beginners:

PHP is the most ideal language for the beginners, who will just have to add some tags with the already existing HTML files, and follow it up by uploading them to the server and see the end results. Besides, the dynamic typing and the associative arrays make the language easier for the beginners.

It is user friendly

When compared to other solutions, there is no need of compilation in PHP. Hence, all that is needed is writing the script and uploading the script to the server and then updating the browser.

Besides, PHP comes up with an integrated support for databases of MySQL and that makes it easier to use the database with MySQL functions with no need to install additional drivers. Since it is a much older language, there are a number of web-oriented frameworks as well libraries available. Also, since it has been round the corner for such a long period (since as early as 1995), it performs seamlessly on Linux as well as Windows along with a wide range of other web servers. Also, when it comes to finding hosting with pre-installed PHP, there is no problem.

You can hire developers from top php web development companies who can help you build web application within allocated budgets and time schedules.