Let me start by defining what I mean by visual organization and personality. Visual organization applies visual contrast and ultimately visual hierarchy to create page layouts that guide users through content. If you were to strip away all the aesthetic properties of an interface design, you’d still be left with a good amount of visual design—or rather visual organization—that illuminates the relationships between and the relative importance of page elements.
The other side of visual design is personality, or look and feel, which requires selecting the right fonts, colors, shapes, textures, and images to communicate an appropriate message to your target audience. Most visual designers will tell you these two aspects of visual design are virtually inseparable. This may have led to the commonly held belief that visual design is simply decoration. Personality, after all, communicates so instantaneously and powerfully that it may mask the deliberate visual organization “beneath” it.
Read this interview from User Interface 11 Conference website
Who is Luke Wroblewski? Why should you read his book Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability? Visit the Whats New Media Wiki to learn more or contribute what you know.
