Tripping Words - The Philosophy of Design

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What Emotional Vibe Does Your Website Exude?

efore I begin, a thank you message is in order to those who sent in emails in praise of my literary ventures on Tripping Words. These compliments certainly serve as an added impetuous for me to continue conjuring up insightful and incisive perspectives on the state of affairs in the world of design.

Today’s subject matter takes us in the direction of the emotional complexities behind visual design, a topic that remains surprisingly under-analyzed in the field of web design. A year ago, I had the privilege of participating in an academic research movement on youth emotional attitudes towards specific websites on the internet. A select group of youth were nominated randomly for the study and asked to account for their sense of emotional engagement (or disengagement) with certain elements of visual design/culture. They were tasked to keep personal journals detailing their emotional experiences online (a profoundly abstract assignment indeed!). The results were quite astounding.

More than half of those surveyed felt that websites on the Internet (both visual and content based elements) have the ability to evoke specific emotions, of anger, happiness and sadness. There was a clear empirical correlation between visual design and ones emotional complexion. But to the layman who is unperturbed by these new-fangled theories, how do websites actually relate to emotions? The answer lies in our emotional cognition of ‘art’. Read on.

We are well acquainted with famous classical paintings such as the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and Van Gogh’s, Starry Night from which extensive reviews have been generated, commenting on its emotional complexity. In my opinion, the first impression a website leaves on us, is an emotional one. I am using the term ‘emotion’ here in a highly generalized and hence ‘loose’ sense and to put things into perspective, I’ll provide a definition to further contextualize matters.

Presumably similar design elements can bring out largely varying emotional affects (not effects). The use of colours such as ‘black’ for example can signify a sense of melancholic defiance, a breath of modern sophistication or a state of foreboding mystery. The possibilities are endless and they are of course open to debate and interpretation. I have taken the liberty to collate 2 websites to put “my” theory to the test.

SocialSignal.Com - Sending the right signals

Social Signal is dedicated towards social media marketing. So basically if you have a social media start up, these people would transform your business in to a fully fledged commercial enterprise. I selected this website because of its glaringly clear appeal to human emotion. The bright orange colour and the multi colored logo, provide a ‘fresh’ vibe that conveys a positive message – “the possibilities in social media are endless. The future is bright, cheery and colorful!” (my interpretation) This site is a clear winner in manipulating the emotional conditions upon which you view social media marketing. “Social media marketing is energetic its potentialities are limitless!” (again, my interpretation). The sheer sleekness of the overall design creates a very modernistic (and optimistic) aura, a key ingredient in the spirit of entrepreneurship.

Creative Joomla Design - A Beautiful Mind

If you’ve watched Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind” (the scene where main lead, Russell Crowe frantically writes on a blackboard, a series of complex mathematical equations) , then you would certainly understand the design inspiration behind this website, an online firm specializing in web development and design for Joomla, the content management system. The designer opts for an ‘enigmatic’ ambience. The site breathes a certain sense of perplexing ambiguity (formulas and design blueprints hand drawn haphazardly) and yet eludes an assurance that something ‘brilliant’ will emerge from all the complexity.

Some of the chalk scribbles are actually clickable links and their search box is also embedded within the whole corpus of text. The emotional message imparted is powerfully sharp: “Creative Joomla Design is an agency that operates on a profoundly complex scale and we deliver only the most precise solutions regardless of how difficult the challenge is”.

What emotional vibe does your website give off? Post a link in the comments section, and we’ll have an engaging discussion!

Nov 9, 2009
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COMMENTS (78)

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COMMENTS

{78 people tripped so far}

lpqtgh tripped on Fri Nov 13, 2009 at 05:18 PM

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Simon Tsui tripped on Sat Nov 14, 2009 at 07:37 AM

How about a website with a theme that changes to reflect the time of day?

You should probably take a look at my website and tell me how you feel about it!

Josh tripped on Sat Nov 14, 2009 at 11:37 AM

Hi Simon,

Cheers for the comment. Wow..thats a great idea to have a website programmed in accordance to the time of day.

Your website is clean and very professional looking. It seems purport a sense of calm and sophisticated sensibility. Looking forward to seeing how it develops!

Josh tripped on Sat Nov 14, 2009 at 04:41 PM

Well, I was just browsing A List Apart today when I came across this excellent article by Stephen Anderson. He states that aesthetic appeal and emotion cannot be saperated; Design and Cognition thus go hand in hand, which is pretty much a similar premise to what I’ve said above.

Here’s the link:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy/

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