Your UI Design is super important. It should make your user's life easier, present your content in a way that's not just consumable but, enjoyable for your user's to experience. So how do you make a solid first visual impression? Avoiding these mistakes will certainly help.
More is less. Unless it's whitespace.
Just because there is space to fill doesn’t mean you should fill it. So don’t. In fact, whitespace promotes readability. Clean margins padding your content is like wrapping your reader in an anxiety reducing weighted blanket. The viewer can focus more on your message if the margins are generous and the design is clean. This makes your design easily scannable thus also making it user friendly.
Contain the full width copy.
Viewers using wide screen monitors should not have to move their heads while reading your content. Keep the copy contained to a maximum of 700 px, no wider. This allows viewers to scan your content simply by moving their eyes. Avoiding full width copy is less visually overwhelming and less intimidating to read.
Sharpen those fuzzy images.
Have you ever looked at a design and thought maybe you shouldn’t have skipped that annual eye exam? Fuzzy images have always been the bane of bad graphic design and as technology has advanced, the specifications keep changing. Users now have the ability to work off 4K monitors and retina screens. Which means 72 dpi has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Extinct.
When outputting assets, save your images at 2X their size to accommodate users with larger and more sensitive screens. You can always run your images through a compressor like tinyjpg.com to keep the file size small but the resolution up to user expectation.
Ditch giant blocks of copy.
Yep. No one is going to read that, seriously. When you are writing your copy, even within blogs, break it up into smaller chunks with subheadings. It helps maintain the readers’ interest and promotes scannability.
Plan text areas for growth.
Always plan text on design items with “worst case scenario” in mind. It’s impossible to predict how long a name or product title will be on a business card or product tile. It’s important to figure out a method to design for these unknowns so that overlap does not occur. You don’t want to break the design of an entire website, business card, or graphic for unplanned text.