Phi, phi, design notes

Just for the sake of me jotting this down somewhere…

Phi (the golden ratio) is approximately equal to 1.6180339887498948482.

phi is the decimal part of that: .6180339887498948482.

When laying out two column widths on a web page, using phi as the percentage of the wider column often provides a nice visual balance.

So, two columns would be set to width: 62% and width: 38%, which together add up to 100%, in order to approximate this ratio.

We’ve used this in the past on a few sites, including Wharton Center. I know we’ve used it to help layout others, but I just can’t think of any other sites right now.

Web Site Visibility class

Today I taught a course in Web Site Visibility. It was fun. It is really the first course I’ve been able to teach that I was actually able to draw heavily on my experience with the web.

It was a small course, and I realized after talking with the participants that the name of the course is misleading. Some people seemed to think the course was more concerned with web site accessibility (how to make web sites work for people with disabilities). Others thought it would have more details on visual design (the visibility part of the title).

The course was concerned with ways of getting your prospective site visitors to turn into actual site visitors. So, it covered topics like invisible sites (the dark web), how search spiders work, design and content considerations, site promotion, differences between search engines and directories, and some techniques on assessing how well you are doing with managing your site’s visibility.

So, what’s a better name for the course?

  • Web Site Promotion
  • Web Site Marketing
  • Advertising Your Web Site
  • Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
  • Making Easy-to-Find Web Sites

Other ideas?