Homepage design: horizontal lines

A lot of homepages are full to the point of overflowing with content. Most of the time, that’s not a good idea. 

Then again, sometimes it’s the only way to go. For a newspaper website for example, a long homepage filled with content is the norm rather than the exception.

In other words, a long homepage isn’t always a cardinal sin. At least not when it looks orderly and structured.

Unfortunately, some websites look like they’ve been thrown together from a distance. The result: a mess without visual anchor points to steady and guide the visitor’s eye.

Horizontal lines are calming

There’s a simple thing that makes a page look a lot calmer: the horizontal line.

You can use an actual horizontal line or you can simply line up a number of page elements to an imaginary horizontal line.

Try it. It’ll make your page look less frantic.

Example: De Standaard

We tried it on the homepage of De Standaard, one of the leading Flemish newspapers.

The actual homepage of De Standaard

After our cut and paste work

4 things to keep in mind:

• We’re not designers.
• All we did is rearrange the existing elements.
• We didn’t change the number of vertical columns.
• We did it in 5 minutes.

What do you think?

Can you tell the difference? Is it an improvement?

We’d love to hear from you.