design3

3
Chapter
Texture
There are many well-intentioned designers out there who build a standard two or three-column
website layout, pick a few colors for it, and call it a day. They don’t bother pushing their design
any further, or tweaking any details. Perhaps there’s no time or money in the project budget to go
the extra distance, or maybe they’ve taken the “less is more” axiom a little too literally. Not every
website has to be beautiful, but every website can be. CSS has given web designers a great amount
of control over how a site looks, but I think the real problem is that many people are just unsure
where to start when it comes to customization. This chapter is all about that process: taking your
design a step further with the help of texture.
Texture is anything that gives a distinctive appearance or feel to the surface of a design or object.
When you put your hands on a brick wall, a wooden beam, or a wet bar of soap, what do you feel?
Can you make a website “feel” like one of these surfaces? Thankfully, it’s impossible for a website
to give visitors splinters, but you can make it relate to and evoke memories of real materials. First,
you need a way to describe the surface. You might start off by talking about relative roughness or
smoothness, but there are other factors that give a surface its unique characteristics. Does the texture
incorporate repeated patterns? Does it have a unique shape? What are the lines like that make up
the shape? Does the shape have volume?
These questions might seem random, but they arise directly from the elements of graphic design:
point, line, shape, volume and depth, and pattern. Understanding these components will help you
not only to explain texture, but to create it as well.