Designers are becoming big-headed

Big heads rock - with bigger screen sizes letterbox designing is becoming pointless - more space is more creativity.

negotiate, what a clever word. i personally think that the header are should be like this. while showing me clearly where i am with the brand identity it draws me in with a graphical feel striking and emotion up. most sites i see that ‘appear’ to have heavy text with no design sence i tend to skip (crl-w) not because i dont like to read, but because i feel (and being a designer i know im somewhat bias)that if they didnt take at the very least enough time to make the first impression look nice, then the content is probably not all that good anyway, am i say that with some confidense. if you look at your own daily reads and sites you visit, im sure this holds up for most people.

Didn’t this site use to have a big head before the redesign..?
It’s a great place indeed like david mentioned to evoque some emotions and to brand the site.

I love head , gimme more head.

I think large headers are neither good nor bad per se. Thay are good or bad according to the purpose of the site. Having one attention grabing header on a site that needs to strongly communicate a brand identity or on a long-awaited site may be a good thing, but having one on a site users browse for its content only gets in their way.

From an artists point of view it’s always nice to have one big header, from a designers point of view it depends on what your goals are.

Before you pretend to be an expert in web design and critique take a look at your own site in ALL Browsers lol your article is 3/4 way down the page what’s up with the huge white space?

The size of the header should depend on whether the content or the design is the focal point of the site. In most cases a header should stay within the first 100 - 150 pixels to keep the content the priority.

We must remember that the most precious space on any page is the first screen full or the “above the fold” area. Visitors expect content to start high on the page so maybe this topic should be angled from what is user friendly and not so much the artsy-fartsy factor.

Justin, thanks for the pointer. There’s an issue with the Google Ads in individual articles. I’ll look into it.
Any opinions on the usability of a site with large header areas?

I find that web 2.0 (the designs) brings smaller headers (if any at all) and more focus on the sites content instead. Although I find that huge headers can be good to show off work etc. on portfolio sites - but is it a header then, or is it just a part of the content, just a bit explicit?

Interesting point. I hadn’t really noticed this because of my large screen/resolution, and the examples that you linked to don’t seem to have THAT big of a header. Although large headers may pose some problems for people with small screen sizes/resolutions, I’m a fan of big headers. It adds flavor to sites and allows for more creativity. With a big header, though, a site often looks silly if it doesn’t have enough content underneath the header.

In my opinion the question is difficult to answer in a general sense. As many said before - it depends on the situation. It’s all about the goal of the site, the goal of the specific page and the goal of the specific user of that site and page. Someone mentioned Khoi’s site subtraction and it’s large header. But take a look when you go to a single article on that site: the big header is gone. So for someone visiting the site directly and/or for the first time, the big header will make a nice visual impression. However, someone visiting an article, coming from a feedreader or search engine, will land directly on a deeper page. Without the big header. And that’s a good thing, in my opinion.

So to say large headers are either good or bad is impossible. Sometimes they are good - on a front page of a webdesigner’s portfolio. Sometimes they aren’t - on a page with some interesting content.

Designers love big headers because they are beautiful. I am not convinced that they resonate with normal folk.

Big headers can be visually pleasing but I’m a reader so if it’s the main page of your journal/news feed and I have to scroll down 400-500 px (yes, I’ve seen that done before) to read your content then you can anticipate me not being a daily reader. Too often people who have big headers spend more time on the graphics of their site than they do actual content. Which makes for visually stunning sites, but not much incentive to come back and look again.

had to come back,
http://www.climaxdesigns.com/misc/thoughts.jpg
now that is my ‘blog’(god i hate that word for some reason ) at 800×600 (designed for 1024 on up thus the horizontal bars) and you mean to tell me that the lay user would close the window because they could not be bothered to scroll 250px through the logo to see the content. I find that a very hard pill to swallow, and i have lay people looking at my site all the time and giving my user feed back and non of them has ever had an issue with having to scroll through that header or any other. i actually think it is us designer/bloggers that actually are the ones most likely to close the window because of a big header on a content oriented page rather than the average joe so to speak. just my opinion thought.

I agree with JPF regarding Dan Rood and Hell design, both of these sites are showing off their work straight up front which in this case is their content.

My site currently has a large header which holds nothing but a calendar and brand. I’ve grown tried of it for the content reason. When I post a new folio piece I want it right up front, so, as my re design draws nearer, I have scrapped it in favour of content, placing branding at the footer. We’ll see how this works out.

The other thing to consider is audience. Designers are generally designing for employers and other designers, both audiences are in most cases running higher spec machines with big glossy screens so it’s maybe not so much of an issue.

Good conversation, nice site! One small constructive criticism. It might be worth including another post comment link at the bottom of the article. As a first timer, it took me a while to find the link, which in it self may something about how much header information is retained?

I care about these poeple but it depends on the client and if they do. They have to pay for time and if they don’t want to worry about people out there, even if they are in their target audience, they may not be prepared to pay for it. Educate your clients! When will it all end and we can just design a website without testing it on about 5 browsers!!!!!!! The pain, the misery, the victory and the challenge - we love it really ;-)

[…] positive bi-product of the much-maligned “Web 2.0 look” is large section headers. They’re eye-catching and usually improve page […]

I think large headers add some great, evocative decoration to web sites - which were at one time the most tawdry of all media. It helps when this feature can be combined with the homepage’s primary purpose, such as HellDesign’s example where they push the portfolio to the fore. Regarding shunting the content down the page, we do now have larger resolutions to rely on, plus trends show the user’s are more comfortable with content ‘below the fold’ than ever before. Perhaps this is thanks to familiarity with super-long reams of texts on weblogs and the fact that most mice feature scroll-wheels.

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