When working with UI, it is important to understand a few design basics. This chapter will cover the foundation of designing UI as well as a few key concepts to start you off in the right direction.
In this chapter, we will discuss the following topics:
- Defining UI and GUI
- Describing the four types of interfaces
- Choosing a UI layout and color scheme
- Defining interface metaphors
- Discerning and setting resolution and aspect ratio
This book is not about the art of designing UI. It is a technical text that discusses implementation of UI functionality. However, I do want to discuss some basic design principles of UI design. I don't expect you to be an amazing UI artist after reading this chapter. I do hope that you get some basic understanding of layout and design principles from this chapter, though, so that maybe your artist friends won't make too much fun of you.