Unless your website only consists of one page, perhaps one of the most important things to consider when designing a layout is the navigation menu. A navigation menu plays a very important role, as this is how your user will navigate your site. If you do not plan your navigation menu carefully, your users will have difficulties browsing your site and will eventually leave. Of course, you do not want this to happen, so here are some tips to create an attractive navigation.

When it comes to planning the navigation menu, besides appearance, you should always think effectiveness. An attractive navigation menu is useless if it is not user friendly! This is so important, that you have to choose effectiveness over design if the situation calls for it. Now with that in mind, let us move on to how to design an attractive navigation.

Of course, when designing the navigation menu of your site, it should always match the overall tone of your design. For example, if you are designing a simplistic and minimalist layout, it is a good idea to create a simple navigation also. Complicated, over the top navigation designs will ruin the balance of your entire layout and distract the user’s attention from other important content. Instead, you can play with block, solid colours. (Use the Colour Palette to find which colour matches your layout) You should experiment to see what kind of navigation matches your site layout.

With Web 2.0, many websites are using glossy buttons. If you want to create one on your own, the steps are fairly easy. First, you need to create a selection and fill it with black. Next, double click on the layer and select Gradient Overlay (you can also do this from Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay). Select your preferred gradient colours and click OK. Voila, now you only need to give it some touch up (e.g. give it a Drop Shadow effect) before it is ready to use.

You can also choose to use navigation using text only. Of course, be careful when using this method, as it can look a little bland. Use this method if it suits your design.

Now that you know how to design an attractive navigation menu, you can start incorporating them into your design. Just remember the golden rule:

Your navigation menu should always be beautiful and user friendly.

Good luck!

M.A.H.

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