Green has been shown to help increase reading speed and comprehension because it is the easiest color for the human eye to process; it helps make small areas to appear much more spacious as well (Kuchinsky). Orange is the best color to draw attention to something, but it also makes objects appear less expensive or sophisticated (Kuchinsky). Brown is the most reassuring color on the human psyche, and as such is seen as solid and reliable. (Kuchinsky) If purple is used in excess, the color can dampen the desire to purchase something as it creates a feeling of cheapness, but when used appropriately, it can create feelings of luxury, sophistication, and even enlightenment (Kuchinsky). When designers use these colors with one another in a design, they have the ability to strengthen their messages on their audience in ways other elements simply cannot.
	The composition of websites is also changing in modern times, and at the present, there is a strong tendency to arrange pages into a grid. In the article Future Web Trends, web design expert Craig Grannell comments, “Grid-oriented pages tend to provide a pleasing vertical (and sometimes horizontal) rhythm that makes reading text and navigating a page more pleasurable and easier… An advantage of using a grid is that some questions are answered for you during the layout phase, regarding things like element dimensions” (Web). As he maintains, grids allow designers a starting point in deciding which elements are most important and which are least, and give them an organized way to relay that information to the user through size and location on the page.
	And with such an organized structure, designers also gravitate towards lots of negative, or empty, web space on their pages. This urge to approach the user in a direct, simple way has also lead to the death of a somewhat recent trend that many designers now reflect on with ambivalence. In an interview, Dr. Jacob Nielson states, “We have almost succeeded in eradicating annoying splash pages and Flash [introductions]. There are also not nearly as many bloated designs as there used to be. These are great advances from a design perspective” (Web).
	It would appear that designers today are following the most important trend of all, which is forcing the design as a whole, regardless of its purpose or amount of content, to be as simplistic and comfortable to use as possible: as Robert Hoekman, Jr. asserts in Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Application Design, one should hope to create an “obvious interface” which is “focused on what’s most important and leaves out the things that are simply ‘nice to have’” (60). By selecting only the most important elements – crucial, concise writing paired with an intuitive, simple navigation and clear imagery – the user is left with a positive notion about the site and the site itself stands the best chance at retaining an audience long enough to express its idea.
