Form Design help!!!!!!!!+

[kidrobot]

I finished making my Access database, but I'm not to fond of the aesthetics of it. I've never been a very artsy person and I'm not too satisfied with the way my forms look. I work for a pretty big corporation, so I want my form to look professional, but sleek. If you think you have a nice form, please take an SS of it and let me see! I want to see any forms, no matter what its functions are, I'm mainly looking at colors and arrangement.

 

[twoplustwo]

Let's see yours first

Edit: I work for a large firm too and aesthetics aren't important here. Obv they don't want to look like shit but arsing around too much is probably a waste of time. Content >>> Style.

 

[kidrobot]

i know content>style

but there was a story my old programming teacher told me. she got a job to "fix" a program made by another individual, because the company said the program didn't work correctly. my teacher reviewed everything and said the code was extremely great and the only thing she really needed to fix was the aesthetics (among other simple changes). She said the company was EXTREMELY pleased with what she did and gave her a bonus for what she did; even though she really did nothing but change the form around and spruce it up.

These days i believe form design is a whole other art from programming, I know there are jobs out there now based on form design alone.

I'd show you my form but it is just plain gray lol.

 

[DJkarl]

Design is an important aspect and I hate the standard grey of Access forms, I ususally change the background color and change the font and label colors as well. I would caution against loading up the form with too much stuff, I've seen forms where people have used large BMP files as backgrounds, and while it looks nice it takes a long time to load and really in a business I'm interested in performance more than asthetics.

 

[twoplustwo]

Hmmm ergonomics are different from aesthetics. Putting controls in a logical order and presenting information that is easy to understand is obviously important - I also think this is they key to having "good looking" forms. Most of my work is grey, too As is some of the really clever risk/options work.

 

[kidrobot]

i guess no one wants to show their form. it's cool.

 

[georgedwilkinson]

i guess no one wants to show their form. it's cool.

My forms suck. Just black on white. Functional but not pretty.

You should look at Wiklendt's forms. She knows how to use color and everything.

 

[NJBuckeye]

Backround

Here is a trick I use, but it depends on your photo editing skills, and software.

Does the company have a logo? Or a photograph of something important, etc? A GRAPHIC OF IMPORTANCE.

Use photo editing software to fade it out (generally 20-30%). If you still have a version of office with Microsoft Photoeditor, you can use it.

Then, use it as the background. It is faded, so it shouldn't overwhelm the data, but visable enough to "customize" the database.

Same trick works for backgrounds in PowerPoint.

I purchased The New Print Shop (many many versions ago), and use the graphics from there as well as the tinting option to fade out graphics and photos.

Fairly simple to do, but a much better end result than the standard templates.