We are gifted with five senses - sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. These let us identify color, sound, feel, aroma and appetite. How often do we give active thought to them? Well, of-course, those who are in a profession related to any of the five senses, have to deal with their impact on individuals and the masses. Barring ’taste’, we can feel all other senses without much effort. Funny and surprising.
In my daily life as a Software Engineer, I mostly use only three of my senses - touch for input, and color / sound to understand output that I get from my intelligent box ( my computer ). What about other senses? If I am reading an article or a book, then at most, the text could make me visualize the things which would stimulate other senses. For example, if I see a photos or videos of very tasty food. What impact does it have on us when other senses are not used for long? I would really like to know answer. Perhaps we feel dull or bored.
Moving on. For the purpose of design for the web ( or any visual design for that matter ), ‘color’ is the most effective of the senses. Graphic design, pictures, fonts ( their shapes and sizes ), element spacing etc. are all the different manifestations of color. Even the text we write is another of its manifestations.
More on color.
Of the remaining senses, sound only makes our moving pictures ( videos, animations ) really complete. If you think piece-by-piece over our daily pastimes, like movies, music, blogs, books etc., enormous amount of creativity goes into their making. Such a though to ponder, over and over again.
More on sound.