What is aesthetics?

aesthitics refers to how elements of an image work together to produce a subject that is overall pleasing to the eye. Aesthetics examines what makes something beautiful, disgusting, entertaining, pretentious, harmonious, boring, humorous, or tragic. Although broad rules apply to making an image aesthetically plaesing, the final judgement is subjective and will vary from individual to individual. This is beacause the aesthetics of an image produce different reactions in different people, depending upon their personal experiences. As mentioned above, an image may conjure feelings of disgust, beauty, humour or tradgedy. Which emotion is conjured for the individual is heavily reliant upon their personal experiences.

Web aesthetics refers to what makes a web page functional and easy to read and navigate. This refers to everything from the colours used to the type of font. For example:

This web page uses a dark, busy background, making the small font difficult to read and the overall page confusing and difficult to navigate. This isnt helped by the choice of red for the font colour which is difficult to read for the best sighted person. Confusion and distraction is added by the choice of boarder, alos red, which clashes with the busy background.
Simplicity is the best choice when it comes to web aesthetics as it creartes no confusion, is easy to read and can be navigated through easily. The best example of this is probably the search enigine, google:

This web page uses simple text, with very few page elements. This avoids confusion and makes the page easy to read. This site is used by millions of people around the world every day, and couldn't be simpler to use.