Note from .Atlantis: Many, and I mean MANY people in the Web/Graphic Designers Corner should read this. Although they contribute greatly. What they achieve in quantity they soon loose in content and style.
Original Article
So you call yourself a Web Designer!
It?s a sad fact that anyone with a copy of Microsoft Frontpage (or equivalent), a budget hosting plan and domain name can call themselves a Web Designer and start touting for business. What?s wrong with this?
Well, take a look around the web for any length of time, frequent any of the design forums and you?ll soon realise that there are many individuals who only have a basic grasp upon the fundamentals of the software they use, and a tentative grasp upon the main design principals. However, this doesn?t stop them from branding themselves as desigSo what does all this have to do with this article?cle?
Simple, I want to take you through some of the basic building blocks, good and bad habits and to just offer my opinion on the oversaturated Web Design arena. I?m going to outline some basic requirements that, in my opinion, any self respecting potential Web Designer should know; then I?ll look at ways to develop for youTools of the trade e trade
Would you take your car to a mechanic that only knew how to use a screwdriver, hammer and spanner? The answer (I hope) is a resounding NO! So why should anyone trust you to design anything for them when you only have a basic knowledge of your toolkit?
While the advent of WYSIWIG development tools, like Dreamweaver have simplified the task of web site development, they don?t mean that you don?t need to know the underlying code. HTML and its many successors are not too difficult to learn and understand, and knowing the basics of the code your application is creating will make fault finding, problem solving and tweaking a much easier and quicker process. Also, many of these applications have their own limitations that mean you will need to delve into the code on occasion to achieve a desired effect.
Alongside the web design tools, you?re going to need to have a good grasp on at least one graphics application. The forerunners are obviously applications like Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, etc. While none of these are particularly cheap, there are cheaper alternatives, like Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 or Paintshop Pro 8 that stand up well to their more expensivDesign, usability and accessibility accessibility
There are 2 kinds of design in my book ? Good design and bad design. While any design is subjective, there are still distinguishing factors that will make a design good or bad for the majority of users. While it is beyond the scope of this, or any article to impart the many rules of design, I?ve listed a few for completenColour:icle.
Colour: Colour is one of the biggest mood influencing factors you can incorporate into your work. If you are working on a site with a lot of textual information you need to make the contrast between text and background as high as possible. Not only that, but the choice of text and background colour is important as well. For example, black and white are good high contrast colours. However, using a black background and white text can be hard on the eyes when viewed on a light emitting device like a computer monitor or PDA. Swap that to black text on a white or pale grey background and you have an altogether more pleasant experience. Look at what you see in everyday life and then ask yourself ?why is it so prevalent?? Because it WORKS!
Calming colours work well on sites that have a lot of text to read, as they relax your mind while allowing you to digest the informatioUsability:ading.
Usability: What exactly do I mean by this? Well, that the site and its content are easy to use. The navigation is where you would expect it, easy to distinguish from the content and stands out as navigation. Use contrasting colours, make it self explanatory. Try to stay away from cryptic text/icons that willAccessibility:s.
Accessibility: 2 clicks! You heard me, 2 clicks. Try to make all your pertinent information a maximum of 2 clicks away. Why? Because visitors will become bored having to wade through layers of navigation to find what they want. Or worse still, they will get bored and/or distracted and leave,Unnecessary content:b>Unnecessary content: You?ve been learning flash for months now and you?ve created (what you think) is a superb intro animation to your site about your favourite topic. So, you create a wonderful all singing, all dancing splash page for your site that takes 45 seconds to load. Does the average visitor care? Probably not, and they?ve had to sit there for 45 seconds waiting for an unnecessary part of the site to download before they can get to your real content. Again, worst case scenario, they?ve left the site before they even viewed youThe future site proper.
The future
The Internet is in a constant state of flux, and so are many of the Web Design technologies. Go back a short space of time in Internet history and the majority of web sites were static by design. Now take a look at how many sites are embracing server technology and dynamic design.
Why is this? Simply because the benefits of using a database to store the content of your site and have it served to a handful of dynamically designed and populated pages makes the ongoing design process an easier task. However, with that ease of amending and updating comes a whole plethora of new technologies to learn and understand. Hiding in the dark and pretending that dynamic design is going to go away is certain death for any web developer.
How do you choose which server model to go with? Well, that is a difficult choice and one that would depend on many factors. On the upside, there are a lot of similarities between the different languages (ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, etc) and you can also feel safer in the knowledge that the database backend will also have a lot of similarities in the SQL (Structured Query Language) that you would need to utilise it. Meaning that learning any of the languages will make learning the next one easier.
So, the life of any good Web Designer should be one that embraces these as well as numerous other factors into their work, their ethic and their outlook.
I hope you found this article of use, and I?d be more than happy to hear your thoughts on the points raised here.
Question
.Atlantis
Note from .Atlantis: Many, and I mean MANY people in the Web/Graphic Designers Corner should read this. Although they contribute greatly. What they achieve in quantity they soon loose in content and style.
Original Article
So you call yourself a Web Designer!
It?s a sad fact that anyone with a copy of Microsoft Frontpage (or equivalent), a budget hosting plan and domain name can call themselves a Web Designer and start touting for business. What?s wrong with this?
Well, take a look around the web for any length of time, frequent any of the design forums and you?ll soon realise that there are many individuals who only have a basic grasp upon the fundamentals of the software they use, and a tentative grasp upon the main design principals. However, this doesn?t stop them from branding themselves as desigSo what does all this have to do with this article?cle?
Simple, I want to take you through some of the basic building blocks, good and bad habits and to just offer my opinion on the oversaturated Web Design arena. I?m going to outline some basic requirements that, in my opinion, any self respecting potential Web Designer should know; then I?ll look at ways to develop for youTools of the trade e trade
Would you take your car to a mechanic that only knew how to use a screwdriver, hammer and spanner? The answer (I hope) is a resounding NO! So why should anyone trust you to design anything for them when you only have a basic knowledge of your toolkit?
While the advent of WYSIWIG development tools, like Dreamweaver have simplified the task of web site development, they don?t mean that you don?t need to know the underlying code. HTML and its many successors are not too difficult to learn and understand, and knowing the basics of the code your application is creating will make fault finding, problem solving and tweaking a much easier and quicker process. Also, many of these applications have their own limitations that mean you will need to delve into the code on occasion to achieve a desired effect.
Alongside the web design tools, you?re going to need to have a good grasp on at least one graphics application. The forerunners are obviously applications like Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, etc. While none of these are particularly cheap, there are cheaper alternatives, like Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 or Paintshop Pro 8 that stand up well to their more expensivDesign, usability and accessibility accessibility
There are 2 kinds of design in my book ? Good design and bad design. While any design is subjective, there are still distinguishing factors that will make a design good or bad for the majority of users. While it is beyond the scope of this, or any article to impart the many rules of design, I?ve listed a few for completenColour:icle.
Colour: Colour is one of the biggest mood influencing factors you can incorporate into your work. If you are working on a site with a lot of textual information you need to make the contrast between text and background as high as possible. Not only that, but the choice of text and background colour is important as well. For example, black and white are good high contrast colours. However, using a black background and white text can be hard on the eyes when viewed on a light emitting device like a computer monitor or PDA. Swap that to black text on a white or pale grey background and you have an altogether more pleasant experience. Look at what you see in everyday life and then ask yourself ?why is it so prevalent?? Because it WORKS!
Calming colours work well on sites that have a lot of text to read, as they relax your mind while allowing you to digest the informatioUsability:ading.
Usability: What exactly do I mean by this? Well, that the site and its content are easy to use. The navigation is where you would expect it, easy to distinguish from the content and stands out as navigation. Use contrasting colours, make it self explanatory. Try to stay away from cryptic text/icons that willAccessibility:s.
Accessibility: 2 clicks! You heard me, 2 clicks. Try to make all your pertinent information a maximum of 2 clicks away. Why? Because visitors will become bored having to wade through layers of navigation to find what they want. Or worse still, they will get bored and/or distracted and leave,Unnecessary content:b>Unnecessary content: You?ve been learning flash for months now and you?ve created (what you think) is a superb intro animation to your site about your favourite topic. So, you create a wonderful all singing, all dancing splash page for your site that takes 45 seconds to load. Does the average visitor care? Probably not, and they?ve had to sit there for 45 seconds waiting for an unnecessary part of the site to download before they can get to your real content. Again, worst case scenario, they?ve left the site before they even viewed youThe future site proper.
The future
The Internet is in a constant state of flux, and so are many of the Web Design technologies. Go back a short space of time in Internet history and the majority of web sites were static by design. Now take a look at how many sites are embracing server technology and dynamic design.
Why is this? Simply because the benefits of using a database to store the content of your site and have it served to a handful of dynamically designed and populated pages makes the ongoing design process an easier task. However, with that ease of amending and updating comes a whole plethora of new technologies to learn and understand. Hiding in the dark and pretending that dynamic design is going to go away is certain death for any web developer.
How do you choose which server model to go with? Well, that is a difficult choice and one that would depend on many factors. On the upside, there are a lot of similarities between the different languages (ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, etc) and you can also feel safer in the knowledge that the database backend will also have a lot of similarities in the SQL (Structured Query Language) that you would need to utilise it. Meaning that learning any of the languages will make learning the next one easier.
So, the life of any good Web Designer should be one that embraces these as well as numerous other factors into their work, their ethic and their outlook.
I hope you found this article of use, and I?d be more than happy to hear your thoughts on the points raised here.
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