Commercial web design experience
Many designers think if they do a good job in the graphic design will be able to do a good job on the web design, in fact, the graphic design and web design is radically different. For web design, there are many more requirements need to consider, and more problems to face. From the creativity of entire website, style, the overall framework of the layout, text layout, reasonable picture and space arrangement etc… And excellent web site designers will take care all the little detail. This brief article conclude 5 main points for Web designers when develop a commercial website.
First: Website style / creativity
Style is the abstract, refers to the overall image to site visitors experienced when they come to the website, The Overall image, which means site layout, colours, fonts, browser method, etc. For example: We feel that Disney website is a lively and IBM website is a serious professional. Different website has different feelings.
Hence designer need to do is to design a unique style in accordance with website’s business target. And the importance is the style should be same for entire website, from the images arrangement, background colour, headings, footnotes etc… All should be a unified style, throughout the entire site. So browsers can feel the website is comfortable and smooth to read, and your website will leave a “very professional” impression on users. Many web designers are often on the lack of this point.
Creativity: Creativity is eclectic. Some designers spend large portion of project time to make very creative, very unique website but unfortunately is not accepted by client. At this situation, the designer should not blame the client too much but try to re-think and understand what client really wants for the website. In fact, a good website does not need to put a lot of big ideas on it, designers don’t need to waste too much time just to make website look unique and look different from others. It may only need a little creativity throughout the entire website and will make it livelier and more attractive.
Second: LOGO
Logo is the company symbol; the most important function of Logo is to use as graphical way to express company’s business philosophy, at the same time easy for clients to identify company. Website logo design process has the following three general ideas:
1. Use the website address as a logo.
2. According to website’s product and service to start logo design.
3. Design a Logo to express company’s business philosophy and company characteristics.
Third: Visual flow
When people read certain information, there is a natural habit: Which section people will read first, which section read then, and which section people will read last.
Psychology studies have shown that general human’s browsing habits is from top to bottom, left to right. And on the plane surface, the upper and middle-upper part are known as the “best view place”, that is also the preferred place for designer to put outstanding information on this website location usually. Of course this is people’s usual psychological order and logical sequence, and not a fixed formula; you can use it more flexible. In the web design, reasonable use of visual flow is a direct impact to convey accurate information and effectiveness.
Fourth: Page framework and layout
Most important job of page layout is to seize the customer’s needs, and make a reasonable frame and table arrangements.
1. Resolution
The overall page width settings can be divided into three forms: the percentage, pixels and pixels + percentage. Usually Pixels is the most commonly used in the website design. Recently the 1024 * 768 resolution is the most common used setting, and now due to the more wide-screen monitor are used, the wide resolution 1280*800 or 1280*768 settings are getting popular.
2. Reasonable Advertisement
The current site ads (pop-up ads, floating ads, big ads, banner ads etc…) sometimes make people feel very cumbersome, and too many ads will end out people don’t like to visit your website anymore, and all the ads from your website are useless. Hence these are problem which we need to consider before putting ads on it.
There are two floating ads, the first one is the floating ads move up-down on page margins on sides of website, and the second is random mobile ads which can move everywhere. We Recommended designer to use first one and try to avoid second. Ads should not be too many otherwise visitors can have trouble to browsing your website and the ads should relate to your website information.
3. Rational use of space
Many website have common problem: “stuff the web page with too many items”. Sometimes designer put all sorts of information such as text, image, animation, etc. without proper arrangement. And visitors find it’s very inconvenient to browsing and also can’t catch the main point of this website; the entire website is full of all sorts of information but make users hard to find what they want.
It is not necessary to stuff all website space with item to make website not empty. Designer should know how to arrange a combination of web content and blank space to achieve balance layout. Good designer can even leave large blank space on one side of web page to achieved memorable visual effects.
4. Text layout
In web design, fonts and colours selection, layout, graphical text and other design element are critical.
4.1 graphical text
Graphical text is the text designed in the form of picture to present, this graphical text is commonly used on the page menu and navigation bar, because of its prominent, while at the same time beautifying the web page to make web page more user-friendly and better visual effects.
4.2 Emphasized text
For certain text which is used as the main point of website, you can bold, underlined, and increase its size, plus indicative symbols, tilt fonts, change font colour and other means. These can consciously strengthen the text’s visual effects, so that they have outstanding and eye-catching appearance.
Five: Site colour
5.1. With a colour, this means selected a colour, and then adjust the transparency or saturation, to generate a second colour for the web page. This can make web page colour looks unified and has the stratified feeling.
5.2. Using two colours. First selected a colour, then select its contrast-colour (in Photoshop press ctrl + shift + I) then do some minor adjustments. This can make web page more colourful and not too fancy.
5.3. With a colour, such as light blue, light yellow, light green etc… Then use this colour as the main background colour and add few other similar style colours on top. This way to achieve the rich colour design and browsers can still feel the main colour exist. This is most commonly used types of website colour design.
5.4. Medium grey, also known as “universal colour” in web designs. Its characteristic is easy to match with other colour, but designer should use it carefully to avoid making entire web page looks grey.
With web page colour, it is better to control within three colours in order to avoid too fancy and too colourful. The contrast between background and front content should be clear in order to highlight the main content, and do not use complex patterns for the background.
Article from Verecom Australia - Sydney web design Studio
