Graphics Explained
graphics explained 10 Web Design Don'ts (for the Graphic Designer) 1. Don’t start a layout without having a concept/idea. Before starting, ask yourself: who am I designing thi...
graphics explained
10 Web Design Don'ts (for the Graphic Designer)
1. Don’t start a layout without having a concept/idea.
Before starting, ask yourself: who am I designing this for? What are the target’s preferences? How am I going to make this better than the client’s competition? What will be my central “theme”? Would it revolve around a certain color, a certain style? Will it be clean, grungy, traditional, modern etc? What will be the “wow factor”?
Then, before jumping to your favorite part – laying everything out in Photoshop, right? – take a sheet of paper and sketch your idea. This will help you organize the elements better and get a general idea of whether an idea would work or not, before you invest too much time designing in Photoshop.
Do sketch the layout before laying it out in Photoshop.
2. Don’t obsess over the trends.
Shiny buttons, reflections, gradients, swirls and swooshes, grungy elements – all these are staples in contemporary web design. But with just about everything else, moderation is key. If you make everything shiny, you will end up just giving your visitor an eye sore. When everything is an accent, nothing stand out anymore.
Don’t go reflections crazy
3. Don’t make everything of equal importance.
Egalitarianism is desirable in society, but it doesn’t apply to the elements on your web page. If all your headlines are the same level and all the pictures the same height, your visitor will be confused. You need to direct their sight to the page elements in a certain order – the order of importance. One headline must be the main headline, while the others will subordinate. Make one picture stand out (in the header, maybe) and keep the others smaller. If you have more than one menu on the page, decide which one is the most important and attract the visitor’s view to it. Create a hierarchy. There are many ways in which you can control the order in which a visitor “reads” a web page.
Do layout the design elements according to their hierarchy
4. Don’t lose sight of the functionality.
Don’s just use elements because they are pretty – give them a legitimate place in your design. In other words, don’t design for yourself (unless you are designing your own websites, of course), but for your customer and your customer’s customers.
Don’t make pretty things and then ask what you can use them for.
5. Don’t repeat yourself too much and too often.
It’s easy to get tricked into reusing your own elements of design, especially once you got to master them to perfection. But you don’t want your portfolio to look like it was created for the same client, do you? Try different fonts, new types of arrows, borders styles, layer effects, color schemes. Find alternatives to your go-to elements. Impose yourself to design the next layout without a header. Or without using glossy elements. Break your habits and keep your style diverse.
Recycling is good, but don’t overuse the same elements
6. Don’t disregard the technology.
If you’re not the one coding the website, talk to your programmer and find out how the website will be implemented. If it’s going to be all Flash, then you want to take advantage of the great possibilities for the design and not make it look like a standard HTML page. On the other hand, if the website will be dynamic and database-driven, you don’t want to get too unconventional with the design and make the programmer’s job impossible.
This Flash website is not your usual standard layout. Check it out!
7. Don’t mix and match different design elements to please your client.
Instead, offer your expertise: explain how different elements look great in a certain context but don’t work in another one or in combination with other elements. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t listen to your client. Take into account all their suggestion, but do it to their best interest. If what they suggest doesn’t work design-wise, offer arguments and alternatives.
Don’t throw EVERYTHING in the blender.
8. Don’t use the same boring stock photos like everyone else.
The happy customer support representative, the successful (and political correct) business team, the powerful young leader – they are just a few of the stock photography industry’s clichés. They are sterile, and most of the time look so fake that will reflect the same idea over the company. Instead, try using “real people”, or search harder for creative and expressive stock photographs.
Customer representatives are the happiest employees. Right?
9. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.
Being creative is in your job description, but don’t try to get creative with the things that shouldn’t change. With a content heavy or a portal-style website, you want to keep the navigation at the top or at the left. Don’t change the names for the standard menu items or for things like the shopping cart or the wishlist. The more time a visitor needs to find what they are looking for, then more likely it is they will leave the page. You can bend these rules when you design for other creatives – they will enjoy the unconventional elements. But as a general rule, don’t do it for other customers.
Some things are better left alone.
10. Don’t be inconsistent.
Stick with the same fonts, borders, colors, alignments for the entire website, unless you have strong reasons not to do so (i.e. if you color-code different sections of the website, or if you have an area dedicated to children, where you need to use different fonts and colors). A good practice is to set up a grid system and build all the pages of the same level in accordance with it. Consistency of elements gives the website a certain image that visitors will become familiar with.
Don’t make the visitors believe they landed on a diferent website every time they click a menu link
About the Author
Ardis creative is a web design agency in Fort Lauderdale, specialized in web design, development, flash, and e-commerce.
Visit us at http://www.ardis-creative.com
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Graphic Design Pre-design Checklist-table
Everyone from president of a company to part-time admin assistant has been graced with the burden of designing a flyer, post card, poster, etc. Most people are pressed for time, so they begin working on the computer with their favorite graphic design program. Little do they know, this actually lengthens the required time to complete their graphic design.
All designers will tell you to brainstorm, sketch, organize ideas, and so on, and I say the same thing. There are many things that I do before designing anything, but I have created a table that helps me organize my ideas. This table will help anyone that is faced with a graphic design project, so please put this to good use, before you go to the computer to create your masterpiece!
An explanation of each line is included below.
Graphic Design Pre-Project Checklist/Table
- Title:
- Budget:
- Format:
- Purpose:
- Target Audience:
- Call To Action:
- Delivery Time Frame:
- Response Time Frame:
- Elements To Include:
Title - Give your project a title. This will help you organize files on the computer and find them at a later date, because you will always come back to an old file.
Budget - You must determine what the total budget of this project is. Establishing a budget will help you determine the best way to start your design and what special elements and features you can put into it.
Format - What will this project look like? Is it a 4x6 postcard or tri-fold brochure? How will it be distributed?
Purpose - List here what the purpose of this piece is. List why you are creating it, who it is for, why they need it, and what they are supposed to do.
Target Audience - Expand on who this project is intended for. Detail demographic, sociographic, and psychographic details about your target. This will help you in determining what the piece will look like and what kind of style it should have.
Call To Action - Explain exactly what you want the target to do. (i.e. Call Now - 1-800-555-5555, Visit Us On The Web!, or Return The Enclosed Card)
Delivery Time Frame - How long will it take to design, print, and deliver this piece to your audience? This makes you analyze what will be required to for delivery.
Response Time Frame - How long do you expect the target to take before taking action? This is useful when determining wording, call to action, and delivery methods. This will also establish a point in time to start return analysis.
Elements To Include - This should be the longest item in your table. You need to list everything you want in your piece. You don't have to write out every bit of text, but I include at least sub topics. Also include address info, pictures, tables, requests, logos, etc. Anything that you want in your graphic design project should be included here. If you are working with a team, you will be able to review these elements and eliminate several revisions later.
Feel free to copy and distribute this table. It has been invaluable to me on every one of my projects, and I think you find your projects take less time, look better, and are more effective.
About the Author
Nate Stockard is the owner of Stockard & Associates, Inc, a marketing and design firm in Houston, TX specializing in small business solutions. He is also the author of The Market Seedling, an informative source of information, articles, tips, and advice for small business owners and marketers.