A Web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a website is defined as the arrangement and creation of Web pages that in turn make up a website. A Web page consists of information for which the Web site is developed. A website might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page.
There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For typical commercial Web sites, the basic aspects of design are:
* The content: The substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.
* The usability: The site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.
* The appearance: The graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.
* The visibility: The site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.
A Web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a website is known as the Home page or Index. Some websites use what is commonly called a Splash Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language/region selection, or disclaimer. Each web page within a Web site is an HTML file which has its own URL. After each Web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention spans and more demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash Pages, particularly where commercial websites are concerned.
Once a Web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published, the Web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the website receives. This may include submitting the Web site to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other Web sites, creating affiliations with similar Web sites, etc.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Web Graphic Designer
Web graphic designer is an entry-level position that requires as much knowledge of design-tool software as it does creative energy. Web graphic designers create graphic elements for websites, including banner ads, buttons, and other navigational elements. You'll need to know Adobe Photoshop and other design programs, and be able to create graphics that can be sized and compressed to work well in a Web environment.
A bachelor's degree is not usually necessary, but an associate's is certainly a plus. Of course, you must have a portfolio of work (digital and/or traditional) to show what you can do. The title "Web designer" can mean many different things, from a straightforward graphic designer to one who is responsible for an entire website. In most cases a Web designer is tasked with combining the graphic, textual, and other elements of a site to create an appealing layout. This work may also include using JavaScript and other scripting devices to create dynamic effects. Generally, a BS in graphic arts or commensurate experience is required.
A bachelor's degree is not usually necessary, but an associate's is certainly a plus. Of course, you must have a portfolio of work (digital and/or traditional) to show what you can do. The title "Web designer" can mean many different things, from a straightforward graphic designer to one who is responsible for an entire website. In most cases a Web designer is tasked with combining the graphic, textual, and other elements of a site to create an appealing layout. This work may also include using JavaScript and other scripting devices to create dynamic effects. Generally, a BS in graphic arts or commensurate experience is required.
Do I need to know about Web Design
Because Web design is a very exact science with an enormous number of elements and variables it is true to say that the more you know about web design the better.
These days producing a popular web site is about producing something that has just a little extra, because let’s face it anyone these days can create a website and you just have to look at any number of websites on the internet to see just how bland they can be if they are created by people who don’t know about web design.
Good Web design is like good architecture, fashion design and any other form of design that combines an exacting technical ability with a flair for laying out a web page.
Web design shouldn’t be confused with web content, a brilliant web designer rarely produces content, almost never draws anything or supplies photographs for a website and that is because he or she is a dedicated professional who works solely to ensure that your website has several desperately important characteristics.
* A good Web design must mean that the site is easy to understand.
* A great Web design must ensure that the site and the pages of the site are easy to use.
* A fabulous Web design must include relevant content which is presented concisely
* A wonderful Web design must ensure that the visitor wants to explore the site and spend time on it.
* A fully functioning Web design must ensure that the way the site has been put together is search engine friendly so tat when the search engine bot trawl the web they don’t encounter any problems with the site
*
There are of course many other rules which can be added to the list above, but if those simple rules are followed and that is so much easier tan it sounds the Web design you buy or create will build a site that has few rivals.
One thing to remember when thinking about what sort of Web design you want is your audience. It is of paramount importance to have a very good understanding of the demographic of your visitors Web designs that don’t cater for the people they were created for will always fail.
These days producing a popular web site is about producing something that has just a little extra, because let’s face it anyone these days can create a website and you just have to look at any number of websites on the internet to see just how bland they can be if they are created by people who don’t know about web design.
Good Web design is like good architecture, fashion design and any other form of design that combines an exacting technical ability with a flair for laying out a web page.
Web design shouldn’t be confused with web content, a brilliant web designer rarely produces content, almost never draws anything or supplies photographs for a website and that is because he or she is a dedicated professional who works solely to ensure that your website has several desperately important characteristics.
* A good Web design must mean that the site is easy to understand.
* A great Web design must ensure that the site and the pages of the site are easy to use.
* A fabulous Web design must include relevant content which is presented concisely
* A wonderful Web design must ensure that the visitor wants to explore the site and spend time on it.
* A fully functioning Web design must ensure that the way the site has been put together is search engine friendly so tat when the search engine bot trawl the web they don’t encounter any problems with the site
*
There are of course many other rules which can be added to the list above, but if those simple rules are followed and that is so much easier tan it sounds the Web design you buy or create will build a site that has few rivals.
One thing to remember when thinking about what sort of Web design you want is your audience. It is of paramount importance to have a very good understanding of the demographic of your visitors Web designs that don’t cater for the people they were created for will always fail.
Web Design Types
There are few Web Designs which are very popular and well known. We write below brief summary about some of the most popular Web Designs:
* HTML website designs are incredibly popular in the recent time. Most of the organizations prefer HTML sites. They are search engine friendly and get comparatively better ranks in the search results in all the major search engines. They can also be downloaded quickly . One can expect to have attractive user friendly HTML web sites as per their particular needs.
* Flash website designs are very attractive. Catchy websites can be designed using flash. Flash animation can also be added on the pages of the website to make it more appealing. There are flash experts who can design flash based website for you. It is natural that mostly art related companies generally prefer flash website for you. Mostly , the art related companies prefer flash website as they need to exhibit their organization in an artistic manner. You can also add flash on some particular part of your website. It is not only search engine friendly but also quite appealing.
* Dynamic Website Design: When you are confronted with the proposition that you need to change the content of your website very frequently or at least sometime or the other and you are not in a position to do it without any technical knowledge . But, a dynamic website enables you to do the same . You will be able to change the content of your website by following just a few simple steps. The design of the website can be made dynamic as desired by you.
* E-commerce website designs: World Wide Web has transformed the world into a tiny city and e-commerce has turned it into a small market at that. In e-commerce , people of the whole world are your potential clients . You can sell your products and services to anyone in the country sitting at your office only. A team of IT professionals properly trained in ecommerce web design will be able to design ecommerce web designs for your website and augment the sell of your product or services online .
* HTML website designs are incredibly popular in the recent time. Most of the organizations prefer HTML sites. They are search engine friendly and get comparatively better ranks in the search results in all the major search engines. They can also be downloaded quickly . One can expect to have attractive user friendly HTML web sites as per their particular needs.
* Flash website designs are very attractive. Catchy websites can be designed using flash. Flash animation can also be added on the pages of the website to make it more appealing. There are flash experts who can design flash based website for you. It is natural that mostly art related companies generally prefer flash website for you. Mostly , the art related companies prefer flash website as they need to exhibit their organization in an artistic manner. You can also add flash on some particular part of your website. It is not only search engine friendly but also quite appealing.
* Dynamic Website Design: When you are confronted with the proposition that you need to change the content of your website very frequently or at least sometime or the other and you are not in a position to do it without any technical knowledge . But, a dynamic website enables you to do the same . You will be able to change the content of your website by following just a few simple steps. The design of the website can be made dynamic as desired by you.
* E-commerce website designs: World Wide Web has transformed the world into a tiny city and e-commerce has turned it into a small market at that. In e-commerce , people of the whole world are your potential clients . You can sell your products and services to anyone in the country sitting at your office only. A team of IT professionals properly trained in ecommerce web design will be able to design ecommerce web designs for your website and augment the sell of your product or services online .
Lack of collaboration in design
In the early stages of the web, there wasn't as much collaboration between web designs and larger advertising campaigns, customer transactions, social networking, intranets and extranets as there is now. Web pages were mainly static online brochures disconnected from the larger projects.
Many web pages are still disconnected from larger projects. Special design considerations are necessary for use within these larger projects. These design considerations are often overlooked, especially in cases where there is a lack of leadership, understanding or concern for the larger project to facilitate collaboration. This often results in unhealthy competition or compromise between departments, and less than optimal use of web pages.
Many web pages are still disconnected from larger projects. Special design considerations are necessary for use within these larger projects. These design considerations are often overlooked, especially in cases where there is a lack of leadership, understanding or concern for the larger project to facilitate collaboration. This often results in unhealthy competition or compromise between departments, and less than optimal use of web pages.
CSS versus tables
Back when Netscape Navigator 4 dominated the browser market, the popular solution available for designers to lay out a Web page was by using tables. Often even simple designs for a page would require dozens of tables nested in each other. Many web templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use this technique today. Navigator 4 didn't support CSS to a useful degree, so it simply wasn't used.
After the browser wars were over, and Internet Explorer dominated the market, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what's going on in a web page. All modern Web browsers support CSS with different degrees of limitations.
However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts, developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today, though, designing with reasonable adherence to standards involves little more than applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.
These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design. However, the W3 Consortium has made CSS in combination with XHTML the standard for web design.
After the browser wars were over, and Internet Explorer dominated the market, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what's going on in a web page. All modern Web browsers support CSS with different degrees of limitations.
However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts, developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today, though, designing with reasonable adherence to standards involves little more than applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.
These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design. However, the W3 Consortium has made CSS in combination with XHTML the standard for web design.
How it Looks vs. How it Works
Some web developers have a graphic arts background and may pay more attention to how a page looks than considering other issues such as how visitors are going to find the page via a search engine. Some might rely more on advertising than search engines to attract visitors to the site. On the other side of the issue, search engine optimization consultants (SEOs) obsess about how well a web site works technically and textually: how much traffic it generates via search engines, and how many sales it makes, assuming looks don't contribute to the sales. As a result, the designers and SEOs often end up in disputes where the designer wants more 'pretty' graphics, and the SEO wants lots of 'ugly' keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text links. One could argue that this is a false dichotomy due to the possibility that a web design may integrate the two disciplines for a collaborative and synergistic solution. Because some graphics serve communication purposes in addition to aesthetics, how well a site works may depend on the graphic designer's visual communication ideas as well as the SEO considerations.
Another problem when using lots of graphics on a page is that download times can be greatly lengthened, often irritating the user. This has become less of a problem as the internet has evolved with high-speed internet and the use of vector graphics. This is an engineering challenge to increase bandwidth in addition to an artistic challenge to minimize graphics and graphic file sizes. This is an on-going challenge as increased bandwidth invites increased amounts of content.
Another problem when using lots of graphics on a page is that download times can be greatly lengthened, often irritating the user. This has become less of a problem as the internet has evolved with high-speed internet and the use of vector graphics. This is an engineering challenge to increase bandwidth in addition to an artistic challenge to minimize graphics and graphic file sizes. This is an on-going challenge as increased bandwidth invites increased amounts of content.
Compatibility and restrictions
Because of the market share of modern browsers (depending on your target market), the compatibility of your website with the viewers is restricted. For instance, a website that is designed for the majority of websurfers will be limited to the use of valid XHTML 1.0 Strict or older, Cascading Style Sheets Level 1, and 1024x768 display resolution. This is because Internet Explorer is not fully W3C standards compliant with the modularity of XHTML 1.1 and the majority of CSS beyond 1. A target market of more alternative browser (e.g. Firefox and Opera) users allow for more W3C compliance and thus a greater range of options for a web designer.
Another restriction on webpage design is the use of different Image file formats. The majority of users can support GIF, JPEG, and gif (with restrictions). Again Internet Explorer is the major restriction here, not fully supporting gif's advanced transparency features, resulting in the GIF format still being the most widely used graphic file format for transparent images.
Many website incompatibilities go unnoticed by the designer and unreported by the users. The only way to be certain a website will work on a particular platform is to test it on that platform.
Another restriction on webpage design is the use of different Image file formats. The majority of users can support GIF, JPEG, and gif (with restrictions). Again Internet Explorer is the major restriction here, not fully supporting gif's advanced transparency features, resulting in the GIF format still being the most widely used graphic file format for transparent images.
Many website incompatibilities go unnoticed by the designer and unreported by the users. The only way to be certain a website will work on a particular platform is to test it on that platform.
Planning documentation
Documentation is used to visually plan the site while taking into account the purpose, audience and content, to design the site structure, content and interactions that are most suitable for the website. Documentation may be considered a prototype for the website – a model which allows the website layout to be reviewed, resulting in suggested changes, improvements and/or enhancements. This review process increases the likelihood of success of the website.
First, the content is categorized and the information structure is formulated. The information structure is used to develop a document or visual diagram called a site map. This creates a visual of how the web pages will be interconnected, which helps in deciding what content will be placed on what pages. There are three main ways of diagramming the website structure:
* Linear Website Diagrams will allow the users to move in a predetermined sequence;
* Hierarchical structures (of Tree Design Website Diagrams) provide more than one path for users to take to their destination;
* Branch Design Website Diagrams allow for many interconnections between web pages such as hyperlinks within sentences.
In addition to planning the structure, the layout and interface of individual pages may be planned using a storyboard. In the process of storyboarding, a record is made of the description, purpose and title of each page in the site, and they are linked together according to the most effective and logical diagram type. Depending on the number of pages required for the website, documentation methods may include using pieces of paper and drawing lines to connect them, or creating the storyboard using computer software.
Some or all of the individual pages may be designed in greater detail as a website wireframe, a mock up model or comprehensive layout of what the page will actually look like. This is often done in a graphic program, or layout design program. The wireframe has no working functionality, only planning.
First, the content is categorized and the information structure is formulated. The information structure is used to develop a document or visual diagram called a site map. This creates a visual of how the web pages will be interconnected, which helps in deciding what content will be placed on what pages. There are three main ways of diagramming the website structure:
* Linear Website Diagrams will allow the users to move in a predetermined sequence;
* Hierarchical structures (of Tree Design Website Diagrams) provide more than one path for users to take to their destination;
* Branch Design Website Diagrams allow for many interconnections between web pages such as hyperlinks within sentences.
In addition to planning the structure, the layout and interface of individual pages may be planned using a storyboard. In the process of storyboarding, a record is made of the description, purpose and title of each page in the site, and they are linked together according to the most effective and logical diagram type. Depending on the number of pages required for the website, documentation methods may include using pieces of paper and drawing lines to connect them, or creating the storyboard using computer software.
Some or all of the individual pages may be designed in greater detail as a website wireframe, a mock up model or comprehensive layout of what the page will actually look like. This is often done in a graphic program, or layout design program. The wireframe has no working functionality, only planning.
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