As many of us know; rules inherited from graphic design, good web design consists of a few professional sights and terms.
At the institute I work, most of my class hours pass by giving students design works and to-dos. Like “œcreate a design layout for x consulting company website” or “Create an iPhone presentation page without using iPhone images but injecting the essence of it’s features visually” etc.
After declaring the work, almost all students (and most of the designers) open up Photoshop, and start gazing at the blank screen with blurred and blank eyes, for hours… We might almost call this “Designers’ block“- which I will be talking more about in an another article soon-, but it really isn’t.
We can call it “lack of organization“, “not knowing what to do“, or “photoshophobia“ or even “I don’t belong in this world“ issue but it is not “Designers’ Block”. It is rushing into things without planning, organization, knowledge of the subject to be designed.
Definition of Design
Dictionary.com says “to form or conceive in the mind; contrive; plan” as the 4th meaning of design.
You can also have a look at other explanations (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/design), some of which are more basic, relative and common, but I would like to underline what i just mentioned:
- Forming your plan or ideas:
Whatever the subject is, we first have to have an idea about the subject. If it is about a beverage company, then it is useful that we do a small research about tasty beverages and well shaped sample designs we come by in the web. - Organizing the Information:
Since we always have at least the headings for the subject, we will know what topics or parts of the information will need to be visually boosted; so that the visitors can catch them earlier.I highly suggest a pen and paper to draw a blueprint of the site, outlining the focal areas, important sections.
This will help prepare before opening up a canvas and giving visual styles to that information block.
- Using the design principles and elements:
I will be talking more about the design elements in the future, but for starters; I can say they are basically a list of visual objects and rules making your work efficient, stylish and elegant.Now that is the step where we open up photoshop or an equivalent visual editor to start shaping our data.
To make our work good, we will need to organize the information, and then jump to styling it:
A good design is a compilation of good color contrast, right choice of typographical elements, a well use of white-space and creative small touches, all making the raw information to look more user-friendly and elegant.
These steps will also prevent a possible “Designers’ block”, helping you know what you are doing and how you are doing.
I know that so far I have been a little abstract about the subject, but the main idea is; how well you are prepared about the scope, so well you will handle the design steps.
Tags: principles, web design