Sven has the body of a Swede and the brain
of a turnip. When not sculpting his stubble or dating lingerie models, he
designs websites. And with the right tools and a grasp of the basics, you could
too. So stop putting it off and read on.
For most people now, the web is just there.
Like electricity, news, social interaction, entertainment and more are
available at the click of a switch. New industries have grown up online, and
old ones are moving across, with greater or lesser speed and success: the
Financial Times has said it expects digital income to exceed traditional
business income before the end of 2012. At the same time, more and more people
and companies are moving beyond using the web to consume content from other
sources, and using it to publish their own, via blogs, social networks, sharing
and cu-ration services and full-blown websites. And, quite naturally, they want
it to be as easy to write the web as to read it.
Quite
naturally, they want it to be as easy to write the web as to read it
For the designer, especially if you’re a
new-comer to web development or your knowledge of online technologies has grown
rusty, the pace of change can be disconcerting. Not a year goes by without an
exciting new technology arriving or methods that were once the norm being
disdainfully rejected. Right now, Flash-based web sites are on borrowed time as
Adobe knifes the mobile version of its plug-in and repositions its product for
app creation and online gaming. Elsewhere, savvy designers are talking about
HTML5, mobile-first, adaptive web design and responsive layouts.
Once upon a time, we thought the future of
web design might be like the present of print design: fire up Dreamweaver, drag
a few boxes around, click Export, and see the result appear with pixel-perfect
precision on everyone’s screens. That vision no longer even makes sense; we don’t
want the same design to appear on all the wildly different devices out there,
from the 3.5in iPhone to the 27in iMac and all the Android phablets in between.
As it turns out, about the only thing we had right a decade ago was a deep
distrust of Internet Explorer.
So how is web design done in 2012? This
article isn’t so much a ‘how to’ as a ‘what to’ – and also a ‘what not to’.
With advice from seasoned web designers of many stripes, we’ll show you how to
pick your way through the maze of methods and identify the approach that will
work for you.
Regardless of the kind of project you
intend to embark on, immersing yourself the field is vital, says Cardiff-based
Mark Boulton, creative director at Mark Boulton Design (markboultondesign.com).
The web development community is ‘a noisy, prolific bunch’, he enthuses. ‘We
write a lot of books, there are literally hundreds of conferences every year across
the world, and endless blogs and tutorial sites are online for you to learn
from.’ And besides learning from the masters, the best way to get started is to
experiment: ‘As well as commercial work, every designer has their pet projects.
Web designers are no different, so get yourself [a project] you can make
mistakes with and learn from.’
Mark
Boulton - ‘There are hundreds of books, blogs, tutorial sites and conferences
for you to learn from’
Designer, illustrator and photographer Geri
Coady (hellogeri.com) thinks similarly. As a relatively recent convert to web
design, she understands the need to be comfortable with the medium before
starting work in anger. So she also advocates setting out at your own pace with
a few personal projects. ‘A portfolio is a great place to start. Don’t jump
into client work without some experience – you’ll spend more time learning as
you go, on the client’s dime.’ The point stands even if the client is you:
don’t plan to create your own site from scratch as your first foray into web
design. Get some practice in so that you have an idea of the challenges and
experience of the pitfalls first.
Like Boulton, Coady reckons the community
can be the key to success. ‘Become more active, both online and in person. A
tend meet-ups and conferences and make friends –it helps to stay inspired and
motivated.’
Whatever task you set yourself, a blank
canvas is no less daunting when it comes to a website than in any other
creative medium. The first steps are to decide on the type of site you want to
create and technologies that will be relevant in enabling you to do so. From a
content standpoint, start out simple: unless your site is all about the
content, less is more. Keep text succinct and use images wisely; don’t assume
all your visitors will be on a super-fast internet connection, and just as
importantly, don’t assume they’re prepared to devote a lot of time and effort
to exploring your site. Attention is fickle.
Geri
Coady - ‘Be active, online and in person. Attend meet-ups and make friends – it
helps you to stay inspired’
That’s not to say you should follow the
joyless old edict that everything except plain, relevant information is
wasteful decoration. But be rigorous in excluding everything that doesn’t
contribute to conveying a message or establishing a tone.
Above all, when refining down what you need
to do and what you don’t, realize that a website can evolve and grow: it’s not
like a book that’s going to cost a fortune to reprint if you need to add a page
or correct a mistake. Make the effort to create a reasonably modular design,
and adding new content can be painless. In fact, the more elegant and efficient
your template, the more rewarding it will be to maintain, improve and expand
your site over time.
