Web site design

Hi Keith,
Welcome to the forum. There are some really great sites here as well as not so good ones. You can learn from mistakes made by others, what works and what doesn't. I know that the others will give you some good pointers but this is generally what I do.

I take into consideration what the main idea of the site will be and find a color scheme that I think fits it. My color schemes usually change several times though....I am female. LOL
I use Paint Shop Pro a lot and actually draw my layout using the colors that I choose. Kinda like making one huge jpg that looks like a screen shot of a web page. Add buttons, images and other graphics. This is the fun part to me because I feel like I am putting a puzzle together. Sometimes I come up with neat looking stuff and can't remember how in the world I did it. When I get something that I halfway like then I take each part (ie; top bar, buttons, logo, other images) and work on them seperately. As each part is finished, I take it to Dreamweaver and insert it to see if it is what I wanted. Sounds easy? It isn't really for me. I struggle sometimes...well, most of the time. As it starts coming together the main content is added. After I get my page like I want it then the links are added as well as meta tags and stuff like that. I have also found that I will mess around for weeks, sometimes months and then one day the artistic bug will hit and I just get so dang creative. hehehehe

You will develop you own style and way of doing things. Everyone is different. Good luck!!

Yeah, everyone does have their own style. DM's style doesn't work for me. I usually just use a stylesheet with all my colors and change it.

As far as going to school for web design, I think that you would find quite a few, a majority maybe, of web designers, that did not go to school for it. I think that you just have to figure out what you like. Some people are on the artistic side but hate the coding part of a website. Others love coding but hate design. I think that I am somewhere in the middle. So try some programming courses and some graphic design courses. See if one appeals to you. Some of the best designed websites are done by artists since they have an eye for what works well. Take your time and you will figure it out.

Quote: Originally posted by keith2045
Also, i am going to start planning to go to college. What colleges are good for web developing? I want to be a webmaster. Any good colleges?

Are you looking at a four year college or more of a community college/trade school type thing. Your american definition of "college" is confusing to me, because in Canada we have university (mostly academic) and college (which I think is what you'd call community callege - more practical). Be very careful when looking into any kind of web design program, especially at community colleges and even more especially at those schools that advertise on TV (ITT Tech etc.) I've had a really bad experience with a community college program so make sure you do your research. Make sure the instructors know what they're doing and that you're really going to learn what you need to know. You have to wonder why these people are teaching when they could probably be doing more interesting and profitable work in the private sector.

If you're looking into going to university there are some that have multimedia programs - not sure about those, or you could do the computer science route if you're interested in getting into programming. I know a couple people who are majoring in CS and minoring in Fine arts or something along those lines. As of right now it doesn't matter really what your degree is in. I have a degree in Urban Planning for example, and I know people with degrees in things like Philosophy and Classics who are doing web development now. It doesn't matter now but it may matter soon, espeically with the job market getting smaller and smaller these days. Of course, that could change too...

I'd also like to touch on your use of the word "webmaster". This word seems to have a lot of different meanings to different people. For most it includes most or all aspects of a website, and that's a perfectly acceptable goal for a hobbiest or freelancer, but I think you'll find that most companies like to divide up the tasks a lot more. So you might want to think about specializing one way or the other - from front end design to backend programming.

Quote: Mariving wrote: Some of the best designed websites are done by artists since they have an eye for what works well.

Interesting opinion... I tend to find that really artistic types tend to be the ones with the really unusable sites. Espeically people who came through print media. With print you have a lot more freedom in terms of visual design and a lot of graphics people don't seem to understand the technical limitations of the web. They might look great but usually take forever to download if they even work on your browser. I guess it really depends on your definition of "good design" - whether it includes functionality or not. For me functionality is a key part of web design.

Now, how do I do it? I'm not going to assume that mine is one of the great sites you're talking about but I guess I'll put my two cents in on this one too. My process is very similar to disaster-master's. I usually try to have some sort of concept in my head before I start anything. This usually involves a lot of pacing and smoking, and often a piece of paper and a pencil. I get an idea of colours, shapes, navigation, basic layout etc. sort of a rough picture in my head of what the site will look like.

Well, actually, lets go back a bit first. Before any ideas for visual layout I need to first define the purpose of the site, it's goals and objectives, some idea of its content and the architechture behind it. What will go on it and where, how things will be organized etc. From this comes ideas about appropriate ways to represent the content with colours, fonts and images. Then I can get working on that visual picture.

Now, once I have that visual picture I go into Photoshop (or Fireworks or Flash depending on which is best suited to this particular site) and start trying to put that visual picture into reality. Sometimes it fails miserably, but most of the time I can work something out.

Once that's all done, I slice it up and put it together in HTML, add some CSS, javascripts etc. etc. upload and head on over to, you guessed it, the TWF Website Critiques Area. I think it's important to get a crit before it's too late to go back and change things. Revisions come from critique ideas, then full content goes in and that's more or less it.

My way is similar to those mentioned, I used to take a pad and pen to bed with me (on the bedside table) as when you cant sleep or wake up in the middle of the night can just draw it, or scribble as i do (cant draw, even my stick figures look like, umm well not sticks)

So I either draw/design it on paper then maybe make a few changes before redoing it in Paint Shop Pro, Once I'm happy with it, I use a smal program called "Dicer" which dices the image up into bits, I recode what that program gives me, adding colspan and rowspan to suit, sometimes I also stick images back together or change/add fonts etc (the whole time in bmp format), once I am happy with the layout I check it on IE and Netscape, if all looks good then use another small program called "converter" or image converter, slect all the .bmps I want to use, right click and convert all to .jpg.
Sometimes I add the text in the layout (can always remove those bits later) to get the feel of it, but once its cut and fitting I add the text.

"Webmaster" has different sections, the coding, the layout, the graphics ....
Maybe play around with all of it, make an image, do the html (javascript etc), lay it all out, upload and test it ..
to give you an idea of which area youd like to go into, if not all.

Everyone has different tools, methods, likes, dislikes, learning from different places allows you to see different methods, styles so you can adapt your own.

Good luck

Quote: Originally posted by Busy
So I either draw/design it on paper then maybe make a few changes before redoing it in Paint Shop Pro, Once I'm happy with it, I use a smal program called "Dicer" which dices the image up into bits, I recode what that program gives me, adding colspan and rowspan to suit, sometimes I also stick images back together or change/add fonts etc (the whole time in bmp format), once I am happy with the layout I check it on IE and Netscape, if all looks good then use another small program called "converter" or image converter, slect all the .bmps I want to use, right click and convert all to .jpg.

Could you explain to me the rationale behind slicing and saving as .bmp's, then converting to .jpg's? Seems to me that it would be much more convenient to slice and save directly in a web usable format. Also, why do you convert everything to .jpeg? Don't you tend to have some images that should be .gif's? You don't find any problems with those looking lossy or anything? What about optimization? It just seems to me that this is a rather convoluted process with three different programs.

Saving as .bmp doesnt loose any quality, so can be added to, subtracted from etc with distorting the image, where as if you resave a .jpg you loose the quality of it. (gets compressed every time)
Depends on the design/colors whther its saved in .gif or .jpg but from the bmp can right click and convert from any to any. Once everything is converted to the final format I use the free service of the graphic optimser (gotta learn to spell ) to compress them, gifs also compress better.
8-10 times I end up using .gifs, but the beauty of the format converter is i can make .jpg, gif, bmp, tga or tiff for any of those formats, it copies it, doesnt replace them so make jpgs and gifs and choose the best ones.
Dicer - can save the grid, and reuse any time, can choose output format plus compression settings (but dont agree with it)
format converter, copies the files so the oringals are never touched, can convert to 5 other formats etc.

I find most of the time the graphic and finished design (working design) are never 100% the same, so changing colors, changing fonts etc are easy to do on sections (sometimes).

Im pretty much the same as busy.

I design on paper, whether it be 4 in the morning, or lunch time. If and idea pops in my head, I have the pen and paper ready to scribble.
And again, the same as busy, I can't draw to save my life, it's lucky no-one else has to design a site from my paper.

But,
I don't go into psp, or photoshop to create a site, once I have it on paper, I start making it in HTML and work from there.

Funny how we all have different ways.

Hey all

Thanks for all of your replies. I generally draw on paper also. I was just thining you all had other ways for creating good designs.

Thanks for your help

Keith