Tips For A Web Designer

One of the toughest challenges facing any designer is the web page. There are perhaps millions of pages in the World Wide Web all jostling for attention. The question that is foremost is how you as a designer can make a difference. 

Study the subject being featured. Visit as many sites as possible that cover the same as well as related topics. Make a list of what works and what doesnt. Avoid using a design that is going to be uniform with others. Unless your pages are distinctive they are not going to work.

1. Try and avoid run of the mill things like page counters, java text scrolling, flashing images, GIF images, signs which say we are not ready. Or, too many illustrations or animations, black grounds or fade ins.

2. Create a design which coveys in a stylish way what it has to. Instead of using downloaded illustrations use original ones. 

3. Avoid things like heavy files or graphics. These will slow down your pages. GIF is better than JPEG files. 

4. Think of the target audience and subject being addressed when designing. The overall effect should be that of exclusivity. 

5. Avoid incorporating download plugins. While Flash is innovative and fun you will loose viewers if you dont provide an HTML alternative.

6. Design the pages so that they are not more than 50K.

7. Remember the rule of thumb; a web page should not have more than three screens. And, ensure that the viewer does not have to scroll horizontally.

8. Test your website pages with several browsers. Make sure they open quickly and completely. Do a reality check by asking a cross section of users to check the site. Usability checking will bring to the fore any mistakes made.

9. Dont use backgrounds with tiles or patterns it makes the design fussy and decreases readability. Avoid frames they make the pages difficult to book mark.

10. Determine accurately the rules of creative design and ensure that you apply them. If you have links make sure they work. Limit page content. Pay attention to search engine optimization. Ensure that the design follows the content and is not a separate element. Maintain archives. Use innovative fonts and titles. The content should follow basic elements of style or a style sheet.

When designing the web page think about the site as a whole not each page separately. There should continuity in design. Include a site map for easy navigation. Pay attention to imparting knowledge, include information on the subject of the site, give tips, make available how to articles as well as publications on the topic. The site and pages should be interactive without being a nuisance, so links must be well thought of and of practical use.

Keep in mind at all times the 5 golden principles of design: balance, rhythm, proportion, dominance, and unity. 

About the Author: Paul Wilson is a freelance writer for http://www.1888Discuss.com/web-design/ web design Singapore

Web Design Flaws

These days, everyone is trying to become a Web designer with a relatively simply web design Singapore packages readily available, but is this wise, or is it giving them a headache? If you have the time, the panache, and the vision for your organization's website, you will have no doubt in designing yourself. But have you ever thought why the visitors are turning off from your website? Well then there are a number of guaranteed ways to turn-off visitors to your web site. Turn-offs generally can be defined as anything that obstructs the user from quick and easy use of your site and so these factors requires special consideration and attention as you either design a site, or revise a site.

Your website is highly important for your online business and you should observe those rules of thumb and avoid common blunders with an eye toward making them less common if you want it to achieve good results. Some of the common mistakes are:

1. Overly wordy web designs that make your website loaded with problems including perception, a comprehension, and a design. It will be wise to slice it down by being brief to drive the online visitor to take action. 

2. Ugly web designs consists of pixilated graphics that were not sized for the screen, a lack of integrated design, and the use of free clip art instead of artwork designed specifically for your pages. 

3. Useless Website- that is your website does not have a point to make, a mission statement of its very own. Your website does not offers excellent content which can be graphics, text or interactive features. 

4. Lack of traffic flow planning is a common flaw in web design, especially inexpert design. A good website is equipped for its user with easy navigation tools effective enough to persuade the user to whip out their credit card, send an email, or download something fascinating. 

5. Lack of tracking features keeps you aloof of the necessary information of whether or not your website is meeting its mission which is very important for the progress of your website. Therefore the tracking feature is the only way to you will be able to measure the level of progress. 

The criteria for good web design Singapore depends upon the person and the purpose of each site and these common mistakes all point to a lack of forethought on the part of the would-be web designer.

written by: Brad smith

graphic design mistakes

1. Using web graphics on printed material.
With many young designers coming from a pre-dominantly web design background the transfer over from web design Singapore to traditional design for print can bring with it a multitude of design sins. Images supplied at 72dpi and crunched down to load fast on a website are going to reproduce very badly in print you can get away with small thumbnails but blowing things up to any appreciable size is going to be pushing your luck. There are a number of online sites offering free or very cheap quality hi resolution images which are a good source for suitable imagery.

2. Forgetting about or not allowing enough bleed.
A very common error is to send to print a document or flattened image that has no bleed at all. Generally speaking you should allow at least 3mm around every cut off edge. Failing to do so will give the printers no leeway and will either crop off the side of the page or give you a white border. It is always a good idea when supplying image files to save layered psd files then if things need extending or cropping you can do this on the background layer and hopefully cut down your work

3. Using obscure fonts and not embedding or outlining them for output.
We've all been guilty of this at some point and things are generally fine if you are going to be the only person accessing your artwork or documents. However if someone else needs to amend the files or use your vector logo on one of there publications. Unless you package up the used fonts, they are not going to be able to open the files correctly and some software programs may replace any unknown fonts with a default. This is a particular problem when you need to dig out stuff that was created several years previously and you no longer have your old fonts installed.

4. Supplying print ready artwork using spot colours or rgb
There are valid reasons for using spot colours in artwork, logos that need to reference particular pantone colours for example. In general design work however most print is sent through on 4 colour presses CMYK with occasional 5th colour for luminoius or metallic colour or for spot UV varnish. It is very common for lazy designers to just place rgb images into files and expect the vibrant colours seen on screen to reproduce in print.

5. Allowing design illiterate clients to lead you round the houses
The customer is always right, goes the old adage. However it is often said with gritted teeth and a sense of patience that recognizes that these morons will at some stage be handing over a fat cheque for your troubles. It is often a good idea when first submitting visuals to throw in a couple of stinkers to hopefully get them to appreciate the design you would like them to accept. There is the very real danger of course of them loving the piece of absolute arsewipe that you knocked up in five minutes to make them think you've been earning your money. Still it's a living. website design company Singapore

Advantage of Excellent Website Designing

A basic knowledge of how html and graphic design works will go a long way in designing a website you can be proud of. Color choice should also be dictated by other, less obvious goals, when designing or re-vamping a website. In designing your website, you should be conscious of all the components that go into successful development and how to use them to your most excellent advantage.

When designing your website, remember to get as much meat or substance to the top of your code just below the tag as you can. As a substitute of designing a sale-oriented website, all they're trying to do is designing a "thing of beauty". A company specializes in building, designing, implementing, managing and maintaining corporate website to boost sales of your company. It?s not designing the website that counts but how the website is designed.

You are designing a website for a client and are confused by the terminology, you may want to bring it to their attention and help them rework the copy, so that all their customers understand it. Design depends on individual taste and designing a website from a first draft that the client will like from the start, can be a real challenge.

There are some very important things you must do SEO-wise while designing your website. For help visit: Web Design Singapore the first step to implementing a website is to design the directory structure. Designing for color-blind browsers although designing a website for the colorblind will not limit your color palette, you?ll need to be wary of the color combinations that you use. Layout is particularly important in designing your website.

Business owners and marketers have a tendency to think in broad terms about their marketing objective by focusing on ones such as ?generating traffic? or ?designing a website. It always happens that html editors write clumsy tags, especially when you amend the webpage layout again and again during your website designing process, which may possibly deter search engines from reading your web page and in turn poorly affect your search engine ranking. Building and designing website is not as difficult as you think.

In summary, there is much to consider when designing a website. Color choice should also be dictated by other, less obvious goals, when designing or re-vamping a website. When designing your website you must make allowances for the lowest possible common browser.

Database templates also facilitate you to make changes to your site much more easily, and help you change certain elements without recreating the entire page from scratch.

What Are The Basics Of Web Design?

Web design uses almost all those elements as used in print design. One requires exploring layout and space, manage colours and fonts, and arrange it all together in a format in order to put all the intended messages across. Those resources will enable one know details of web design even if one is a professional web developer or just on one’s beginning stage leading to the web arena. 

Understanding of Designing Elements: 

One must know that a good web design is equivalent to the good design. If anyone has the right understanding about the elements that appropriately suits with a good design, then one will undoubtedly have a Web page that works well. One applies those elements of good design if and when one is producing a web page, a business card, or a raiment logo, and once one makes out them and their necessities and differences, one will acquire the skills and expertise that requires for becoming a great web designer. 

Use of Colours: 

Colour is present everywhere. With it we make our world up and help ourselves see things from different angles. In short, it is what as we see the things around us and as we dress up our world. The ‘red’ or the ‘black’ is not mere colour; they have meaning beyond their apparent looks. And they have larger important effects on design elements. The pools of colours show influences in their varieties as how they could be used effectively in web designing services. 

Application of Web design software: 

"What You See Is What You Get" [WYSIWYG] editor is a popular preference among most of the web designers. It has become popular because this editor provides a visual interface to the design effects. At the same time, it should be remembered there are more opportunities and resources than they meet the eyes. Only web editor could not have brought about such a revolution unless there have been other designing tools. 

Fundamentals of Web Layouts: 

Layout comes at the very onset of web designing services. It is the proper arrangement of elements on web pages. It is very necessary to begin with basic design rules. If and when one understands them, one can proceed across how to place elements on one’s web pages. 

Usefulness of Images & Graphics: 

If one wants to apply and bring about an environment of fun and frolic, the graphics and their use will be best considered. The effects of graphics are so long extensive that it reminds us of the proverb "a picture is worth one thousand words". This proverb is also applicable to the web designing service and their uses of images and graphics. 

Usefulness of Navigation Interfaces: 

When a website is live on the internet, there are all chances that visitors may come to the web pages of the website. On visiting the website, visitors may want to know what the purpose of the website is. And for this reason, they may go to one page to another. This is called navigation. There should be all browser compatible navigation interfaces, where from the visitors can move through one page to another and see the objectives of the website as a whole and at the same time see the image and graphic application. 

The purpose of a website design is well fulfilled only if the website is professionally designed and in this case professional web designing tops the list of priorities. Only a professionally designed website can bring in desired business and return on investment on a quicker pace.

http://www.chromewebsolutions.com

Getting creative with CSS3

Getting creative with CSS3 

CSS3 is used in organizing the style and layout of Web pages. It is the latest standard in the CSS series. CSS3 offers a wide variety of new trends to make an impact with your web designs. With many exciting new functions and features, CSS can be used as a powerful tool in website designing and development. A CSS3 refers to the technical stipulation of a layout. It ensures that a web page will appear precisely the way the website developer has specified. 

As a website designer we have to look into the capabilities of CSS3 and need to make the most of it. The basic approach of CSS3 in web designing is to make the web page user friendly by removing loads of complications from it. The changes that CSS3 has brought into the website development market are quite amazing. Using CSS3 can speed up the process of website design and development and also speed up your web site. 

Using CSS3 to your Advantage 

Keep all the things side apart, here are some advantages of CSS3 for you: 

1. Better search engine results: 

With CSS3, you can keep your HTML code much cleaner which in turn helps search engine crawler in getting the real content from your site very easily. You can also put any content anywhere in your web page and no longer each individual page have to be simplified to replicate the new style. By using this website design technique you will make much greater consistency throughout the site easily. 

2. Lightweight coding: 

In the field of website development, no one likes to wait for anything to come. This condition also applies in loading of web pages. When a website page takes a lot of time to load, generally users leave that page. By using CSS3, web pages can be made lighter which will allow the site to load faster. As table layout format is not used in CSS3, the sites acquire less memory and load faster. 

3. Accessibility and usability: 

In website designing you have to make it understandable that the content of the site must be validated in all formats of the browsers. A web designer has better control over a website by using CSS3. CSS3 allows for more compatible style elements, including font size and line heights through which web pages can be used more easily by people with disabilities. Website developers can craft specific CSS files especially for printing, or mobile devices, as well as the customary computer screen and in doing so making websites fully multimedia applications. 

4. Isolation and Differentiation: 

With the introduction of the CSS3 format, website designers have a lot to offer in development of a web page. CSS3 allows changes and modifications to be made in individual modules. CSS3 format helps users in separating presentation from structures. In this technique, style sheets defined presentational characteristics whereas the document structures were defined in separate heading. This eases the maintenance of the web page in efficient and comfortable manner. 

When you start styling your content with CSS3 modules, you will probably never want to go back to using the old tags for styling. 

You must use CSS3 to determine its full potential. Flexibility is the most useful features of using Cascading Style Sheets. One of the important things you require to gaze at before using this technique is what browsers the greater part of your users uses to visit your website. The reason behind this question is that it sometimes may be very difficult to make your CSS sprites friendly with many of the browsers depending on the techniques you use.

http://www.sonitek.ca

Layout

Above the fold is gold. In the newspaper industry important stories are placed on the top half of the page - this is known as 'above the fold'. This is prime real estate because it's where readers first look. Use this approach when designing your website. Put your eye-grabbing content at the top. Don't eat up the top of the page with ads and graphics which force your visitors to scroll down the window to find out what you have to say.

Less is more

'Less is more' are words to live by. Since you only have a few seconds to capture a user's interest don't waste any of them with bloated pages that take too long to load. Potential visitors will just hit 'cancel' and move on to the next guy. Keep in mind that not everyone has a high-speed internet connection. Try to keep the file size at the bare minimum. That may mean you have to lose that 'really cool' graphic or flash intro - but ask yourself - does it add to what you are saying or is it just eye candy? Honestly, no one cares how long you worked on the razzle-dazzle - they just want to find the answer to their problem. Is the solution really going to be found in your photoshop masterpiece? If not, ditch it.

Be consistent

Make it easy for your visitors to find their way around by keeping navigation menus in the same place from page to page. The most common places are a vertical strip at the top left or a horizontal bar at or near the top of the page. Familiarity make users feel at ease, don't make them guess what to do with each page they load. The same goes for link colors - use the same color and style for links throughout your website so they know what is a link and what is not.

Break it up

Divide your content into logical blocks. Use headlines, subheadlines and paragraphs to guide your users through your copy. Nobody wants to fight their way through a big, grey wall of text. Cut it into bite-size pieces readers can digest.

http://www.websitedesignbasics.com

7 Tips for Closing the Sale

1. Pay Attention to the Real Issues
One of the keys to closing a sale with a potential client is to find out what they really want and to offer it. Each client and each project is unique, and if you fall into the trap of thinking that each web design client will want the same things you will wind up not offering enough of a personalized service. The key is to offer a customized solution to their problems or to the issues that they want to address.
This sounds pretty simple, and it doesn’t have to be complicated, but many freelancers overlook it. In the past I’ve hired freelancers for a number of projects and I’m always amazed at how many people just send a canned response without even addressing the project’s details. I’ll have a description of the project on a job board and many of the responses are obviously just a generic email template stating the person’s qualifications and sometimes with a link to a portfolio. In many cases the services they are listing in the email don’t even fit with the particular project. I delete those emails very quickly, and I’m sure most other clients would do the same.
On the other hand, what stands out in a positive way is someone who responds (whether through email, a phone call, or face-to-face) in a way that shows they have taken the time to learn about the specific project. They understand the basics of what is needed and they can offer services and expertise that will help to solve the problems and address the issues associated with the specific project.
2. Respond Promptly
When a potential client is looking to get information from you about your services, chances are they are also reaching out to other designers. If they emailed you or filled out the contact form on your website, they may have done the same thing at the sites of a few other designers. If you’re responding to a job listing or placing a bid on a site like Odesk or Elance, you know others are going to be responding as well.
Prompt responses are always appreciated by clients. They send a positive message about your responsiveness and the type of customer service that you will provide, and it also gives you the chance to make a strong impression before others beat you to it. If the clients has already been in communication with a few other qualified designers before they hear from you, your odds of landing the project will be drastically reduced.
3. Communicate Personally, but Professionally
Professional communication is important, but most clients also prefer to work with people that they like. That means you need to be yourself and connect with potential clients rather than being all business all the time. It’s possible to be personable and to show your personality without being unprofessional.
The web design process involves a lot of communication between the designer and the client, and many clients can be intimidated by the process. If the client enjoys the initial conversations with you and if you can put him or her at ease, you’ll be in a much better position to secure the project.
4. Demonstrate Your Expertise
In the first point I talked about the importance of offering a personalized, customized solution based in the client’s unique situation. Taking that a step further, you’ll also want to demonstrate or sell your own experience and expertise. It could be on a general level, but to be even more successful you should show examples of similar projects. Show specifically how you were able to help a client in a similar situation and explain that you’re confident you can be a great asset for this project as well.
Case studies from past projects can be especially helpful if you’re able to show how the client benefited from your work, or if you can show measurable results of the project (such as an x% increase in online sales after a re-design). Some designers include detailed case studies on their portfolio websites, and another option is a printed case study booklet.
5. Ask for the Business
This is a simple point, but one that many freelancers miss out on. Be sure to ask for the business and make sure the client knows that you want the project. If you’ve talked to the potential client about their project and provided a quote, take the next step and ask them to move forward by signing the contract and getting started.
Asking for the business also gives you a chance to get to the root of any potential objections that the client might have. If they like what you are proposing but they are hesitant to move forward when you ask for the business, there is something holding them back. It may or may not be something that is within your control, but if you ask them about their hesitations or what would convince them to move forward, you may be able address issues or concerns that you didn’t even know existed.
6. Follow Up
Another mistake that many freelancers make is simply not following up. How long you wait before following up will depend on the situation and where things were left during your last communication with the client. In many situations you may want to send an email or make a follow up phone call if you haven’t heard anything in a few days.
From my experience, many clients that make initial contact with designers about a project will let it fall through the cracks for a while. So if you haven’t heard back from a client regarding your proposal, don’t just assume that they hired another designer. There’s a good chance that they just haven’t yet made a decision to move forward. If you are proactive you’ll have a much better chance of getting the work.
7. Cut Ties When it Doesn’t Fit
Not every project will be a good fit for you. It could be the type of project, the industry, the budget, the time frame, or any number of other issues. If the project isn’t a good fit for you, explain that to the client and move on. Don’t waste your time. Instead, use your time to do a better job of communicating with other potential clients and you can focus on landing the projects that are the best fit for you.