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Web Graphic Design for Small Businesses
An anonymous reader writes "I'm a competent geek running a one-man-show for a small business. I do everything IT in this company; servers, email, desktop support, managing Ethernet switches, cash registers, inventory database, and the company website. My boss has asked me to 'punch up' the website to make it more appealing. Although I can hold my own with HTML, PHP and a couple SQL products, graphic design isn't one of my strengths. I'm looking for some advice on how to improve the site without making it overstimulating for the webophobic. It's also important that it conform to ADA accessibility guidelines. In particular, I'm looking for books or tutorial websites that teach the basics of good graphic design — how to make it more appealing without losing the ability to communicate effectively. Also, I would appreciate suggestions for tools to use to make this more efficient (Windows and Linux are both OK)."
I'm a good geek of all arts. But when I try to dabble in graphical design, I always fail spectacularly.
Get someone with actual talent to do it.
Do really you think you can train a graphical designer to code with a few book and tutorials, and not get out results fitting for thedailywtf?
One of my favorite that really impacted that way I developed web sites: "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug.
I have a little bit of advice in this area from experience too. I was the IT department of a small company like that once. I was ask the samething. I can put together a home page but a business page is a whole different bowl of wax. You screw it up and you can lose customers.
My advice would be to scout some of the local talent first. You can find some really good artists and designers out of the local techschools. Most of them will work cheap, a good page might set you back 200 bucks.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Prepare for 50 variations on the "Computer techs are not artists. You should pay someone." comment.
Shoot from the hip! It's the Slashdot way.
The Zen of CSS Design won great praise when it was released for its call for beautiful and natural graphical interfaces built on top of semantically meaningful and conformant (X)HTML. Perhaps you could take inspiration from that?
It's easy for engineers to imagine that these types of things are the same as the mathematical equation required for coding. These tasks are more esoteric and require a sensitivity to process and inputs that can't be gleaned from a single information source.
If money is an issue I suggest mining the local college for design students.
Look, just because you're familiar with HTML, and server technologies doesn't mean that you can extend yourself into graphic design. Ask yourself - would you let a typical graphic designer manage those Ethernet servers, etc. that you currently maintain on your network? No! It works both ways.
Decent graphic design - especially accessibility etc. that your boss wants is a studied art, it will cost you a lot less just to go to the professionals, even if doing it yourself seems like it might save money and time. It won't.
The art of winning battles is knowing which ones to participate in, and which ones to sit out.
This sig has been deprecated.
A good looking website isn't moving, blinking crap. Its good layout, color schemes and art. Hire a graphic designer. Good ones will have links to sites they've done, which makes it easy to choose one whose style matches the image your company wants to project. I did some research on this for a project and easily found breathtakingly good site designs on the web.
That said, what looks good isn't always the most functional. Site designers agree these days that you never want to force your visitors to go through too many links, so home pages tend to be a bunch of menus with 500 links on them. Not much room for good design.
I understand it's a small business and money is tight, but one thing I've found is that you either have the "eye" or you don't. Geeks with no artistic eye make really horrible web sites. I have the same problem. I actually have taste; I can look at a web site and tell you if it's good or not, but taking a blank page and putting something tasteful (key word) on it is just something I can't do.
To quote Clint Eastwood: "A man has gotta know his own limitations."
Unfortunately, you're going to get terrible advice from this site ("Just make it black/white text! That's the best for readability, navigation, and accessibility"). Geeks all too typically have no appreciation for design, but it's critical for appealing to regular, everyday people (I'm assuming your site is not targeted at geeks).
If your boss wants a nice looking web site, get someone who knows what they're doing. There's more to design than just easy navigation.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Contract out to a professional.
You've already got a lot on your plate.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It is hard to give you advice if you don't point us to the site. That said, I am trying to do the same thing for my company's site... it still has a long way to go.
The first thing I will tell you, though, is forget about trying to write it in html/php. Get a good, free content management system like typo3 or phpwebsite. Develop a good template and let the other employees fill in the content. That will save you a lot of time and enable your company's on line presence to continue to function once you leave/go on vacation.
As for what to put on your front page, why don't you just look at what other people in your niche are doing and try to improve on it?
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Sounds like the project has already failed, then.
Seriously, start by asking questions, not offering answers. And I mean to him, not to slashdot. What is it the site is meant to communicate? What services does it provide? What values should it express? Why does he think it is not appealing now? Who is the audience? What are their values and expectations? Why are you worrying about this on Sunday?
People that do this are called graphic artists for a reason, and art is communication and it has a vocabulary. Start with what you want to communicate and how it can/should be communicated, then find colors, shapes, symbols and relationships that express that.
Get a professional if you can, he's the one that knows to ask those questions, and how to execute the answers he discovers.
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
Edward Tufte has great ideas on graphic design in general. Most are not specifically directed at web graphics, but some of the topics in his Ask E.T Forum cover this. He responds to problems that include how to format a list properly, how much information to put on one screen, and the design of forms intended for user input.
Your best bet here is to start with a system like Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal and theme it. You can start with one that has the basic layout you like and modify according to your GIMP skill level. Usually all the accessibility work is done for you with this approach.
1: Find a site that has the usability level (and pretty interface) that you're after.
2: Mimic (with all the copyright-infringing energy you can muster) their their site layout.
3: Find a local college art student, and have him/her make some replacement graphics for you.
Art students generally work pretty cheap on art/design projects - mostly due to the lack of employment opportunities directly relating to their choice of major. Design jobs that bolster the resume are almost always welcomed. Besides, most of us will tolerate a few gaudy graphics if the site layout works well (i.e. we can find what we're looking for quickly).
You can get a professional design for $500 max online. Why waste your time and energy learning how to design a website when you can hire one for so cheap?
I would build the site on some simple CMS like CMS Made Simple, http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ Then, I would add a ready-made CSS template from a site like http://www.oswd.org/ Also, you could just suggest to your boss that you buy the design along with the CSS. There are tons of freelance designers on the web with excellent references available. Our company has bought some amazing designs for as little as 200$. Try a site like http://www.elance.com/ for starters.
It doesn't matter if you're a geek or not ... you should hire a web designer who's portfolio of websites is in line with what you are looking for. Unless of course you are a designer. Otherwise it doesn't matter how many books you read, the website will look bad. You need an artists touch. Someone who's got experience.
Websites are MARKETING tools, and must be part of a unified Marketing Strategy.
You want a Marketing Pro, who can deliver the rain, handling the "Vision", while you can concentrate on the implementation.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
I've been in the same situation several times and I've come to the conclusion that it's best just to hire some one to do the design. If you you don't have an artistic sensibility you will just end up wasting a lot time, getting frustrated, and making something that looks like shit. Find a designer that does work that you like and have them just make the mockup image. Then you can take the image and slice it up and make the html/xhtml/css to your exact standards compliant specifications.
If you can't come up with a pretty design (I can't either), then more or less mimic someone else's design. If you mimic some non-popular website's look, and your website also isn't that popular, nobody will notice or care (not that you can get in trouble for this as far as I know). Or, hire a graphic designer at a small or one-man firm to create a mockup in photoshop of your new website design. This takes someone who is skilled in graphic design like an hour or so and shouldn't cost more than $50-100. You then write the html/css to actually implement their scheme, which isn't hard because you are basically just following their directions.
Therein lies your solution - tell your boss "graphic design isn't one of my strengths" and that if he wants someone to "punch it up," he'll be happier if he brings in a graphic artist/web designer. The person can be a consulting designer and not a permanent hire. Phrases like "punch it up" is a warning flag that your boss doesn't know what s/he wants. Web page design-by-boss can quickly suck up all your time and then some when he wonders why email quit working.
I once worked on a project that required working for a project manager who issued very vague directives about the software interface. After four or five tries, I ended up writing him a little tool that let him tweak all the parameters himself. It satisfied him and relieved me of chasing my tail. You can't do that with a web page so let him interact with someone whose strength is graphic design and all three of you will be happier.
Absolutely. Get someone from the local Art Institute of $yourCity to look at your current glossy brochures and do it. Grahpic design is as far from programming as grahpics are from the mechanics of the printing press.
:) That's the bonus, you'll get to work with a creative, and see how the other half live (gender- and professionally-wise). Then actually follow through with what she designs for you, don't just cringe at the large grahpics and crazy layout.
And yeah, she'll probably be a she
Lies about crimes
If you don't have lots of experience, a natural talent or at least some training and a little experience, it's going to take a while to come up with something. The problem with that is: The longer you look at your design, the more you tweak it, the more you lose sight of what it looks like to someone who hasn't looked at it all day. It is very easy to go overboard with colors, bevels, shadows, gradients or whatever you like without realizing that you're not making a website to your own taste. Small businesses need functional, informative websites that don't look bad. Snazzy is for the big guys who can afford professional designers. Small websites tend to drift off into tackyness when the one man IT department tries out Photoshop for the first time. Good web design isn't just a trip to the library and a weekend with a "for dummies" book away.
"...how to make it more appealing without losing the ability to communicate effectively."
Graphic design is more about communicating effectively than just making it "more appealing". If all you succeed in doing is making it pretty, you didn't improve it.
Try looking at local art colleges. You might be able to find a student there that's willing to work cheaply and you'll still get quality work.
If the business want "rebranding", you'd be best to hire a designer. If they already have a logotype and associated design elements, you should be fine reconstructing and tweaking these in inkscape/Xara (assuming you know how to use them).
As for the CSS, learning it is time consuming. Translating a mockup into CSS is time consuming. Debugging layouts cross browser is time consuming.
The fact you had to ask is telling; the prospects of getting a local designer to skin the site are probably looking attractive?
Just use a CMS that supports templates, Joomla is a good choice imho, then buy a professional template that fits your needs. There are also many free templates around, try to a search in emule too.
I just got back from an Adobe Flash 3D (Papervision 3d) training approximately one week ago, and there were many designers who attended. There were also some coders, but all the larger companies hire full blown artists. For example, Starbucks currently has two artists who create the concepts, and then they have two Actionscript/PHP coders who translate the artists' vision, and they have a back end coder for database stuff and other heavy-logic items. If an artistic element is a requirement, you really should outsource/hire someone who actually has a true art background (with experience in visual design), because artists just think in very different ways than coders do, and most people can't bridge the gaps. Sure, you can make something that could be pretty good, but it will never have the actual "feel" of an art project.
One more thing-80% of the audience had MacBook pro's. Why? The majority of people felt that the workflow was more intuitive/refined than what Microsoft Windows has to offer.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
You might want to take a look at Open Source Web Design, even if they do not have exactly what you want their templates will give you a good starting point for your layout and design.
Yes, and in only 10 years.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Good design is not black magic. There are rules and conventions just like there are for any other discipline. There are also trends and fashions like there are for any other discipline. You can learn them, if you want.
There are sites that serve as reference points for design professionals; There are many, but this is one: http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm
So look through the galleries of what design professionals themselves consider exemplary, then shamelessly copy; after all, that's exactly what design professionals do--they're constantly stealing from each other.
Beyond that, you only require finicky, anal attention to detail. If things don't look evenly spaced, measure it with the ruler tools. If the font renders fuzzy, use a better one. But chances are, if you're in I.T. you already possess the fine attention to detail required.
In sum, it's a different way of thinking, but not impossible or even that difficult to acquire. Fair warning, though, if you start wearing those glasses you may suddenly find yourself remarking how that women's shoes don't go with her outfit, or the stitching on his jacket is clumsy, or that the lines on the new Mazda give you an angular, cramped impression.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If you want an affordable solution, purchase a ready-made template for a CMS.
:)
You could then always hire someone to tweak it according to your wishes.
This leads to the following:
- Quick implementation time;
- Low costs;
- Someone non-technical can update the content so you don't have to do it.
As a technical person, I know I will never burn my fingers again on designing a website myself! Being good at PHP etc. is one thing, but designing a site or template that actually looks right is something completely different. It requires a skill that you either do, or do not have. In my experience, most technical people don't have them.
Hi, I work as a graphic designer and I can tell you making a really good UI design is tough. Just try to keep it as simple as possible and make sure that absolutely everything on your page is there for a purpose.
I would go with the "pay a graphic design student to do it" route if you can (talk to the teachers at your local school. A lot of students will do this kind of work for free to help them complete course work.)
If you do it yourself this book might help. "Homepage Usability 50 websites deconstructed" by Jakob Neilsen & Marie Tahir (ISBN: 0-7357-1102-x) It is a bit dated but goes into detail about how successful websites breakdown things like screen real estate and use of effective graphics.
Hope this helps a bit.
The CSS Zen Garden is a great place to get some ideas. No book will teach you creativity, you can learn some general rules or tips and tricks but good design ultimately comes down to experience. The best advice, in my opinion, is to keep it simple and clean. Most visitors will appreciate a clean, easy to navigate site more than fancy flash graphics or a Photoshop jungle.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
...and frankly, designing can be cool with the patience to try it, but in your case I expect that'll be at the expensive of literally everything else. Suggest either very very basic but clean designs that you can do quickly or outsource it to someone else.
Places like http://www.getacoder.com/ are good for outsourcing one-off projects, even for design. If design becomes a constant requirement, get someone full time.
That's the way forward.
throw new NoSignatureException();
www.templatemonster.com
In the spirit of teaching a man to fish rather than handing him a fish, let me recommend that you check out design patterns and page templates. Here are some *great* resources:
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/
http://www.welie.com/patterns/
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/salaakso/patterns/
http://ui-patterns.com/docs/pages/about
This will give you the basics on what needs to go on the page (interaction and information design). If you then skin these items with color palettes that are pleasing to you, you're pretty much good to go. Here are a couple of color palette resources:
http://redalt.com/Tools/I+Like+Your+Colors
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/index.php (this one is particularly interesting to me in theory - I have not used it, but it seems promising)
Decent templates (including some flash, all the graphics, layout and sample menus) can be had for less than $100. Sometimes WAY less.
Just make sure the people who you need to please get a chance to help pick it out.
Then, add your ADA and whatnot BEFORE you start adding content.
If it's a small business, you don't need SQL and PHP (those just make it easier for security problems to creep in) just a set of flat HTML files and a plain text editor is all you need.
I have been down the same road you are on before, and it is much better and easier if you confine the project to what it really NEEDS to be, not what you think you can build.
I'm in the same boat, I administer the family business website (now #1 in sales in USA for their product). As a SW developer I can program, but graphics and design, not so good. Either way, just keep trying. Approx every 2 years I'll refresh the site's graphics and design. Photoshop will be your friend. I don't think any books will really help, you need to try some trial/error. Also, look at other sites to get ideas, nothing wrong with tweaking an existing site that you like. You'll get better and learn on the way; even build your own portfolio. Or, you can hire out... but that's hard when you are a DIY'er
AListApart.com is my fav. It's code, it's style, it has explanations and step by step examples. I really enjoy reading that site. It focuses on making compliant code and code that works with the not so compliant browsers that people actually use, all at the same time.
Do yourself a favour; find a template you like, make sure its got the appropriate license and use that. It will save you a lot of time and effort. You sound like you have enough on already!
Check out the first entries:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=open+source+web+design&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Remember to check the licensing.
Copying someone's site design is bad policy in general.
I think the many people who either give the advice to copy or copy another site themselves risk ending up on this site:
http://pirated-sites.com/
I graduated with a BFA and took my share of communication design courses.
I worked hard the past 7 years learning to be a competent developer so I've been on both sides of the boat.
It's just bad to have some douchebag steal the site design it actually took a design degree and years of experience to create.
Geek translation: It's like someone putting GPL code in closed source software.
You 're familiar with the geek outrage when that happens.
Well that's the same outrage that designers feel when you steal a site design.
My missus designs signs and posters. I know far more about the gear and software she's using but give me a blank screen and I haven't a clue what to put on it.
Pay someone who does this for a living. It'll save you a lot of grief.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I've muddled through over the years, mostly by looking at what actual graphic designers have done and trying to learn their techniques. A few things to remember:
* a boring design is better than an ugly one. Don't try too hard.
* learn about negative space, colour theory, and usability. There's generally math behind them that you can learn and use.
* go find some attractive sites, try to figure out 2 or 3 elements that you like, and try to copy them.
* don't be afraid to rip off other sites; generally by the time you're done tweaking, your design won't look anything like the original. (Just don't steal their actual images or code)
* HTML naturally leads to boxy layouts; that's okay! Don't mangle your HTML trying to avoid it; you can de-boxify with CSS and images.
* find an artist friend and get them to critique your design; a few offhand comments from them can save you days!
* most of the neat effects on the web these days are clever images (3-column layouts, reflection effects, rounded corners), and most of the rest are clever CSS.
* you *can* get the same level of quality as a professional designer, it will just take you 100x as long.
* http://www.alistapart.com/
* http://www.csszengarden.com/
That said, you probably don't want to be learning this stuff on the job while your servers catch on fire. It will be better for all involved if your boss hires someone who is already a talented designer; even an amateur designer will probably be faster than you. Design is definitely a time-money tradeoff; professional designers charge a lot because they do good work quickly. If you really want to learn this stuff, you probably don't want to do it under a deadline.
You won't like this answer but if I were you, I'd calculate my income versus the time it would take me to learn and do the design on my own and then hire someone for this budget. You can find great talent on http://www.elance.com/ and elsewhere.
If you insist on rolling your own, I'd start with this book: The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321534042
The open source web design site oswd.org, mentioned earlier, is a really great site to check out. If you use dreamweaver and are willing to learn as you apply a template then check out the project seven (http://www.projectseven.com/) website. Each template cost, but you get a tutorial with them. The tutorials will help you with css, and section 508 compliance.
I was pretty much in the same situation until somebody recommended to me "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" By Jason Beaird http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Beautiful-Web-Design/dp/0975841963/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202658998&sr=8-1 since then I've done several websites and got several contracts from people who've seen those sites. The book assumes you know stuff like HTML and CSS and just covers things like layout, color schemes and graphics.
Blazing Spiders
Hire a marketing intern, and a design intern, and between them they should know everything you need to know to complete a successful corporate site design. There aren't any opportunities for lots of bright graduates that are just sitting around getting data mined.
Its a lot more than simply creating images that look nice, there are legal, user interface, and other important issues that go into a successful design.
I run into this misunderstanding all the time, on both sides (geek and suit).
There is nothing about being a "geek" or knowing HTML, CSS, or javascript that magically grants someone designer chops. It's like expecting the guy who sets type and runs the printing press to be a novelist or journalist, or expecting the chemist who mixes the paint to also be a canvas artist.
This misunderstanding was prevalent back when the web was "new" (circa '94-95), but it's inexcusable today. In any case, it's a lot easier to teach HTML and CSS to a legitimate designer, than design to an HTML jockey.
If the work of a real designer or design firm is simply not in the budget (which is crazy talk, because there are firms online that grind this stuff out now for chump change), than find some CSS book with a CD full of templates that grant license to modify. But please, for the sake of art, sanity, and all that's holy, keep IT out of web design!
Please note: Code is *not* poetry, and HTML is not code...
Hire someone. The results will be better than anything you can do! Plus it will likely be cheaper compared to the amount of time you'll have to put in to get a mediocre result.
Put up an ad in a local design school bulletin board and build a working relationship with a real (aspiring) designer.
I've run into this a few times and it's easy to explain:
In the auto industry there are mechanics, powertrain engineers, and those guys that design bodies and interiors. (No bias from me at all!) You wouldn't want the guy picking paint colors and fabrics for the interiors to design your exhaust manifold; by the same token you don't want the guy who does the casting flow calculations for the engine block figuring out what the front grill should look like. These are not only different professions, but different kinds of professions.
Keep your nose out of the design business, please. If you're a good programmer or admin guy, you don't know much about marketing and have lousy taste. Admitting it is the first step.
Get off my lawn.
Don't even consider trying to design yourself - in addition to rules and standards, there is a 'leap' you have to make to get a good design. If you customise a website with content, templates are cheap as you can use a non-unique one and have a great look for very little money. My personal favourite is Template Monster - It's got great designs, the possibility to buy sites unique if teh customer wants it, and delivered in all sorts of formats (including HTML, layered PSD etc..)
As someone in the creative industry it pisses me off every time I hear a person being called a "creative". If the person you're working with is actually competent - you won't be cringing at large graphics and a crazy layout. You'll be looking at it and thinking, "Wow! That actually looks good and organizes the content in a meaningful way".
I am in a similar position as the poster and have been asked to do a couple of Websites for our various companies. My advice would be to go hit up the local community college or tech school, maybe even high schools, and see if you can get a student to do some pro-bono work for a resume bullet point and perhaps a letter of recommendation. Check with the instructors first, they will know who has the talent and who might be willing to work for free/little. You can also justify it to management by stating they have access to many more robust packages plus you are getting a fresher feel with better tech...etc. etc.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
http://www.unmatchedstyle.com/
http://www.stylegala.com/
http://www.thefwa.com/ http://www.csszengarden.com/
http://www.styletheweb.com/
These are all good directories of good web design you can get 'inspiration' from
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You may find Th e Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird helpful. It's essentially a primer in basic graphic design intended for people exactly like you. Here's the paragraph from the introduction entitled "Who Should Read this Book?":
The table of contents in brief:
The text is reasonably friendly, and has lots of illustrations to demonstrate what the author discusses. It won't turn you into a graphic design guru, but it will probably help you figure out where to start. In general, a good book. My one real criticism is that in his discussion of legitimate sources of images, the author doesn't discuss public domain or the Creative Commons, only doing it yourself, royalty-free (but copyrighted) images, hiring professionals, and obtaining rights-managed images.
Another good book, not specifically about web design but a mainstay of introductory design classes, is The Non-Designer's Design Book. In the second edition, it covered:
Note that I have linked to the third edition, which is scheduled for release later this month and may cover slightly different things. I don't know how much or even if it's been updated.
The same author puts out a book entitled "The Non-Designer's Web Book". I do not think that this book will be as helpful to you. It covers a lot of very basic material about building web sites (some basic HTML, acceptable image formats, and so on), and it sounds like you've already got that part of it.
Hope this helps.
Ease and speed make for the best web sites.
It's a tool. Customers use it to obtain info.
It should be simple, consistent, easy to use, and fast.
How about hiring someone who knows how to properly create a good GUI design, like an experienced designer, or small design firm.
A good designer will not only be able to provide you with the extra visual elegance you are looking for, but should be able to assist you in the three areas that are most important in delivery to the viewer - Design, Usability, and Information Architecture.
Coders often think of design as being an afterthought, and "accessory" to the functionality of the site, but all of the elements are equally important.
Use the analogy of a house:
You are trying to sell or rent a home (get a user to want to use and stay on your website)
And it has the best heating, cooling, efficient economical electricity, good light, and is made of the finest materials - in many ways it is superior to any other house on the block in these regards (this is your good code)
No one is ever going to buy or rent it (visit it) if the doorknobs are 2 feet to high and the light-switches on the ceiling (Usability)
Or if the bathroom has poor ventilation and is situated next to the dining room and living room, and also has a swimming pool in the kitchen. (Info Architecture)
Or if the house has a combination of Grecian columns etched with daisies, windows of all different sizes, mis-matched shingles on the roof, and is painted pink and green. (Design)
A good GUI (and user experience) is the result of working with someone who knows these disciplines, and create a site so the user can appreciate and use the good code and applications "behind the curtain". A good User Interface Designer will also know about 503 compliance, how to make interface run quickly and efficiently.
But just like good code, good design will cost money (however, design usually costs only a fraction of the entire project) - this is definitely one of those "you get what you pay for" scenarios.
You don't have to hire a full-time designer; you can get a good contractor to do this work for you.
The note someone gave about finding a design student is bad advice - yes, they will likely work for cheap, but they will be less likely to know about usability and architecture issues, or have strong experience in these areas.
Get yourself an experienced contractor to do the work.
All too often good coders and good UX people don't appreciate the disciplines that the other group has to offer - but both are vital to the success of any website.
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
The greatest design tool ever invented is: an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper
Bring you own pen or pencil.
Don't worry about the technology, that comes second. Worry about what you want to user experience to be. The message. The structure.
Define the business solution, THEN apply the technology.
Push back a little on your boss. Have him scratch out some rough sketches of what he thinks he wants to see. The problem with artistic endeavors is that everyone is a critic. If you put in the extra effort to try and come up with some nice artwork, only to find your boss doesn't like it, you will become bogged down and eventually burn out. You need your client —your boss —to give you some artistic direction on what he wants. By engaging him like this, he'll be a little more aware of the amount of effort it is going to take you — a confessed non-artist —to "pretty things up".
Someone already beat me to suggesting CSS Zen Garden. That's a very inspirational site for anyone who wants to blend esthetically pleasing with advanced technically functional. Being familiar with HTML, SQL, and PHP, adding CSS to the quiver will open up a new level of creative possibilities. My favorite approach was adding subtle variations depending on the season or holiday —even local changes to the weather. I would have the PHP output a slight variation in the colors of certain elements with inline CSS, depending on certain conditions laid out in the rules table I created in MySQL.
You can do some very effective decorative touches using just CSS and minimal graphics elements. If nothing else, it will certainly increase the speed at which your site loads. Eric Meyers offers some simple (and not so simple) examples of what you can accomplish with just CSS. His Complex Spiral demonstration is one of my favorites and was what really inspired me years ago to learn more about CSS.
Definitely go to different web sites and look at the way they look and use that as inspiration for what you would like to accomplish. But as I stated in the opening, each revision, bring back to your boss and get his input. The more you involve him (her?), the more you are likely to end up with something that he wants, and the less work you will have to do.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
This choice is really up to you on how much time you have to spend on this. The website and book recommendations in the previous comments are great as is the recommendation of using a Content Management System (CMS) such as Joomla!, Drupal, etc. Another book I would recommend is Web Design and Marketing Solutions for Business Websites ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-839-9 and ISBN-10: 1-59059-839-3. This is a great book which talks about what needs to be in a business website, how to market it, 508 compliance, using CMS software and templates, and many other topics. BTW, don't buy the hype of "IT can't do graphics design and vice versa" as it is usually not true. However, these are not skills you can do well overnight. Just like any other profession, it takes time to get good then great at it.
My end analysis would be to get a good CMS (most are 508 and standards compliant and allow the user to manage their own content and most of the good ones are free) with a good template (which you may or may not have to pay for as a lot of the free templates out there are very nice) or hire out the redesign (because that sounds like what your boss is asking for) to a web design company (keeping in mind that not all DESIGN companies are WEB DESIGN companies although more and more are coming around every day).
Hope this helps.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
[start troll]
When in the blue fuck did Slashdot become "I have some inane gripe where the answer is obvious and I want to try to turn nerds into trolls?" This article, the fuckin "Amazon ripped me off eventhough I have no proof and am out no money or time", "Can I do something with all this spare hard drive space", or the "Here, download this 15 gig bit-torrent of bullshit that someone clicked a radio button on MySpace to hide instead of being smart and just hiding" bullshit... it's nuts.
I understand there are some basic themes here - RIAA sucks, Microsoft sucks, paying for stuff sucks, Bush sucks, Americans suck, Futurama is cool (but I won't buy anything to support it), Apple is imo (but still somehow irresistable), Linus isn't down for the fight anymore, etc... - but if this is a new trend and Slashdot is gonna turn into fuckin Dear Abby then gawd help us.
[end troll]
This was actually th book I was going to recommend. Like everyone else here I suggest hiring a graphic designer/usability expert/marketing person - but if you understand the basics of this book, it will at least help you thin the herd when hiring for look/feel.
http://www.coderoshi.com/
Okay... who let in the PHB?
Of course I agree, I'm a graphic designer! But, I think that the larger point is that perhaps a lot of sites don't need an incredible amount of design. Look at something Like 37 Signals, or even the Barack Obama site with respect to typography and not the graphics per se.
MAybe what you need is a set of solutions that work, and a range of graphics that can fit the designs. As with the Mezza Blue site which others are touting, a lot of the detail work is what counts. Pay somebody to come up with an acceptable range, and if people want more distinction, let them know the costs.
The hardest part about performing work for smaller clients, is the unprofessionalism, and the desire to get everything done for as close to nothing as possible. Running a business, which I do as well, requires that you improve your work, professionalism, and clients so that you can efficiently make more money. As a designer, in my mind this requires understanding when a project deserves something other than standard solutions. A surprising amount of work is very simple. But as with everything simplicity is the hardest task of all!
Remember when web designers actually made money?
Zen garden is good blog design. Some things transfer out but add ie support to your site and things dont always look so good in from the zen garden - that was my observation of two years ago of zen.
Anyone interested in presenting information on the web would benefit from picking up two classics by Ed Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information.
I've seen plenty of designers that were very competent in graphic design for print not be able to design a web site. UI design is something you learn over a series of years and not something you learn over night. On the flip side, I've seen very talented developers never master the art of user interface. They just lack the gene. Either you have the gift or you don't. You could go out and get a template, which is fine, but your site will look like a templated site. If you want to save yourself a lot of trouble, hire someone that knows what they are doing, and make sure they are a web designer and not a graphic designer.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Open source web designs like http://www.oswd.org/ will allow you to build your site for "free" or at least give you usable contribution to work from.
If design is something that interests you and that you want to add to your bucket of skills, then get started. Fortunately, learning design is like learning your first programming language; once you learn that first language, the skills and techniques you learn can be transferred and implemented in many other languages. Good design skills and techniques can be applied to many many many other areas besides web sites. Gotta make a GUI for that crucial command line app? Why not do it using good design skills so that it makes sense to you - oh, and to the other poor saps that have to come along and inherit it after you move on. How you furnish your office, your home, what clothes you wear, even the meals you make - these things all have aspects of design in them.
As the Man With Many Hats at my small company, the boss asked me to do this too. In my case, my boss had a general idea what he wanted to do -- 'spruce up the site' -- but didn't really have any idea what that meant. The first thing I did was sit down and talk about it with him. I needed to figure out what his overall goals for the site were (keep the same content, just make the design prettier, make it easier to more frequently update, etc) before recommending anything. I really can't overemphasize how important it is to communicate. Hopefully along the way you can impart some of your knowledge about what the (re)design would entail - in non-technical, broad terms, of course.
This information will come in handy whether you end up doing it in-house or getting a pro to do it. Once you know what has to be done, you can give your boss the scoop. If he's a good businessman, he'll listen.
"Hey, Boss, it sounds like the goals you established will require a large investment in man hours. I'd be happy to do it. However, it sounds like it might make be more efficient to have the design done professionally so that we can be sure the goals are met."
But be sure to tell him that in order to get in touch with the much weaker hippie artistic side of your brain, you're going to need some extra supplies.
1) Smoke a few bowls.2) Litter the corporate site with <blink> tags.
3) ??????
4) PROFIT!
he cannot go wrong by reading and trying the CSS Zen Garden examples..google for the website url..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Starbucks has ARTISTS and DESIGNERS as far as THEY are concerned. The ARTISTS-who do not write code at all, but create the visual layout for Starbuck's music page. Then, they hand off their work to two DESIGNERS who translate the ideas of the ARTISTS into Actionscript 3 code. The DESIGNERS work with the ARTISTS to make sure the initial vision of what the ARTISTS are looking for remains as close to their original ideas as possible. Then, for the "heavy lifting" (databases), one dedicated programmer handles all back end logic.
If you don't like Starbuck's terms, I'd suggest you take it up with them up in Seattle, where these guys work. They consider their "senior web developers" as DESIGNERS and the web developers refer to themselves as designers and make a clear distinction between how the roles are split.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
Then poetry cannot exist at all! Is the following example not a beautiful and elegant usage of language?
What are you talking about? The site shows how keeping the same HTML and just varying the CSS can produce vastly different designs. This is applicable to any site, not just blogs. If you see something you like, look at the CSS and see how that sort of things is achieved.
I really don't understand why you think this is just applicable to blogs.
I've found the worst about IT for small business is web development. It ends up being the most frustrating, unproductive thing. First of all, I always end up with business owners who have too many opinions. They don't care about the rest of IT as long as it works. But they care a lot whether the footer on the homepage has a 2px border or a 1px border. That kind of micromanagement gets demoralizing fast.
And the same business owner who says they want better website design, really needs better website content first. Design is fun with a lot of content available. With no content or pictures, design is almost impossible.
And then I end up with graphic designers who tell us "sure, I can do HTML/CSS" but really can't. They are competent users of Photoshop and Dreamweaver, and can create a decent mockup, but then deliver webpages containing lousy markup, with text replaced by images that's basically invisible to search engines. (I guess if they understood HTML better, they'd call themselves web developers not designers.) A geek can use that as a starting point and create well-formed markup, but that's not usually what's planned.
So now what I do is tell small business owners to just find another random website they like, and then import that template, and customize it from there.
Before you do that, ask your boss to give examples of websites that have elements of design s/he is thinking of. "Punched-up" is WAY too open to interpretation. For all you know your boss could have seen one website that has some 'really cool' Flash / mash-up thing, and thinks that what YOUR website needs.
I'm one of the fortunate rare few that is good at both, programming *and* design. And I can asure you that either - when done professionally - is extremely hard work until you get a routine.
Since you are the Geek type that even *admits* he's bad at designing and you've got a full time job already doing all the stuff you mentioned, let me give you one advice for this particular situation you've just described: Stear clear of any design work what-so-ever. Don't even try to do it - you most certainly *will* fail miserably. You've basically got two options: Get a professional (!!!) designer to pimp your site (Any one of these will do just fine: http://www.csszengarden.com/ ) or get yourself a template *or* a web-professional who's got a template subscription with a good template foundry.
Don't get me wrong: Learning good webdesign is possible for anyone. But you will have to learn two things: Design *and* Webdesign. The former being what programmers often neglect as simply "drawing cute little colorfull mockups and layouts in Photoshop" (way harder that many imagine) and the latter transferring said mockups into compliant CSS based web document frames and scaffolds while maintaing the overall look and feel on various OSes and browsers. I'd say both together take about 800 hrs. to learn for somebody who is proficient in operating computers and has a ood suply of O'reilly's at hand, but hasn't done any of those thouroughly. You can start now, but I wouldn't expect to get up to speed before a year has passed and you've had you designs scrutinized a few times by the people at cssbeauty or cssvault. So once again: Hand the design stuff over to someone else or buy a template. Then integrating that into a functional website and optimised pageflow is work enough for one guy.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Getting a designer to consult on your site is important, but you will also need to effectively communicate with each other. If you want to start learning about design, I'd add some of the sites from the deck to your rss reader. I find A List Apart provides a good mix of posts about both front-end and back-end design. Typography is also important, so I'd subscribe to some of the foundry blogs, or typography blogs. After reading these for a while you'll gain an understanding of how designers approach problems.
Colors come with a lot of meanings we geeks aren't wired to grasp. It's why corporate websites all look alike. There is a sort of detente with color meanings among the corps. Basically, you're blue and white or red and white, and some shades of gray and a few spot colors tossed in for good measure. Companies want to avoid conveying meanings.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I'm pretty much like you, but I do have great Photoshop skills. The problem is, I cant design graphics. I can make them if I start with someone else's design. That why I was thrilled to find sites like BoxedArt (http://www.boxedart.com/) where you can download pre-made PSD files (which means you can edit them). Change the colors to your company colors and youre done. They even sell distinct designs that only 1 person can buy, but obviously you pay more for those layouts.
This question seems to go around on
This is a very easy read but packed full of solid advice, real world examples, and common geek-traps to avoid. It has helped me a great deal.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
The CSS Zen Garden is a great place to get some ideas.
I respectfully disagree. CSS Zen Garden is a fascinating showcase of what is possible, but it's perhaps also a perfect example of "just because we can do something, that doesn't mean we should do it". The person asking this question is talking about a small business web site, not a personal blog-for-fun. Many of the tricks used in CSS Zen Garden entries, clever and attractive as they may be, are exactly the sort of thing you don't want in a usable, accessible, search-engine-friendly web site for a professional organisation.
You can't just learn good design overnight, and good taste certainly plays its part in producing an effective web site. However, there are some big ways to go wrong, and if you can just avoid those then you'll probably already have a better web site than a lot of your competitors. If the asker wants to learn a bit about graphic design, the good news is there are plenty of web sites that do teach the basic principles.
If you like to browse the web and find your own ideas and patterns, you could start by searching for some common topics like:
There's no one authoritative set, but you'll find the same themes come up time and again. Most of these will hopefully seem like they're just common sense once you've read them, too, though of course you might not have thought of them until they were pointed out.
If you prefer a more structured approach, you'll probably do fine just searching for "graphic design principles", reading a few of the all-in-one tutorials, and then following some links for more detailed information on the key topics you find mentioned repeatedly.
I would recommend looking up some basic material on usability as well. The prettiest design in the world isn't going to help visitors to find the information they want and/or to make purchases if your information architecture and site navigation are poor. I'd also suggest reading up on the basics of search engine optimisation, because prettifying your site in a way that makes it harder for search engines to scan will cost you presumably valuable page hits. These sorts of issues are why CSS Zen Garden is exactly the wrong place to look for inspiration if you're trying to make an effective web site, even though it's a great place to look if you just want to make a pretty web site.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Requirement: It's also important that it conform to ADA accessibility guidelines. In particular, I'm looking for books or tutorial websites that teach the basics of good graphic design -- how to make it more appealing without losing the ability to communicate effectively.
The http://www.gc.ca/Government of Canada (GoC) has developed a comprehensive set of http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/index-eng.aspguidelines for its web sites which might be of interest to you in light of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
As for graphic content you are best served by hiring a professional with experience communicating in a visual, non-text, medium.
Good sources for design by example:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/
how to present quantitative information and get to the essence: less is more.
http://www.garrreynolds.com/
many examples on messages and negative space
http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/
intelligent checklists of what to do and stunningly great what not to do examples. Excellent walk through for "the boss" who might really, really, want to have that musical gif with the dog playing the banjo on the first page along side the waving flag/support our troops light show...
Test: Consider too how customers, et.al.,will access the site.
Make the dog food, eat the dog food. If the users are coming through a network jinking like a moth in flight from a bat, that big ass wonderful "thing" may well and truly blow chunks. Demo on the LAN, or on the desktop: bad thing. What's the implementation environment?
If users are urban with high capacity networks, fatter images etc. can be less of a problem. But if you're trying to reach, say, people "on the road" or in dial up land, test with their environments. I recall one rule of thumb that suggested that 4 seconds is about the design budget for the first page to show up.
In turn, consider also testing with at least a couple of current and backlevel browsers to catch major pains.
Go for basic function/message first. Avoid the scripting etc. until the site is stabilized and (most)people smile.
Is it to support the operations of your business as well as communicate to your customers and partners? The ops/innards pieces, to me at least, are very different in terms of look, function, and feel. Separate these requirements from the messaging; creeping functionality kills.
Who Is The Decider?
Who is writing content? Who is editing content?
Frame up a few questions such as "who should we look like vis a vis competition, which customers and prospects are of interest, what's our brand, etc." If you get a glazed look go for the neat gif mailboxes and spinning blinkenlights and declare a victory. If the idea of integrated messaging and corporate (organizational) image are not big in the culture, well shucks, I'd go for beige on beige.
Verizon: Latin for "poor rural service".
While I agree with some of the other posters when they tell you to hire a professional I would also like to recommend this book. Unlike many books which show you how to be oh so trendy the focus here is how to maximise usability, readability etx. through the application of fundamental principles.
... you need a web design geek.
A graphic designer knows all about fonts and colour and layout, and could design you a beautiful logo, or ad, or book layout. But they won't know about usability, accessibility, browser independence, standards compliance, performance. This is how people end up with sites where every page is an image (or worse, a chopped up image, reassembled in a table).
A typical IT geek knows about code and protocols, probably knows a well designed web site when he sees one, but often doesn't have the inclination to design something new and visually beautiful. I used to be pretty good at art and design at school, but now I class myself in this group -- if I pick two colours for a page, they'll either look hideous together, or conventional and dull.
WHEREAS - a Web design geek doesn't necessarily understand the subtleties of protocols, nor necessarily have the best programming skills. But they'll know HTML and CSS inside out, and they'll have a passion for all those important webby things the graphic designer would neglect. They'll be full of attractive layout ideas, but will stay within the bounds of what CSS can do efficiently.
You can still be involved. If there's dynamic content, you pick the CMS, you code up any new logic that's needed (learned RoR yet? Now's an opportunity!). Work with your Web design geek to agree on div classes they can write their CSS around.
There is nothing about being a "geek" or knowing HTML, CSS, or javascript that magically grants someone designer chops.
And there's one other *extremely important* fact that I've learned: there's nothing that being a graphic designer learns that magically grants them webpage design chops.
If the web was run by graphics designers, all the pages would be extremely pretty. Most would be stored as individual flash files, but some of the less important text would just be as represented as images. No text would actually be stored as text, and each page would contain roughly a sentence or two worth of actual text. To find anything meaningful would require somewhere in the neighborhood of eight clicks.
In other words, they can make the web fluffy. Today, the place of the graphic artist is starting to be more and more just devoted to logos, banners, and advertisements - like they were before the web (mostly because the web used to be just those things for a lot of companies, and is now becoming a lot more than that). The usability people are taking up the task of writing pages, and those people are very much geeks. They're the ones who make new kinds of widgets that work the way that they do for desktop apps - with things like autocomplete, AJAX, unified designs, usage of CSS, etc, standard layout and standard widget usage. These are pretty much always two different groups. Usability people fight to make things look and work naturally, while graphic artists fight to make their pages stand out and work different from everyone else's. So you aren't likely to be both.
So if I were in your position (and I actually am in my company), I'd focus on cognitive science usability studies and take my ideas of how to make things nicer from that. People who actually try to get information out of your site will appreciate it...whereas they mostly won't care much what it looks like for more than the first three seconds or so (for most companies, anyway. If you happen to sell something that's main feature is it's prettiness, then you might consider making a pretty site more important than one that you can find out about your business from).
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Ultimately, good design is about communication. Webpages communicate a message to the end-user, and provide 'links' to more detailed information related to that message. In order to communicate effectively, you must put yourself in the role of the end-user and anticipate their expectations. In today's high-bandwidth society, end-users expect to recieve the information they are looking for clearly and with as few steps as possible. That's why the second rennaissance of web design (Web 2.0) has been largely about simplicity. Some common elements of Web 2.0 design include: navigation that is shallow & promintently laid out, clean & streamlined graphics (rounded corners, gradients, glass textures), top-level site search, and bold & clear headers.
Back to my point about communication, the role of graphics on a webpage has changed from being merely decorative to playing an essential part in the navigation. You should be able to glance at a webpage and break down a complete heirarchy of importance without reading any of the text. The reason for this is that your end-users will not take the time to read text, they will look at what catches their eye and expect that piece to provide the information they want. The longer it takes to receive and understand the information they are looking for, the less likely they will be to visit your site in the future.
As a general resource for multi-role web professionals like you and I, I highly recommend alistapart.com. It's an online publication authored by well-respected names in the web industry that addresses topics ranging from abstract design and user interactivity, to code solutions, and business strategy. They thoughtfully break down modern challenges facing web professionals and provide clear explainations and solutions.
-Bryan
Surgery can be fatal for the patient but with bad cooking it's not a big deal (jokes aside
But a badly designed website can be bad for business in the longterm because people like to see beautiful things. Just like if the surgeon tried to make a living out of cooking meals would not be good in the longterm.
"I'm a competent graphic designer running a one-man-show for a small business. I do everything involving graphic design in this company; Art direction, magazine ads, flyers, mailers, desktop publishing, managing photographers and models, Point of Sale signage, inventory stickers, and the company website. My boss has asked me to 'punch up' the in-house accounting system and inventory management software, and to integrate it with the web site. I also need to get up to speed on building a seure web server on which to host this thing. Although I can hold my own with HTML, PHP and a couple SQL products, software development isn't one of my strengths.
I'm looking for some advice on how to improve the software without totally screwing the thing up. It's also important that it conform to GAAP and commonly accepted inventory management guidelines, and that it be secure. In particular, I'm looking for books or tutorial websites that teach the basics of good software design & development as well as the ins and outs of accounting and inventory. Also, I would appreciate suggestions for tools to use to make this more efficient (Windows and Linux are both OK)."
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
My first recommendation would be to try Blueprint -- a set of reasonable CSS styles that make building grid-based layouts much easier. It's open source, designed by some great people and actively supported.
If you're looking for full designs, try Open Source Web Designs. There are also other free template sites out there, so search around.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I'd advise extra care if using this approach. Marketing people are not usability experts, and users do NOT want to be sucker-punched with marketing drivel every time they visit your site. You may get their attention the first time with a slick home page, but if the implementation makes it too cumbersome to actually use the site, you can bet they'll probably never come back. It's too easy to go somewhere else.
If already you do html and css and the rest when called to - then all zen garden is css and divs boiling it down. A blog usually displays 10 articles - fast to load. OK so it looks good in FF 2.0, now lets see what it looks like in ie 6 - oh no 'train crash'.
Start adding 'support' for the winbloze ie crap. Check in FF and Opera and you might feel too that blog design is what zen gardens best option. If however you don't accommodate ie (we are considering dropping support for it) then ok no problems. zen garden does showcase css but they do rather look like blog templates and yes wordpress.org is cool but zen garden feels very stereotyped for the the blogger who runs something other than ie.
It's not very hard to start your own company. You should ditch this boss that's taking advantage of you, and start your own company, you have the skills for it!
Just ask your boss to select looks he likes from *other* websites, and then copy and meld the top picks. You don't have to copy exactly, but it can give you a good starting point.
Table-ized A.I.
Add rounded corners, drop shadows, glassy reflections and gradients everywhere - and you're done!
Seriously,
Tons of good gallery sites, visit them. Use Adobe's Kuler. Finally, read this basic book: The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams.
And like someone else said - a boring site is better than an ugly one. So don't try to be a hero.
Check out "The non-designers design book" by Robin Williams (no, not that Robin Williams - a different Robin Williams.) Exactly what it advertises, it gives you a basic working vocabulary for the core principles of graphic design in a geek-friendly, non-fluff manner. For people with procedural rather than intuitive minds, it shows you how to apply rules and algorithms to achieve that elusive "it just looks right" look.
I'm a professional who has worked in this field for a long time. I'm well-known and I've won many, many awards. I know I should be urging you to pay top dollar for an outside agency, but since you may not have the budget--and since I'm posting anonymously--I'll let you in on a secret: It's entirely possible for a non-designer to do effective work.
The keys are to copy what good designers do, and keep your site absolutely as simple as possible.
In particular, if you're a beginner I'd advise:
1. Don't even try to make your site look beautiful. Forget about it. Just make it simple and easy to use--and it will end up good-looking. I realize this piece of advice has an annoying "zen and the art of archery" feel to it, but it's absolutely true. If you want an attractive site, don't even think about attractiveness.
2. Never choose colors yourself. Take them from somewhere else. Does your company have a professionally designed brochure? Great, take them from that. Does your logo have colors? There's your palette. Nothing to work off of? Copy the colors--every hex digit--from a simple site you like.
3. Make your HTML/CSS as short as possible. Brevity in code is a *great* way for a "geek" to end up with a good design. The hallmark of bad design is too many different things jumbled together. If you force yourself to use the absolute bare minimum number of styles etc., you're already ahead of the game.
4. Whenever things (fonts, colors, positions, etc.) are different on a web page, ask yourself: is it *essential* that those things be different? If the answer is no, make them the same. If yes, make them even more different than you first had them.
5. Watch other people use your site. Then fix the problems. Then watch them use it again. Repeat many, many times.
If you follow these rules and are ruthless about simplifying, you'll already be in the top 20% of web sites.
Good luck!
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The Non-designers Design Book (and similar books by Robin Williams on Web Design and Typography).
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101 Things I learned in Architectural School
A bit more on the esoteric side, but might help get you into the right mindset (like 'The Little Schemer' helps you guild the right mindset for functional programming), is "Thinking With Type". Realize that this will take some work. Your biggest struggle will probably be getting people to tell you WHY your initial designs are bad. That means you should seek feedback early, and often (from anybody you can get it from).Just as there are a ton of pseudo hackers (those who say they can program but can't), graphics is not much different. Just like it takes a good programmer to find a good programmer, it takes a good designer to spot a good designer. You are, admittedly, not a good designer, so assume you are degner-blind. Fortunately, you have a workaround in your situation because you are working for a client. Have your client pick out the designer or tell you what designs they like.
You need three sets of bookmarks. The first set should include all of the sites of potential design firms or freelancers you can hire. You probably want somebody local, who can visit your office in person. If they don't have a web site and an online portfolio, DO NOT HIRE THEM. The second list should include all of the pretty big corporate web sites. This could include sun.com, apple.com, microsoft.com... not because of their products, but because we know they spent a lof of money and got their site done by a high profile web publishing firm. The third set of bookmarks should include all of your rival companies in your industry. Your primary goal is to look better than them.
Go through all of these sites with your client/boss, and have them pick out what they like and dislike. At the end, the problem should boil down to you asking your potential web designer "can you create a web site like [insert clients favorite site] and make it do [function requirements here] and include everything that I put [link to all content or current site] for under [budget]".
To make the process easier for the designer, you should have all of the content ready beforehand, and have an extensive list of example sites that represent what you want and don't want.
Also, although this sounds cruel, be harsh when critiquing the design work. It is also wise to send them back to the drawing board once or twice even if you do like their first product. If their first version was better, you can always decide on it later. But it is always good to push your designers to their creative limits, as they will come back with something better more times than not.
Good luck.
1) The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) has little or nothing to do with web accessibility. (It may, pending the results of NFB v Target. But not now.) You need to check out the requirements in Section 508 if you'll be working with/for federal agencies. You need to read up on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), including Joe Clark's criticism of them. I suggest starting with WebAIM and Mark Pilgrim's excellent (though dated) Dive Into Accessibility.
2) Hire a good writer and a good photographer, or an agency which has 'em. Content is king. "Punching up" the design doesn't mean a thing without that foundation.
You're spreading yourself too thin. If you're not a designer, don't try to be one, you have more important things to deal with. Get your boss to hire a design firm - if they don't think it's worth the money, then it certainly isn't worth your time.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
A nice summary on the fusion of (written) editorial content and it's (graphical) presentation, by Jan Victor White.
Recommended.
The flow goes like this:
The only warning is that "punch it up" may translate into a punch-drunk design. By asking polite n pesky questions of the owner/boss you can reduce the horror. The KISS principle may well be your friend...
I hope.
This is progress?
I'm one of them. I'm more of a master of computer science than I am graphic design, but I do both professionally. The designers I've worked with who had the most talent were evenly split male to female, with by far the best being male. Unlike IT, the design world has been pretty well co-ed for a really long time now.
As for the original poster's lament. Totally get someone professional to make mockups for you. It's incredibly risky to get the same person to do the HTML as did the design. Sometimes it can turn out okay (again, I do both), but I'd say 90% of the time you shouldn't even let the designer see the code.
Regarding accessibility, the most important thing is to ALT tag images that add meaning. That last phrase seriously cannot be overstated. Don't add an alt tag to an icon of a globe or something because the alt tags are there for blind people, and they use programs to read the web page to them. So, using a screen reader it'll come out something like "Lorem ipsum dolor sit globe amet" and sound really dumb. Also, if you want the page to be accessible, DON'T USE FLASH. Seriously. Flash is absurdly hard to make accessible. It can be done but not easily.
Sorry only a little bit of that related to the parent post but you know. Better to get it all out in one shot than write a bazillion comments when I'm pressed for time.
In your case I'd suggest getting a graphic designer to give you a simple design framework for your site. Just the basic layout of a couple of main page types then building it yourself using the same framework.
Hiring a professional is cheaper and faster than becoming a professional yourself.
Imagine this problem was the other way around: A graphics person needs to code a web site and build applications. As a programmer, can you seriously recommend any "PHP in 24 hours" or "C++ for dummies" books? Would you refer them to any sites with a ton of code snippets to copy and paste? For fun, sure. But if you need the job done, and done professionally, they would have to hire a programmer, no doubt about it. As a programmer you know how much hard work went into obtaining your skills and it is the same for graphics. And just as programmers have their expensive tools, so do graphic designers. When you hire someone with those tools, you avoid paying for them yourself.
I agree with most of the comments here. One can be taught the techniques of artistic design, but unless you're already artistically inclined, It's going to take some time to get acquainted with the ideas. I'm a small-time web-designer, working mostly in Gimp and Inkscape (open source graphics programs). In contrast, I started out as an artist and got interested in web work; in hindsight, a transition that I'm thankful for. BlatOdea.com is my art gallery, but it also has some info on my web-design work. Feel free to drop me a line.
Why, if not because?
It wasn't a PHB, it was a Marketing Pro®... :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
A great icon set can really punch up a product. Check these out http://www.iconshock.com/.
I've tried to use free ones, but they just don't have the same quality.
I oversee Web development for a living and graphic design is always where the discussion starts when management wants to improve a site. That does not mean that graphic design is the actual problem with the Web site though. I earn my money by asking questions and leading a discussion that gets to the heart of the real problems.
Graphic design is a wash on the information layout of the site. It is important for making your site look professional and easy on the eyes. But it cannot fix any underlying problems with how the site is organized or the information laid out on a page. Have a good discussion/think about what your company does and wants to accomplish with the site, then take a look and see whether the page layout, navigation, etc emphasize the right things. It's amazing how often people want to change the colors and add more pictures, then it turns out that the one thing they want their site to do isn't prominent in the nav or is barely keyworded (a ton of site traffic comes from search engines these days).
Have a look at this:
http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf
Note that graphic design is the top and final step--the polish. If you've built a crappy car (analogy), then no amount of polish is going to make it work. If you're interested in site design, I highly recommend the book by the same name:
http://www.jjg.net/elements/
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There are loads of open source CMS that come with various themes for you to choose, all you need is to add content.
My personal favorite is drupal.
Geek 2:
And they're both absolutely right. I would suggest starting with a free template and modifying the CSS / graphics. That saves you the initial legwork of choosing a design layout, colors, etc. Here are some sites with some really awesome templates and liberal licensing (CC for most I think): Free CSS Templates.org and Open source web design.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Really really think about getting help. If you aren't a graphically designed type of person, this isn't something you simply read about. I know plenty of great coders who can't design. I also know a ton of great designers who can't make a simple website. There are reasons why there are people and firms that handle this. My best idea is if your boss doesn't understand that the website is actually a form of advertising, then go grab a generic template somewhere. However, realize that it is just a template in the end and won't set you apart in the end.
You and the company management should farm out the design to a web designer - they do this ALL the time and it's relatively cheap. Once you get the design from the designer, you slice it up and make it a site. I used to try to design sites myself. I realized when I use a designer, it not only saves time and money but I get a better result in the end.
Actually, according to the OED, "creative" is a noun, with the following senses:
1. The creative faculty; creative work; (Advertising) creative material produced for an advertising campaign, such as the copy, design, or artwork.
2. A creative person, a person whose job involves creative work; (Advertising) a person who carries out creative work on an advertising campaign, esp. a copywriter, art director, or designer.
An example of the second sense dates to 1938.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The flow goes like this:
Otherwise known as "Information Architecture", and critical to effective web design. (Interesting, IAs tend to be the highest paid job title in the web dev field, see here.)
An analogy for the coders: what's worse than trying to code a major piece of software without having fully worked out scope and specs - exactly what problems it needs to solve for the business, and so on.
Ultimately, IA is why all those comments from the tediously omnipresent snide, sneering, critical, back-seat-driving, basement-dwelling slashdot minority saying graphic design is just clutter and flash and fluff and useless distraction, are sadly mistaken. The talented graphic designer uses every tool in the "visual language" toolbox (whitespace, typography, colour, shape, size, etc) to most clearly serve and support the priorities and relationships established by your IA.
Here's one common method:
Obviously it depends on the nature of your business.
Now, some people write off this approach. They've got a point, but I'm wary of falling into sycophantic "OMG! 37signals said it, it must be true!" mode. It works for them, but not everybody has not everybody has their team, their instinct and experience, etc; for many organisations this is unfamiliar territory and therefore the persona exercise is a useful piece of formalism to force them to think of these things. Of course you don't follow it blindly and let yourself temper it with common sense.
As for the technical side, as you're a techie, I ho
For y'all bashers saying that "a geek will never be an artist", here's an example of a man who was both a genius artist and a genius engineer.
Of course, not all of us can get even close to the ability that guy had (in terms of universal talent, I don't think he's ever been topped by anyone in history, before or after him). But Leonardo's biggest advantage is that he did not divide the world into "art" and "science". Nothing was irrelevant for him, or outside of his range of capability. He never said "it's not my job" to anything, and therefore did not shackle himself with prejudice that would restrain his talent.
To the original poster: don't succumb to the "it's not my job" mentality. If you are a one man show, EVERYTHING is your job. And yes, a coder who wants to learn the basics of design will never be as profound as a professional designer, and at first his design WILL look like it came from a 3-year-olds drawing album, but that does NOT mean he shouldn't keep learning. And I'll also say the same thing in the vice versa scenario (a graphical artist who tries to grasp the fundamentals of coding), even if at first his results will look like they came from thedailywtf. Practice makes perfect.
Above all, don't succumb to trolls and haters who in their prejudice divide the whole world into "us" and "them", and vehemently oppose any "cultural interbreeding" between the realms of art and science.
So never say "it's not my job", and let Leonardo be an inspiration to you. The World is only limited by your imagination and willingness to learn, and the particular field of study is much less restrictive than certain people would want you to believe.
I very strongly suggest listening to the Boagworld Podcast. They are from a firm in the UK and they give all kinds of advice for web developers, designers and website owners. They try to keep away from talking too techie which is good to keep in mind when explaining things to technophobes and they always always always talk about accessibility and web standards.
I very strongly suggest listening to the Boagworld Podcast. They are from a firm in the UK and they give all kinds of advice for web developers, designers and website owners. They try to keep away from talking too techie which is good to keep in mind when explaining things to technophobes and they always always always talk about accessibility and web standards. If you dont wanna listen to the podcast atleast read the blog and checkout the forum. http://www.boagworld.com/
Hiring someone is not always an option. The boss might not give you money for it. You might be the boss and have no money since your company is so small you have no profits yet. Or maybe there just isn't anyone to hire in your backwoods little town. There are many reasons why you might have to do the design yourself and the original poster seems to have one.
I'd advise keeping things simple. If you are not a design guru, make your page with as little of it as possible. 98% content, 2% fluff is the best way to go when you are no good at fluff. Go to Home Depot; in the paint section you'll find a selection of free color scheme booklets. Use them. Minimize the number of pictures; use the company logo and as little else as possible. Absolutely no flash. This way you'll probably come up with something not too ugly. The customer comes to the site for the content anyway, and if fluff is all you sell, you don't deserve customers.
Honestly, just look around on freecsstemplates.org and find something you like, and use it. You find some very nice templates there.
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by Donald Norman. If you're not trained as a designer and are being asked to design, this book is the most important thing you can read. In it is nothing about how to make things pretty, and everything about how to make things usable by humans.
Heck, even if you are a designer that was trained in the art of making things pretty but not really the art of making things usable by humans, you need to read this book. There are certainly enough of those in this industry.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
"I will always preview my HTML at /." 200 times.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
With an arts school background (RISD, Pratt, & Parsons) I've been running a one man design studio for over 25 years, have had to continually educate myself to keep up with technology, and have picked up HTML, CSS, Javascript and Flash programming skills along the way. I understand what it's like reaching beyond one's basic discipline, and it can be done. Naturally a programmer is preferred when things get complicated. An eye for design can be innate or developed. The developing path can take a long time.
Someone who has naturally gravitated to the field of IT will most likely have a strong "left-brain", logical leaning that works counter to the development of visual design skills. It is not likely they will be doing the business any great favor by taking complete responsibility in this area. Going the cheapest route is usually one of the surest ways to keep the business small.
Design takes time and good design - which might actually appear very simple - takes longer. Way longer for the inexperienced. I suppose the IT department is a bit slow these days? If not your boss is paying for design whether you do it or not. Probably best to have you keep the machines up while a designer designs.
That said, I see web design as a two part process. First, distill all the various elements until you've found the simplest way to serve the required functionality. You've really only a few acceptable options in terms of location of navigational items etc. Google "Jacob Nielsen" and read up on usability.
For the second stage, collect (and discuss with your boss) screen shots of web sites you like, figure out what is appealing about them. Define a basic design theme, and incorporate some of those ideas gleaned off your screen shots. If your company already has a decent logo and/or professionally developed printed materials use some graphic elements from those. Build a simple palette with a few colors/shades that work well together. Keep everything simple and clean. You don't want a "shotgun blast" of design ideas. Apply styling consistently. Don't jump from round buttons here to rectangular ones there and something else somewhere else. Subtly adapt your theme into several templates so deeper levels are differentiated from your home page. Make some sketches of what you want to accomplish and then figure out how you can create this with CSS and a minimum of HTML.
Most image files are composited and optimized in PhotoShop, but may (in whole or part) have originated in Illustrator or elsewhere.
Final tip: keep your variety of fonts (styles, weights, colors and sizes) to a minimum unless you work for a circus!
After all your efforts, chances are your resulting site will not be "good design", but instead you might pull off a "fair to middling design" - and that should be considered pretty good! If good design was everyone's domain, I'd have been out of business long ago!
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
This obviously is a vast generalization and I'm not trying to start a flame war. But my experience has been that European and Canadian coders are more likely to be capable to dress their code in a simple but elegant design compared to their US counterparts. I'll say that 85% of European and Canadian coders can design while 85% of US coders can not.
Why?
My guess is that there are more art classes in K-12 education than in the US and there is greater respect for art, architecture and historic preservation.
The US coders who can also design are few and far apart and very hard to find. They usually get snapped up right away by the big advertising agencies or the big web design firms that cater to them.
I expect the situation to improve somewhat in the future since kids get exposed to webdesign at a much younger age.
Green is green and yellow is green plus red.
Green, my friend, is not green; green is yellow and blue. I'm not even going to touch "green plus red," though I suspect it might be Christmas.
blog
But I've found a few websites that were really useful when I had to design websites myself, or advertisements.
dafont.com -> Lots of free fonts, many of which you can use for graphics
sxc.hu -> royalty-free photographs
templatemonster.com -> Ideas. Lots of ideas.
your competitor's website -> see what they're doing, and do better.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
Whups (ding) Thank you for playing.
Good marketing people are usability experts. Advertising people aren't. Best not to confuse the two.
The distinction is fairly simple; Advertising people try to sell things by annoying you, marketing people try to sell things that don't annoy you. The latter defines a niche, the former tries to cram you into it. Seriously. Advertising sells, marketing determines what will sell before the advertiser even sees it.
Other than that quibble, you're pretty much on target. Too much shiny on the site is lame, but good artwork is imperative. Remember this is the foyer of your company's premises to a lot of people, and people read "cheap" into a company really quickly on that first impression. I'd no more design the letterhead of a company than I'd let an un-ticketed outsider play with our DC's air conditioning.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Do you also fix the plumbing? Paint the walls? Change your own oil? Quit beiung a cheap ass, HIRE A PROFESSIONAL.
Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit' Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't said shit
hmmm no one mentioned http://www.getafreelancer.com/ but maybe I broke the first law of usenet by mentioning it... Here's one example: http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/Flash-Website-Design/Website-Design.223416.html
Most of my work where we had to worry about this was online annual reports, which MUST be accessible (by law) to anyone who asks for them. That being the "public" in "publicly-traded corporation", but yeah. I remember having to jump through so many hoops on [super large global corporation]'s annual report that I finally broke down and told them that when they find the one blind investor they have, call me, I'll go to his/her house and explain it to them if they want, 'cause that would've been easier.
Also, finally last year I got a chance to speak to a real live blind person about this, and they confirmed pretty much what you just said. Blind people, in general, can't really use the web without assistance. When I asked him about that super-neat braille terminal Whistler uses in Sneakers, he seemed dubious about it at best :(.
You can identify these people as the ones that back up their claims that they know how to design websites by saying they know HTML and Photoshop.
I don't think you can blame them for that. If you look through books on web design most of them will be about coding with graphics added. Very few books go over colours, page layouts, and such.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Some really great solutions are out there for people who don't want or need to design a site from the ground up or take a year of web design classes.
Joomla, Mamba, many others. You don't need to know web design to do these. You do, however need to know how to either:
a) set up a linux LAMP setup or
b) get a hostmonster.com type account with PHP and MySQL access.
Other than that it's really nice. Pretty mature and at least Joomla has lots of 3rd party components, free ware and commercial.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
To generalize a bit, my experience is that the more "high art" a school views itself as, the less useful its students are for applied stuff like graphic design. If they spend all their time reading theoretical treatises and visiting modern-art galleries, they're not learning the same skills that a webdesigner needs. A local institution which I'm familiar (left nameless to protect the guilty), for example, is almost actively opposed to what they see as the "vocationalization" of their field, and sort of goes out of their way to make it a Real Art School For Real Serious Artists. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but their students aren't likely to be good web designers, unless they learned additional skills elsewhere.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Despite being a techy, I've always loved to dabble in website design. Soon after I mastered the basics I realised that no matter how good I got at html, my sites never looked pro. They were well written and often cleverly designed but they lacked adequate graphics. I remember trying to use photoshop and literally not being able to draw a single line. Advanced graphics programs can sometimes seem to be out to make your life hard, and learning a program like photoshop is extremely intimidating for someone who just wants to hack up some images for his or her website.
The solution? Make your own graphics from ground up! I started off making stuff in MS Paint pixel by pixel. With a little knowledge of CSS I learnt to turn an image one pixel wide and several pixels long into a really kickass background. Pretty soon I was making backgrounds worthy of any commercial site.
Next step: navigation menus. The trick to these is to make one button onto which you can then paste whatever text you need. Also consider inverting the colours or playing with the brightness/contrast/hue/saturation to have an onMouseOver button the same size. With just a little attention to detail you can make a really cool navigation menu that works great whether they have javascript on or off.
When you look around at some great sites, the background image and navigation buttons are usually what give the site its "punch". Any other photos, images or whatever just fill in gaps or build around what the background and navigation menu have already created. Get those right and even an otherwise shabby site can look quite cute.
If you see any random graphic online that has some effect you like (such as blending into the bg or some glowing look) open it up in Paint and have a look at how to pixels are coloured to make it look that way, then use that in your images!
There are some great free tools available to make graphic design a breeze. One example is Paint.net. It feels a lot like MS Paint in its down-to-earth simplicity, but the more menus you click the more cool things you'll find you can do. It really is like Paint on protein shakes. If you've ever used Paint, you'll find you can sit down at Paint.net and make really complex graphics very quickly. Very little adjustment is required but you get infinitely more functionality.
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Books won't teach you everything you need to know, but if you want to be a graphic artist (as a hobby) I'll suggest one, for starters:
Ellen Lupton's 'Thinking With Type' is a great intro to graphic design for the non-so-typographically-inclined. The second book I recommend is a sketchbook. You provide the content. This is the way it's done, and the only way real artists learn. If you haven't got the time, then take [virtually] everyone else's advice and hire some talent.
Use something like Microsoft Project to setup a flow chart. Know what you are going to have on your front page, knwo what menus you are going to have, and submenus. Have this designed before you start coding.
Actually what's better than MS Project, and cheaper, is a drawing or sketch pad. Sketch out a Story Board of the layout of each page with labels for links such as with storyboards here.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Chances are, your company already has a company color. But what looks good with that? Without going through color theory classes, you can get some good suggestions at http://www.colorschemer.com/ - they have a tool that lets you pick your base color and see what works well with it. You can also see premade color schemes that other people have done.
Player's Handbook?
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
Get a decent Template
Google "Web Template" then add your tech of choice, php, asp, flash etc
I disagree!
You should rather talk to your clients/end users, see what they like/don't like about the site.
Then you can think about modifying your site.
Keyword=Usability!
As someone who delivers both graphic design and application development services to small-business, I propose you ask your boss just how serious he is about "punching up" the website. If he is serious, get a real designer. There are too many question regarding the design of a site that you probably haven't even thought to ask yet (I noted that there was no mention of your audience in your post, and this is probably the most important aspect of the design process). It will cost you, but if the designer knows what they are doing, and all the planets are in alignment, you should get the results your boss is after (whatever they are, again I see no mention in the post).
If he isn't too serious and just wants it done on a whim, save your $$$ and do as others here have suggested: get some professional off-the-shelf templates and maybe put them into a free CMS like Joomla or Drupal. Don't expect this to increase your customer usage (or do anything to your bottom-line) though as this type of largely superficial action brings no real benefit to your customers.
As an extra tip, if you do try to find a designer, try and find one who has an understanding of, or who practices, actual application development (they do exist). The synergy between the two aspects can reap much better rewards than having 2 seperate people, but make sure it isn't just a coder who knows Photoshop, or just a Photoshop jockey who knows a bit of PHP.
Good luck.
http://www.sitepoint.com/launch/471cbb
The book is called the principles of beautiful web design. What makes this book awesome is that it was made for a programmer, wanting to design a nice looking site. Almost all books are the other way around!
Read and learn away - I know the book helped me a lot, and is a bit of a godly tome for me now.
Wikipedia has some of the best design web pages on the Net. Stick to just two columns, no frames, and make sure the text flows and can be enlarge for we half-blind middle-age farts.
And younglings - there are two things bad for your eyes - reading and watching TV.
You are doing both at the same thing, right NOW!
Remember this is the foyer of your company's premises to a lot of people, and people read "cheap" into a company really quickly on that first impression.
I suppose that's why Google is failing so badly.
Websites are communication tools, not marketing tools. By all means make them look and feel nice (and consistent with your branding), but treat your users with respect. They chose to visit your site, so don't treat them like they're just passing through while waiting for "America's Biggest Celebrity Dancing Loser" to start. You don't need to grab their attention; you've got their attention. Now give them what they came for.
Simple, clear graphics are not that dissimilar from simple, clear scripts. Neither is a quantifiable entity unto itself, and each requires definition to be useful in any form worthy for business.
There are plenty of "designer" businesses needing only a little "scripting" to get them to the next level. And there are plenty of "hacker" businesses who would benefit greatly from just a little "design work".
This has been the case since (as memory serves me) at least 1994 or so. No kidding. Same creative folks have no cgi-bin scripts; same kernel haxors have disgusting looking web sites.
Why is there no barter marketplace for this work? So much entry-level work is left undone simply because there is a gulf between mouse-people and keyboard-people.
Get it together!
Looking at one of your suggested sites, http://www.thefwa.com/ requires flash 7 or higher. If the site lists good design, and you are not suggesting it in itself is good design, your list is somewhat better. However it is a bad sign when you can't view a site's main page because you don't have a proprietary plugin.
Your logic is based on historical job definitions, which is okay but fails to take into account the possibilities borne from merging the Web Developer and Web Designer role. It started a few years ago, but will be the way of the future : people who are able to effectively design a site AND build it. These people have training as designers (no, it's not some God-given talent or an extra chromosome) and who have also trained/learnt professional level HTML, CSS, JS and if they are truly dedicated to their craft, at least some knowledge of server-side development.
Web designers (by the definition you've given) are going to go the way of the dodo. If I understand you correctly, they aren't print designers so don't know how to get something ready for pre-press, and they don't know how to code.
I've been working as graphic designer for the last 10 years, and in that time the number of programmers I've met that could design I can count on my one hand. Forget close-by universities or design schools, they try to train artists not designers. Prepare your content, current navigation structure (and potential future expansion of the site) and corporate stock (60x60px is not suitable) for a designer. Be realistic with your expectations - if you want a site that brings you coffee and gives you a bj in the mornings, be prepared to pay for it.
This is the best book out there to help you making something decent:
"Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug
http://www.amazon.com/Common-Approach-Usability-Circle-Com-Library/dp/0789723107
Get the book by Zeldman... check out his site zeldman.com too.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
excellent resource: http://www.alistapart.com/
For me, the book that did it was
The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams. It provides explanations of the core concepts taught in graphic design courses: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity, with lots of comparative examples before-and-after applying those basic rules. It also has a whole section about how using type fonts effectively.
She also has a "Non-designers web book", but it centers too much in the basics about web technology and has less deepness about the real payoff, the principles of good design.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
You can't learn to design a good website from books, schools or guides, also, nobody can teach you that.
You either have talent or not, to learn wich way it is, you just have to make tons of websites until you will know if you can or can't make them.
Hire a professional to do that. Wont cost that much.
The Non-Designer's Design Book and/or The Non-Designer's Web book by Robin Williams (no, not the manic, hairy comedian) provide sound basics in graphic design, covering concepts such as contrast and contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. These books spell out the foundations of good graphic design without overwhelming you.
I have had clients say: "oh, that's nice but it *has* to have this special msft font, and it has to have this special background . . ." Changing around the themes in drupal, or whatever, can be more difficult than changing things in your own html/css code.
Those are not 'uses' of creative, they are definitions. If you don't believe me, look it up yourself. The headword in the OED is "creative, n."
If you want an actual use, here is the quotation from 1938: "1938 T. DREISER in W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage (new ed.) I. p. v, Life..is our best novelist and our best biographer... Only it does not write them [sc.novels and biographies] except and perforce..through one of its creations or creatives."
A more modern and perfect example of the contested usage is this: "2000 M. JOHNSON Drop iii. 160 Could you send a portfolio over, a client list and such?.. And could you tell me the name of the head creative? Thank you."
I.e., wrong again.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Thanks,
Your boss
Don't make me think
A common sense approach to web usability
Second Edition
Steve Krug
ISBN: 0-321-34475-8
This book (if it has not already been suggested), will help you with layout and page organization. It will also help you because it shows many examples of sites that have good layout design. Start with the fundamentals.
As a 'Createch' (designer who codes/coder who designs) and having personal experience of trying to sort out the visual mess most geeks create when they have a go (in the same way that geeks have to sort out the code mess when designers have a go), I'd definitely suggest using a designer to conjure something up for you.
This needn't be too expensive. If the people who hold the purse strings in your company can give you a small budget to play with (you could justify this by explaining that it's not cost effective for you to be spending hours trying to get this right when you've far more important jobs to be working on), you could try running a competition on sitepoint.com.
You just give them a brief (with examples of current company logo/stationery if you wish) and let the competition run - the winning designer gets the booty and you get a whole raft of ideas (quite often some very good designs) to run with. You can ask them to modify elements of the design and develop ideas further as the comp runs (ie: choices of colours/fonts/graphical styles). Be thorough in your brief though - it's easy for someone to misinterpret what you mean if you're a bit vague.
I know many companies who've benefitted from this system if they're on a tight budget, and many of the designers are just looking for a bit of extra cash on the side to supplement the day job so don't mind giving you an hour or two of their free time for the opportunity.
Hope that helps...
I've been doing essentially the same for years, and early on Macromedia's Dreamweaver was my savior, but I'm migrated away as my skills have got a little better and I rely on CSS more and more. That said if your new to layout and coding it's the only way to go. Further if you are going to get serious you need to get into something like Photoshop (not free), GIMP (OSS), or to a lesser extent but much simpler Paint.NET (free). Otherwise man, find you a Graphics guy and have him do the layout for you. Geeks aren't supposed to be able do everything, no matter what management thinks.
I teach web design and development at a college. A designer must think about the site as a communication tool. There is an idea you are trying to convey. To accomplish this a designer uses the tools of design. Color, typography, imagery, and composition are just to name a few. It is an artform, just like coding. You can accomplish the task more than one way, but which is the most efficient way. The more you do it the easier it is to answer that question. A book I use is by sitepoint, The principles of beautiful Web design by Jason Beaird, and there are many designers out there that have good information to pass along, Andy Clarke, Andy Rutledge, Molly Holzberg. Go look at their blogs. You can also take some courses on the subject. I will not lie, most colleges don't have a grasp on current trends or methods. You can take just design courses and apply it to your profession. The college I teach at has a more up-to-date curriculum, since we use real web professionals in our advisory committee. However this is not the case everywhere. Web design is like graphic design, you just use another medium.
http://webstyleguide.com/index.html
http://programmermeetdesigner.com/
It's perfect for you....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
First of all, it's disingenuous to compare surgery with doing a web page, whether it's one page or an enterprise-level site. The former is taking life into your hands, the latter is a web page.
But perhaps more importantly, I find it reprehensible to suggest that people shouldn't attempt to do these things - even if they're not good at them, even if they suck really badly. If you have the interest, you should pursue it. It is a valid pursuit to look at and learn from other's products (and if you disagree with this, you might as well throw out all art ever). The only thing that is unethical is copying it and claiming it's yours, or benefiting from someone else's work.
I recognize that you object to people out of the box thinking they can do it 'just as well', but lets not be narrow.
[Ego]out
That's what I get for playing with Crayolas.
blog
Although all the comments to get a pro are worthwhile, in the event that's not an option for one reason or another, you can take a good stab at designing a good site. I've had to do this also - I recommend (in addition to other resources mentioned) "The Non-Designer's Design and Type Books" by Robin Williams. It's written for people who need to get a decent design but are not designers. It's been very helpful for me.
Good luck!
Here's a couple books that should help you out.:
Erskin
geek.
You have gotten several replies along the lines of:
"There are rules and conventions...you can learn them." And others with lists of things for you to check, such as the color wheel, rule of thirds, active and passive shapes, and so on.
Keep in mind that graphic design is not an engineering discipline, it is an art. You cannot just learn the rules and then apply them and be successful. Design is not the same as writing code.
Try composing a song, designing a gown, painting a portrait in oils, or writing a short story to see how this works.
If you can't now go out and get a job as a graphic artist then plan on giving it at least six months of full time effort. After that, look back on what you've done to see if it's any good. Chances are that at best you've learned to appreciate and understand good design but you still can't do it.
There is no algorithm to follow to become an artist. Artists do not think linearly. They do not make lists or categorize things. They do not optimize for performance. For an artist, everything is a swirl of possibility, and a success just is. It comes when it comes, or not, and it either comes to you or never will. Talent is not cumulative.
save yourself the headache of rolling your own design. you're not going to learn graphic design on the job. you might have learned certain design aesthetics(i.e. i know what i like), but don't kid yourself that you can be a graphic designer. graphic design is an art craft, just like painting and sculpture, abeit a more controlled art form. let the pro's do their job, and you do yours.
it sounds to me like you have the ability to code it all, if you choose to go that route. however, at some point in time, you might want to open up the content submission process to someone else, like the boss's secretary or an office administrator. use a CMS that is mature and has plenty of extensions and theming capability, like joomla. buy a professionally designed theme from joomlashack or rockettheme. a theme-capable CMS will allow you to refresh the theme on a regular basis.
nuff sed.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
I don't agree with those suggesting that you tell your boss "this is not my job". I've seen a lot of graphic designers make their own web site so I would not be surprised if developers are sometimes capable of doing the design work themselves. But I did hear your comment that "graphic design isn't one of my strengths". I think you have two options.
1. Ask your boss for site within your category that he likes. What do they have that your site doesn't? Get some bids from some independent web designers (include your time for implementation) then take them to your boss and tell him the true cost of making the changes.
2. Your boss probably likes good design but doesn't want to pay for it. Based on what he likes try to find some free templates from some of the resources people have already mentioned (like CSS Zen Garden). Have him pick the free design that works best, "If you don't want to pay for a design look at these free ones. But keep in mind it will take me X hours to implement it." If you have some friends that are good at design then ask them for some free advice as you're implementing the templates, "Do these fonts look right? Is the logo too big?" etc etc...
Specifically, go back ten years, pre-Google. Search engines such as Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, Excite, etc. have been steadily piling more and more bullshit into their search pages -- er, excuse me, INTERNET PORTALS. News, stock quotes, feeble attempts to keep up with What's New! on the web... it's all there on the front page, usually in a sea of frames and/or tables which take 20 seconds to render.
Then Google comes along. Not only does their search absolutely embarrass their competitors', but the search page also loads just about instantly. No front page ads, no attempts to pull your eyes off the prize, no crapping up a perfectly good tool with useless and deleterious ornamentation. A clean search page which performs the best search ever.
At the time of its introduction, Google's spare design screamed anything but "Cheap!" It might have had as much to do with their success, initially, as the tech behind it.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
You should check out http://rockettheme.com/ and http://joomlashack.com/ Joomla templates. Their templates look great and are easy to modify for your purposes. Plus, they're a lot cheaper than hiring a pro or putting out a mediocre design. Joomla is relatively easy to learn and customize.
I'm a professional web/graphic designer, and an amateur (hack, but working on it) photographer.
I'd like to combine the two in a way, photography and web development. What I want do is sale photographs online. A number of other photographers want to create websites, some if only for an online portfolio. When last in college for, computer science, I also took photo classes and talked to a bunch of people majoring in it. So what I was thinking was packaging together open source projects and creating templates whereby I could setup photography websites for other photographers. One problem though is that I don't know much at all about design and page layout.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Prints? Stock licensing? A portfolio for selling further services?
I plan on selling digital files online, and perhaps join one or more microstock websites, and having an online portfolio. One thing some photographers are doing now is shooting for families or groups, say a child playing Little League baseball or skating, then letting people download photos from a website. From what I've read this is popular with weddings. Now as for what I want to shoot, I love outdoor and nature photography as well as cultural scenes. I also would like to try fine art macro photography and astrophotography. The problem I'd have with astrophotography is that I live in a big city and there isn't anyplace within a 100 miles with a good view of the stars and no light pollution. I'm also interested in photojournalism.
FaqlconShould there be a Law?
No, I didn't. In my original post, I quoted definitions of the word "creative" from the OED. You did not and apparently still do not understand this, since you replied that my "uses" were adjectives. A definition is not an attested example of usage. In my second reply, I then cited attested usages of the word.
You sound like you think language is not something that evolves, and can be referenced from a 1938 usage of the word.You sound like you didn't read the rest of my post. I gave two attestations: one from 1938, and one from 2000. This shows that not only is "creative" used as a noun, but also that that usage is not very recent. There were also several other attestations from the years between that I did not cite.
Of course language changes over time. As a student of several languages and someone who knows how to properly read a dictionary, I understand that quite well - and apparently much better than you do.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson