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How to Design a Website without a Graphics Designer
I wish I took some more graphics design courses while in school.
Now, how many of you webmasters out there are saying to yourselves the exact same thing? Yet, many of you are the ones who had to take involuntary art classes, dreading every minute of them.
To many people, graphics design does not come easy. That's why larger businesses and corporations hire professional graphics designers to do that work instead of the webmasters or application programmers. If you are not part of a larger corporation, but instead part of a small company or someone creating an entire website by yourself, then you probably will not have the luxury of relying on someone with excellent graphics design skills.
This, unfortunately, is why most websites look, how can I politely say this, less than great. Too many websites splatter huge graphics all over the place, not caring about how they are positioned or how the graphics relate to each other. If webmasters followed a few simple rules, however, then many websites would probably look, though not completely professional, at least a lot better than they are now.
(Disclaimer: No, I am not a professional graphics designer myself [If you couldn't tell, that's quite flattering]. Anyone, though, can use these tips).
1.If you don't have the skills, try finding clip-art instead of drawing something yourself.
There are TONS of photographs and clip-art graphics available for use. You can find hundreds of disks and CDs packed with graphics, or you can venture on the web to services that provide hundreds of thousands of images for use. If you don't have the time or the talent, don't try drawing that complex picture yourself - find something that is already done.
(It goes without saying that you shouldn't steal artwork. Only take artwork that is in the public domain, and credit the originator. Or, purchase graphics or a graphic delivery service and carefully read the license agreements before usage.)
2. Choose your graphics carefully.
Try to use images that directly reflect the message you are trying to convey. Think about the icons on your screen or in your software. The best icons are the ones which do not require a text caption underneath; you just know that clicking on one of those icons performs a specific action. You know that if you click on a printer, you are wanting to print something or at least access printer-related functions. Don't always design your text around the graphics that you have - design or find your graphics around the text that you have.
3. Don't use too many pictures on a page.
With millions of clip-art and photographic images available, it can be very easy to go overboard. There are two great reasons on why you should not use too many graphics on a page, one of the reasons being aesthetic, one being technical.
Aesthetically, too many graphics on a page can make a page look cluttered. A page overdone with graphics can look extremely amateurish unless you know all of the graphics design 'tricks of the trade,' which I'm going to assume you don't or you probably wouldn't be reading this text. Keep to just a few graphics on a page that really are important, and your website will look much cleaner.
Technically, too many graphics on a page can cause your page to take forever when loading. This happens on two levels. First, a large number of graphics means that the webserver must transfer more information to the clients whenever they access the page. Second, with many graphics, the webserver must access each individual graphic whenever it is being accessed. The server has to access the hard drive, read in each graphic, and output each graphic to the clients. For many webservers that can cache information, this second reason may not be a problem, but the first reason is something you should definitely consider since most people are accessing the web with slow modems.
4.Try to 'theme' the graphics on your pages
This can be hard to describe, but think about this for a moment. A well-designed advertisement, magazine cover, or book cover may contain several graphics, but they tend to work well together. Unless it is the intent of the graphics designer, one graphic or graphical element does not usually 'jump out' at the viewer. The graphics may be of the same type (line-art, cartoonish, or photographic), the graphics may contain the same colors, they may be around the same size, etc. Now, when designing your website, see if you can do the same with your choice of graphics. It's true that when you use a lot of clip-art, you may not be able to get images from differing sources to visually 'fit' on a page, so now is a good time to learn a few operations on that graphics editor that you have laying around. Just knowing how to resize images, tint them, or how to use an eraser or brush can make the difference from having your page look like it was done by an amateur to one that looks like it was done by - well, a webmaster that knows some about graphics design.
Remember, the goal is not to achieve perfection, and you can spend hours or days just tinkering with individual graphics. Just try to make your page look acceptable. A few minutes here and there can make all of the difference
If you are interested in acquiring some clip art for your pages, here are two links you can check out for professional quality images.
The MalekTips Software Market contains many clip art and photographic image collections that can be purchased on-line. You can even preview individual professional quality photographs and purchase just those you need. Or, if you need a graphics editor, this is the place to find one.
Click here to visit.
ArtToday.Com is a service that lets you, for a small yearly fee, access their huge collection of over 600,000 clip art images, photographs, and fonts. If you can think of an image, chances are, they have it.
Click here to visit.
Article copyright 1998 Andrew Malek - All Rights Reserved. This article may not be redistributed without permission of Andrew Malek. All trademarks mentioned in this article are owned by their respective companies.
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