Designing a site... where to start - Hi Guys, I'm more of a developer myself and when it comes to designing a site I'm left with a

aazad

Hi Guys,

I'm more of a developer myself and when it comes to designing a site I'm left with a blank canvas in photoshop not knowing where to start. I'm looking to design my own portfolio site and am clueless as to where to start.

How do u go about designing sites?

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Michael

I would say do some sketchups away from the computer and do a few different versions on paper before you hit photoshop :)

michaelp

Hi Aazad,

Sometimes I'm faced with this, creators block too. Right now for example I am working on a design that I just started with a blank canvas on.

What you need to do is let your passion sprawl out onto the page. What is it that inspires you? What gets those flairs going. Before you even look at photoshop, try to image something that you'd like to see. In the words of Michelangelo; it's already there. You just had to chip away until you hit flesh!... so to speak :D

Think first, is it a colourful site you want to create, or a dark one?
What shapes come to mind. Sharp flat edges or bubbly sprawling shapes?
What is the site for? Draw inspiration from that. Is it a site for renting movies? -- film reels
Blogging random thoughts? -- thought bubbles
See where I'm going with this?

Hope this helps,
Good Luck
Michael

WelshStew

I start by going through some design galleries and getting a feel for what I like and don't like. Then, taking some screen shots offline, I work with pencil and paper to get a rough sketch of how I want it to look.

Only then do I approach photoshop and start designing.

However, everyones process is different, you just have t go with what is right for your creative juices, whether that be downing 5 espressos and diving straight in or sipping a latte and working on paper for a few hours.

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MinatureCookie

Like everyone else said, really.
Starting off on Photoshop is usually a bad idea, I usually start just thinking of a very basic kind of design in my head, then I try sketching it on paper, seeing how it looks. If it looks good, I mess around with it a bit more on paper, then I go to photoshop and make it digitally.
Never start with Photoshop ;)

Sometimes I make the logo first and see what design fits the logo, rather than vice-versa, but not often.

Hope all that helps

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shalom_m

Content is King!!!

You should design around your content and not make the content fit into the constraints of a design!

Frinkky

While I agree, theres nothing wrong with just experimenting with design - to get the creative juices flowing.

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bonnit

if you are stuck for ideas i would do ssome thorough research on similar companies, browse through them and take note of common features and design elements and i strongly agree - turn the computer off and pull out a pad and pencil

web77

I might be more unconventional. I put a sort of 'working' primer-coat version up when javascript is off. That's easy to accomplish - no script - because there literally is a plugin for Firefox called, NoScript. I use it myself all the time.

And what I see are sites generally designed with everything in the HTML, and CSS. Scripting tends to be used for certain links, forms, maybe Flash video, etc. But the sites mostly don't change when script is turned on. And that doesn't mean they all use TABLE for layout, though many do. The look is generally all in the CSS. Turn that off, and many sites reasonably degrade to bulleted lists, headers, lines and paragraphs.

For myself, as I said, I have basic generally non-descript 'military' colors, basic layout. But turn on Javascript, and it's generally a whole new page, with all sorts of buttons and features and stuff. So, it's a matter of choice and opinion. But as I said, you'll find many sites are designed, I think, with javascript off, and the look is achieved with 'float' and such in CSS.

As for the basic layout. You'll probably want a top banner - though many more visual displays are becoming much wider than tall, suggesting the old Windows layout of sections to right or left for navigation, etc.

You'll probably want contact or FAQ links. You might want another line under that for main areas of the site - though some still use those old drop-down menus. You might want the 'breadcrumb' backing-out line of links, and maybe similar in the browser title bar. To work down into the site, you'll probably want a site map, either popping up in script on any page, or separately as one or a number of linked pages.

If you allow for moving things or setting forms or etc, you might need a preferences window to go to, or which can be popped up in any page. If you are storing preferences, you can use cookies - but people routinely delete browser cookies to play safe. If the preferences are few, it's probably no big deal for them to re-set. But the other alternative is the MySQL that just about every web-hosting service now provides for basic web accounts. Set up login, and save their preferences on your server db - which may be the most common use for those.

Then you might wonder - how much do I script clientside/frontside, how much on the server? PHP can be used with Apache, AND with Microsoft servers. And PHP is very powerful. Certainly something to look at, perhaps before javascript - depending. On the other hand, the latest browsers are implementing fast javascript engines, so that even bad, slow code is going to now run in the blink of an eye. People can read your clientside javascript, even if you try to obscure it. They can't see your PHP scripts (or server side javascript, for that matter). And client javascripts take time to download, at least the first time. So.

You can speed up text, html and script loading in PHP, and in Apache directly, using deflate/etc commands. Firefox has a Firebug extension - and some others - that show you how long various files took to download. So you can check there. But with broadband, really, unless you have some 2MB Google iGoogle script, or some 3MB online mail reader, etc, the only 'bottleneck' will be sound and graphics files. And you can't compress those (assuming they're already mp3, mp4, or jpg, etc).

Generally - again - my preference as with the site design, here, is to go headers, nav-bars, etc, stacked on top of each other, top of screen. But with those wide aspect displays, now, it might be time to consider putting stuff in the left margin. That was the thing in the early web days, particularly when people first began using frames.

aazad

I think I was going about it all wrong. Doing some research first is a good idea and doing some sketches on paper is where I should start.

michaelp - you have given me a lot of good points to think about, cheers.

shalom_m - you make a good point about content. I find myself coming up with a design and then once I get into coding I tend to change stuff because my content doesn't fit or look right or something.

Thanks guys for all your advice and help.

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