An Exploration of Website Redesigns: Tips and Examples
Website redesigns — whether for your own website or clients — seem like exciting and interesting projects. It’s challenging to create a new design while retaining the site’s existing brand and content. And for most web designers, these types of challenges are motivating.
Colors in Web Design: An Exploration
Creating the perfect color palette for each design project can be a time-consuming task. We might settle on a color scheme, only to change our minds five minutes later.
Sometimes we’ll feel like we’ve found a solid set of colors, but don’t know how to make them work together in the project we’re working on. Sometimes it seems like we don’t have enough colors or too many colors or the wrong combination of colors.
Creating Focal Points in Your Web Design
Web designers don’t have much time to impress website visitors and persuade them to stay on the websites we craft. They want to find things quickly, and we should design sites to aid them do just that. One of the most important ways to do this is with focal points.
A focal point is a prominent section on a web page that we want to guide the user’s attention to. The focal point is the eye-catching centerpiece of the page; it stands out and is distinct than other components.
Creating HTML Emails: An Overview for Web Designers
A lot of the requirements of great HTML emails fly right in the face of what makes great website designs. Until you understand the nuances of HTML email design, it can be a frustrating and fruitless experience. But once you understand and accept that HTML email is a fickle, inconsistent, and bug-prone medium, it’s possible to use it to great effect in marketing both for yourself and your clients.
The Evolution of Internet-Enabled Devices
The Internet is a wondrous thing. It’s an unrivalled source of knowledge for its users, and as web designers and web developers, it keeps many of us from becoming homeless with "Will code for food" signs hanging around our necks!
As the Web matures, the devices that provide access to it have evolved along with it. No longer are we limited to "surfing the ‘net" on a 28.8 kbps dial-up modem. These days, we don’t even require a computer to go online — we have smartphones, tablets, e-book readers like the Kindle, and more.
Smarter Web Designs: Responsive and Customizable
The way we design websites has changed profoundly in recent years. We have more information on how web users interact with user interfaces, we have developed many testing methods for evaluating usability, and we now build sites with great emphasis on user-centered design. In addition, research in the fields of psychology, sociology and usability has enriched our understanding of our site visitors.
Using Your Design Graveyard More Effectively
Much of the work we create for the Web has a limited shelf life. We know and accept that the work we produce will likely disappear from the Web within a few years of a site launch, if it makes it to that stage at all, or will be modified and changed from its original form.
