Introduction
From ’500 Simple Website Hints, Tips and Techniques’ by Jamie Freeman.
When people hear the word ‘design’ they often think only of visual design; what something looks like. However, visual design is just one part of the web design process. In fact, we find that the visual design element of some of projects usually only accounts for a small percentage of the work.
Not only is it just one small part of the process, but it tends to happen surprisingly late on. Consider a car designer who’s been briefed to come up with a small family car. Even though they know some basics (e.g. it will have four wheels, five seats and an internal combustion engine) they still have a huge number of design considerations before they get to choose what color it will be!
It’s the same with website design. You can probably make some basic assumptions (it will be accessed through some kind of web browser, users will click hyperlinks to navigate etc.) but you have to design every aspect around the aims of the site and the users who will interact with it. In short, web design is not just how it looks but how it works too.
Of course, the lucky car designer occasionally gets asked to think outside the box and come up with a fabulous new concept vehicle. It might have six wheels, or none, fuel cell technology or solar power. Likewise, there might be occasions where you are tasked with designing a ground-breaking online experience which can throw all existing preconceptions to the wind. Good luck with that! Those projects are great fun, but are usually appropriate only for very small target audiences. There is something of a trickle-down effect though, and yesterday’s way-out techniques can become tomorrows web standards.
Many of the hints, tips and techniques in this book have taken me many years to learn. When I first started designing websites back in 1995 we were making it all up as we went along. That’s still true to some extent today, but we now have the experience of all the people who went before us – their failures as well as their successes – to draw upon.
Of course, I’m still learning. This book won’t tell you everything you need to know, but it will hopefully provide some inspiration along with valuable hints, tips and techniques to get you well on the way to becoming a great website designer. Good luck, and in the language of the Internet, :-)
‘500 Simple Website Hints, Tips and Techniques’ is published by RotoVision
