Software Workshop: Design for Web

Today is the first session in Web Design with Simon. We looked at a few websites Simon had saved and judged them in the first 5 seconds for initial user experience.

Olly Moss

Bland
Minimal
Clean












Malika Favre

Bright
Images
Contrast
Minimal
Grid










SF Dok - Langstrasse Zurich

Google maps
Street
German
Clean
Simple

 








Merer Tavern


Vintage
Steps
Boring

 










Noble Design

Clean
Pastel
Vector
Simple

 









Caava Design

Circular
CD
Type
Contrasting











Main questions to inform the design of a website
What is the purpose of the website?
Who is the target audience?
What do the target audience need?

The questions in relation to our current brief
Purpose of our website is to: Get a job, show off, promote yourself.
Target audience of our site: Designers, studios, potential employers.
Needs of the target audience: Check their website, ask them, research the studio.

A website is a combination of text, image and navigation.

Limitations within web design

Font
Web standard fonts are the most widely known, although fonts aren't embedded in websites so the user will only be able to see a font if they already have it installed on their machine. A font family can eradicate this and make the change of font more subtle.

Colour
Restrictions apply, RGB the colour mode to be used, but limited still to the 'Websafe' colours online.

Size
Width and height of the website is restricted by screen size, providing standard web sizes due to the large range of available screen sizes and types.

Resolution (ppi)
72 dpi or pixels per inch is the standard from when screens were first created and the standard has stayed the same since. 72 is outdated and 96 is now the correct pixels per inch for modern day screens, however, designers are reluctant to change. Apples new retina displays are a whopping 227 dpi.

Building a web site

Languages
HTML, or hypertext markup language, is the most common, followed by CSS, or cascading style sheets.

Scamp
Creating thumbnails of the finished design.

Site Map
The pages of the website and how they are linked.

Domains
Every site has a URL, or a uniform resource locator.

FTP
Any time information is passed over the internet, FTP is used, standing for file transfer protocol.

CMS
To enable the client to manage the content on their website, content management system/solution, known as CMS. Facebook is CMS.

WYSIWYG
Dreamweaver is classed as a WYSIWYG which stands for 'what you see is what you get' is a term used for websites that once created in a local folder will be produced the exact same on the internet.