graphic design
Every web page is speaking to us at both a conscious and an unconscious level. Good graphic design just gets the right message across. It's an art, a skill and a discipline that I, as a self-critical web designer, possess in an "acceptable" measure. I charge accordingly. That being said, I have often been unimpressed with the work of some graphic design firms who charge more for a logo than I do for a complete website.
Most Masonhost clients expect a package, graphic design being rather taken for granted as "part of the job." It depends upon your own priorities and, of course, your budget but, where a very high standard of graphic design is essential i.e. if your business web site needs "art" as opposed to wallpaper and paint, I prefer to work in tandem with a professional graphic designer to achieve and maintain that standard throughout the site. Obviously the finished quality of the site is reflected in the cost but, as with search engine optimisation, high-quality graphic design represents a high-quality investment.
colour
One of the time-saving tools I use to control the colour scheme of a web site is this javascript-based colour finder. I've added a copy here because it demonstrates the fundamentals of colour on a web page.
The "hex" number, at the bottom of the panel, is all that's needed to reproduce the chosen colour on just about any element such as a page or section background, a border or text.
If you move the sliders, you'll see that the text in this section will change colour. The graduated colours on the horizontal bars indicate, for each slider, the colour that will be achieved if the slider is moved to another position on the bar.
Image Editing
Web sites require a slightly constrained approach to image presentation, the main limiting factor being the download speed of visitors' internet connections. There generally has to be an element of compromise between image quality and the time it will take to download each image (usually measured against 56k dial-up connections). If a page takes too long to load, visitors can be expected to move on to another web site. Images intended for your web site will generally require to be re-sized, converted to an appropriate format (usually jpg or gif) and compressed, to minimize the download time without any visible loss of quality.
Where a large number of images are involved and where image dimensions are constant, images can be batch-processed. In the case of e-commerce web sites where the client generally takes over the business of uploading new images to the site, a user-friendly facility for (fixed dimension) batch-processing will usually be provided.
Layout
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Pretty self-explanatory... Actually, the RGB Colour Finder should be just on top of this text. If you'd like to finish the job, just click on the grey bar at the top (where it says RGB Colour Finder) and drag it over here :-) |
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