So you want to make a website? Anyone can throw together a simple site using a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web, but that usually results in non-valid code and a very “cheap-looking” website. Taking a design and turning it into raw, standards-compliant code may seem like a daunting task, but after you get through this tutorial, you’ll be using “DIV”s and styling with CSS like you’ve known it your whole life! That’s right, I said DIVs, no tables here (don’t worry if you don’t know what a div is)! This is a massive 4-part tutorial that will teach you the very fundamentals of design and give you the tools you need to make professional, high-caliber websites. It will walk you through conceptualizing the website, designing it, turning it into valid XHTML/CSS and lastly coding it to the blogging software WordPress. We’ll make a web designer out of you yet!
In the previous part of this tutorial, we conceptualized our website, which is a travel blog, by deciding on a color scheme and structure and by brainstorming some ideas. Now it’s time for the fun part, designing! Open up Photoshop and let’s start. (more…)
Before a designer jumps straight into designing, it’s generally good practice to first understand what direction you want to take with your website. What goal is the website trying to achieve? What’s the site’s theme? What will it look like? How will it be structured? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself before you even touch Photoshop. This is what I call the conceptualizing process. Thinking about these questions will help us in our design decisions and give us focus. Otherwise, the design process becomes, more or less, a series of trial and error (although trial and error is still very much a part of designing). (more…)