Practices in web design
In today’s Internet standards, doing web design has significantly become more complicated with the changes in viewer tastes for what is considered attractive visuals. Professionals and novices alike are faced with the need to learn newer concepts and formats to incorporate in their designs. And while a web designer’s job is primarily to satisfy the client’s requirements, these customers in turn need to satisfy their own clients and target audiences. Ultimately, the designer must try to understand the demands of the general viewing public online, a public that has generally accepted the Internet as a part of everyday life. It goes without saying that these people now have considerable ideas on what looks good in a web design. Failing to gain this understanding would find the designer potentially looking at a bleak future with no hiring clients to work for. There are many ways to bungle a career in this respect. The following are examples of ill-advised practices in web design that will make a professional career grind to a screeching halt.
Cluttered Designs
Generally speaking, having a lot of creative ideas on how to design a website is good for the project. It is all about having a choice. However, it should be noted that having too much of anything does not usually mean it will be better for the site overall, because stuffing a webpage with too many items than necessary will make for a cluttered design. A cluttered layout will only serve to confuse viewers. As in most anything else, moderation and balance should be practiced when adding ideas to a particular page. Doing otherwise conveys an amateurish look, and readers will not respect, much less recommend, websites that have tacky appearances. Keep design elements to a minimum, and you will find that less is more when it comes to a page layout.
Use of Graphics
With regard to the technical aspects, a website can also exceed what is necessary easily with confusing navigation and visuals that border on the eccentric. Websites are meant to be communicated with through their interface functions, and not merely a static picture show rendered onscreen. Shoddy interfaces, therefore, are a big letdown for viewers. There are cases where the design is too preoccupied with looking good that basic interactive qualities are largely swept to the sidelines. Beefing up the website with graphics that are too large for browsers to handle results in prolonged viewer stay in the transitory page load windows. Some sites experiment with a variety of dynamic content formats to present simple text information, but overlook the fact that doing it might affect the cross-browser compatibility of the website. And to think that such gimmickry is not a guarantee of more website traffic, the tactic plainly looks pointless.
Using Too Much Humor or Irony in the Design
Some professionals in the field of web design take their artistic proclivities to extremes while engaged in a website development project. A layout that is being too clever often soon translate into being plain tacky in the long run. A rule of thumb in the design business is to always put the customer’s needs first before anything else. Do not use a paid design project as a playground for the designer to experiment with outlandish ideas. Professionalism should also be maintained by keeping in mind that the project is the property of the client, not the designer’s. Therefore he or she should avoid using personal ideas, even subtle ones, to displace or override client-stated parameters. There is always the possibility that the customer is smart enough to catch the humor in the proposed design, and this will only make the designer come across as being amateur. Another way of being too clever with the design is to make the site interface very technical that users find navigating with it difficult at best. Though the urge to look smart and impress people is strong, a good professional always puts him or herself in the end user’s shoes and design the website according to those user’s perceived tastes.
A web design project for a paying customer is not an exercise to determine the degree of skill the professional has in accomplishing such task. It is all about creating a website that will address an online need, one that will help the client profit along the way while helping people with solutions. Being a professional sometimes mean having to acquiesce to client demands even if your own good sense dictates otherwise, but with a little skill even this can be worked out to everyone’s advantage. Practice good business sense by aiming to please your paying patrons, and they will appreciate your value as a professional doing a specialized job. Perhaps in due time, these same clients will trust you enough to allow you to take the ball and run with it wherever you like, but until then maintain a professionalism that will reflect on your career and your personality as well.
