Website design can simply be defined as the branch of web development that contains many skills and disciplines that are required for the production as maintenance of websites.
There are many disciplines in website design and they include: interface design (also known as authoring. It includes standardized code and proprietary software), search engine optimization, web graphic design, and user experience design.
Most website designers often like to work in teams in order to cover different aspects of the design process. But some web designers prefer to cover all the aspects alone.
Website design is often used to describe the design process that relates to the front-end (client side) design of a website which includes markup.
Brief History About Website Design
In the initial stages of website designing, there was limited element available for website designers to use. However, in recent times, there have been rapid evolutions in the web design world.
Initially, website designers were unable to make use of simple elements like color or graphics, so the earlier versions of web pages were often black plain text that was uploaded on a website.
In that period, there were no elements of web design like color or graphics and even images and photographs were used on web pages in later times. However, in the 1990s, color text and pictures were introduced to the world of website design to be used on web pages.
And in the late 1990s, the web pages now looked more colorful with a different range of colors on them and colorful drawings and images on it.
Why Website Design?
In the last two decades, the popularity of the internet has grown significantly. This is the reason for the increasing demand for website designers to design good and attractive websites to be used on the internet.
And due to the increase in the number of people that want to make the best of their online business, the demand for good and professional website designers that are able to provide out of the world reasoning also increased.
A lot of people started to pay a good amount of money to the website designers to help them to design good and stunning websites that will attract a lot of daily online visitors. During this time, the website designers often use HTML, DHTML and Flash concept to design great and attractive websites.
However, there was some coding as well as picture representation limitations with the table design that created an obstacle for the smooth design of websites.
In recent times, the latest trends that are often used in website development processes by professional and qualified website designers is the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) options which do not require long codes for adding text and graphics or images on the website.
And nowadays, the demand for table design is very low and the CSS concept is the method often used by website designers to produce attractive looking websites that have the correct combination of textual mater and pictorial representations like images and drawings.
What Is Important For Website Designers Now?
In recent years, professional and qualified website designers have decided to give huge importance to the content of the websites being created and only insert graphics or pictures on the website whenever it is required.
Website designers often create layouts for the websites to make them look attractive and good to look at. So, if you ever need the services of a website designer, it is essential that you hire a professional web designer that has a good reputation and knows how to attract visitors to your website with the use of great layouts and make them show interest in your content rather than just the designs on your web pages.
If you are a website designer, it is important that you create a simple but not flashy or boring layout that will not put off the visitors to your website so that he or she does will read the amazing content on your website.
Elements Of Website Design
The concept of website design often uses a lot of the same key visual elements as all the other kinds of design does. The elements of website design include:
1- Layout
This is one of the most elements of web design. This is similar to the way all the other types of design like ads, text, and graphics are arranged. In the web design industry, one of the most important things is to help the viewers find the information they are looking for at a glance. This can often include maintaining consistency, integrity, and balance of the design.
2- Website Colors
Another important element of website design is the color. Website designers are often tasked with choosing the colors which often depends on the purpose of the website and the clientele.
The color of the website can simply be black and white or multicolored to convey the personality of a person or the brand of an organization. This is often done using web safe colors.
3- Graphics
The next element of website design is graphic design and it can often include images, clip art, icons or logos that are capable of improving the design of a website.
In order to make websites more user-friendly, website designers often use graphics by placing them appropriately in a website. These elements work on the color and content of the website and prevent it from getting too slow or congested to load.
4- Fonts
The fonts are often using to improve the design of a website. There are a lot of fonts available for website designers to use to improve the design of a website.
Many web browsers are only capable of reading a select number of fonts commonly known as the “web safe fonts”. So, website designers often work mainly with these select numbers of fonts.
5- Website Content
The two elements of web design and contents often work together to improve the message of the website with the use of visuals and texts. The written text of any website should always be relevant and useful so that the visitors to the website will be able to understand the content of the website.
This will make visitors show more interest in the content of your website. The content used in these websites should be optimized for search engines like Google and be of a reasonable length while including relevant keywords.
Some of the other elements of website design include:
- Multimedia
- Navigation
- Technology
- Compatibility
- Interactive methods