Web Design is such a commonly used term these days and is used in several different contexts. It can be defined as the process of designing a web page. Web Design is a multi step process and often requires strong creative and analytical skills to produce good material.

Web Design can be broken into the following concepts, which collectively form the basis of designing a web site:

• Usability Analysis
• Wireframes
• Visuals
• Interactive Elements

Usability Analysis

This is the process of analyzing the user experience on a website. To provide a higher quality of user experience, designers with extensive background in creating successful websites on the Internet are must on the project. During this phase the goals and objectives of the website to be designed, are carefully examined and items on the web page are marked with priorities. This helps in creating an effective layout to draw the user to certain parts of the web page with higher emphasis compared to the other areas of lesser importance. Usability analysis lays the foundation for the design and is followed by wireframes described in the following paragraph.

Wireframes

Wireframes can be visualized as laying tiles on a blank sheet. These individual tiles would contain the various static and dynamic elements of the web page. During this step the viewing area of a web page is divided into blocks of different sizes, with each block containing the basic layout scheme for the items enclosed within those blocks. This process is extremely important and follows the outcome of the usability analysis. Various elements of the page are assigned their respective real estate and design plan creating overall layout of the web page.

Visuals

Each block of the wireframe is polished with appealing visuals during this process. Having a well-defined style guide is very useful before creating the visuals. This helps with keeping consistent color schemes and fonts. Creative skills combined with thorough knowledge of using designing software are essential to complete this step of the process. Several color effects, font variations, shapes etc. are creating during this phase and the design goes through several iterations before it is finalized.

Interactive Elements

Creating interactive elements goes side by side with the visuals but it is important to understand the difference between visuals and interactive elements. Interactive elements are the elements of a web page that make it interactive. A few simple examples would be sliders, pop-ups, forms, drop down menus etc. Designing an interactive element requires a solid understanding of the functional aspect of a web page along with powerful creative skills.

This article provides very basic understanding of the web design process and can serve as a good starting point for beginners interested in becoming a web designer.

The most commonly used software for designing web pages is Adobe Photoshop. Dreamweaver is another very useful software that is used to convert the Photoshop designs into the HTML version of the design.

Web Design Cedar Rapids

Tech CEO

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