Working on Explore Design has connected me with many talented and innovative designers – each with their own area of specialty – and I would like to introduce two of them to you now.  Spencer Saunders & Kirk Clyne are the founders of a small web shop by the name of Communicate New Media.  Their work on the  ED website has won awards from Applied Arts magazine, and has made it one of my favourite sites to visit.  So what better way to learn about what it means to be a web designer than hearing from them?  Over the next few weeks Kirk and Spencer will tell you everything you need to know to make it in the (super fun, but crazy) world of web design.  Take it away guys . . .

Introduction

When you surf the web, do you ever wonder about the behind-the-scenes process of how a site gets developed? Who created the graphics, and how? Who designed the pages? Who wrote the code to make it all work together?

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to try to answer that question (hint: it might have been one person, or it may have been an entire team), along with a few others, like: How is the web design industry structured? How does a typical web project move from concept to completion? And how does a designer stay inspired?

What Does a Web Designer Do All Day?

Web Designers tend to wear a lot of hats

Designing websites isn’t just about knowing how to write HTML, or CSS (or being able to speak fluently in acronyms). Depending on your level of experience, and where you find yourself working, a web designer’s role might encompass a variety of skills that range from the purely conceptual to the nitty-gritty of writing code by hand. Some designers might bring additional skills to the table, too, such as illustration, animation or Flash programming.

In some web design shops, especially the larger agency-style shops, designers might be focused mainly on creating visuals. But in smaller shops, designers might be expected to contribute in a variety of additional ways: producing the graphics for the web, writing HTML and CSS — even answering the phone and chatting with directly with clients over email.

In a future post, we’ll talk about the various types and sizes of companies involved in the web design industry, and how a designer’s job might be defined by where they’re working.

For now, here is an overview of just some of the skills a web designer might need to use on a daily basis:

Graphic design

Graphic design means using layout, color, typography, illustration (and a whole host of related disciplines) to communicate a message. (Or, as some might put it, to solve a problem.)

Graphic designers can be found working a variety of disciplines — such as print design, or packaging design — and they each have to know the possibilities and limitations of their medium. In some ways, graphic design for the web can very limiting (you can’t have crooked text, unless you create it as an image), but it can also offer some unique possibilities (did you ever watch a video in a magazine?).

Web Design (a.k.a graphic design for the web)

A web designer is typically faced with a lot of messages they need to convey, and a lot of problems to solve — even for a single website. A site’s design may need to convey a certain personality (like “trustworthiness” for a bank’s website, or “fun” for a compact car’s website). Or it may need to present a lot of content in a way that doesn’t overwhelm a visitor (think of a newspaper’s website).

But web designers also have to know how to design for the web, which means means being aware of its limitations. For example, there are only a handful of fonts that you can count on users having. Content that sits “below the fold” won’t be seen unless the user scrolls further down the page — but the location of the “fold” varies depending on monitor size.

Knowing who you’re designing for (who your “target audience” is) can help you make a lot of these decisions. For example, are you lucky enough to have an audience that are mostly on big monitors, with high-speed Internet connections and the latest-greatest browser? Or are you designing “for everyone” (a.k.a. my mom) where you have to account for small screens, dial-up connections and out-of-date web browsers?

Web design, by its very nature, also means designing within a series of rectangular boxes. HTML imposes a grid of sorts, and web designers have to know how to work within the grid, or how to work around it; when to exploit it, and when to bury it.

As far as software goes, initial web designs (or “comps”) are usually created in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, although some pen and paper can often come in handy at the very start!.

User Interface Design / Usability

Web designers must have an understanding of usability — of anticipating (and catering to) the needs of a website’s visitors. Some of this relates to graphic design; making sure a button looks clickable, for example. But usability also means making sure your users know where they are at all times (lighting up the current menu item is a common example). It also means making sure that their choices of where to click next are are clearly presented.

Doing all of this well means understanding who your visitors are. Very web-savvy surfers might be able to navigate their way around even the most esoteric and abstract designs, but others (like my mom) should probably have their hand held all the way through, with clearly lit signposts all along.

There’s also a technical side to usability. For example, if you know that your site might be frequented by surfers on dial-up connections, you should probably avoid designing a very graphic-heavy site because the long downloads would literally make your site unusable to your audience. (There’s a reason Google’s homepage is so spartan.)

Finally, on a more subtle level, designing the user experience might also mean intentionally leading your visitor’s eye to a key piece of content, or providing several different “entry points” into the content. On the practical side, this often comes down to balancing the visual impact of various elements in your design to lead the eye this way or that.

There’s a lot more to usability than we’ve touched on here — there are entire firms that specialize in usability, and authors who’ve built a career talking about it — but the average web designer should keep these concepts in mind during the initial design phase.

Enough for Today

Graphic design, web design and user interface design are just three of the skills that web designers bring to work with them everyday. In our next post, we’ll get into the gorey details of day to day production. Stay tuned!