Here are 5 fresh web design tips that you can use (Also useful for graphic designers!)

1. Use Comics-based themes – ‘The Dark Knight, Superman, Spiderman, 300, Tron, you name it, you have it! Film adaptations of comic books have become phenomenally popular, and it is time you used them in your website design as well. Make your website a unique brand comic-book theme, and build on it. The clients would be blown away, especially if are a fan of any of these characters (which includes almost everybody)!
2. Use Faces from the crowd – Use faces from the crowd to depict your web design adventure. Using heads (albeit matching ones) as a base for your website layout can be unnervingly brilliant. For instance (use the eyes as a sneak peek into the mind, i.e. the web design portfolio or ideas you want to showcase.
3. Dynamic, but useful content – Yeah, everyone knows what web design is or what a portfolio is. Don’t define them. Define why they should look at your portfolio instead. Trust us, it works!
4. Give them what they Want AND also what they Need! – Yes, your client may want a website that looks exactly like YouTube, even though they are a publishing house with e-journals to sell. Give them that, but make sure they also have what they need – conversions, sales & profits to be precise!
5. Use Real-Life pictures – The age of stock images is long gone. Use real-life pictures and images. One, they look better. Two, you can weave your own design story around them. And three, they cost you nothing! Value-for-money anyone?!

So, there you go! Enjoy designing for your clients – and calling in a cavalcade of results. All by following these tips, and this Blog!

• Web Designers need to be given a free rein – “The client may be king, but he’s not the art director”! This famed quote from Von R. Glitschka fits exactly right in the web designers’ trade. Do not interrupt if you are the client, and do not indulge if you are the designer. For to many suggestions always spoil the final cut!

• Web design & Graphic design go hand-in-hand – If you were a web designer, you need to at least have an ounce of knowledge on graphic design. For that is where art stems from – and the more you are passionate about the latter, the better you shall prevail in the former.

• Clarity = Creativity – Many designers believe that using every single pixel to flaunt their creative juices is the demand of art. He/she couldn’t have been more wrong! Today, clarity defines creativity, and so does precision and engulfing a gamut of ideas into a short, sweet space.

• Colours Need to be used more judiciously – Coloring your websites which go “BOOM-In-Your-Face!” are not what a tasteful web designer would do. Instead, keep it simple yet sassy. For in restraint, lies class!

• A good graphic designer ≠ A great web designer – Read Fact #2 if you did miss out on it. Now understand that while a great web designer has to be a good graphic designer as well, it doesn’t work vice versa. The encroachment of art is not ideal in the online space, especially if you are trying to kick-start a vociferous marketing campaign, with your web design as its prime weapon.

o    Also, the approximation of pixels, online space, frames and browser-mode differences may be too much for a print or graphic designer to consume and execute with perfection.

How many did you agree with? All?! Aah, then you belong to Soula mate! Check out why!

So what is a good way of doing this?

The first approach is to keep your project files organised. For every project you should only need a maximum of three folders; 1. PSD Files 2. HTML Files 3. Client Info Files. These three files are quite explanatory however I will quickly mention the elements that can be contained within.

1. PSD
Contains client logo’s (within its own folder), client print work (within its own folder) and the project PSD’s.

2. HTML
Contains any html previews and the development site. If you have a project that has both a development and a live version then I would recommend keeping these completely seperate.

3. Client Info File
Contains the project information, client brief and any similar document files that may have been supplied by the client.

When working with Photoshop there are many small factors which will help to keep your work organised. The main element is to name layers. We all know this is a very time consuming job as the designer knows the exact position of every layer and which elements act as the mouse over’s. However, to a new designer the layers palette will appear to be a maze of layers and time will be needed to familiarise themselves with how the project has been developed.

A good idea to adopt is to name the layers in small case and when grouping the layers to name the groups in Uppercase. This difference will help to clearly distinguish the difference between layers and groups.

Group your layers!
It is a good idea to group your layers as again this will have a huge impact on the whole organisation of the PSD. The best way to group the layers is to adopt the ‘build of the website’. For instance, group all elements of the header together. Group all elements of the menu items together. Continue this approach throughout the PSD to other elements such as the content and left or right menu items and the overall organisation of your project will be massively improved.

PNG comes in two types, 8-bit and 24-bit. In a broad sense, these mirror the capabilities of GIF and JPEG, although a typical 24-bit PNG is weightier than the equivalent JPEG. However, PNG does offer something for design purposes that the other two formats don’t: alpha transparency.

The closest traditional web image formats come to transparency is in making specific colours within GIFs transparent. But unless your images are heavily pixellated or have very straight edges, such transparency usually results in a severe case of the jaggies. Also, it’s an all or nothing proposition – you can’t make your transparent colour 50 per cent transparent, for example.

With PNG, these problems vanish. Therefore, you can create elaborate gradients and transparencies in the likes of Illustrator and Photoshop, and export them to the web intact, adding visual clout to your designs.

As with ever new feature to be used for the web, PNG does not work with IE6. There are some CSS hacks available and I would recomend using these, however, depending upon your client and the type of project in hand, simply ignoring IE6 may just be your best option.