From print designer to web designer
Take the leap but don’t get wet…I did.
By Todd Bertsch
There are two schools of web designers.
Graphic designers who mainly
focused on print design their entire career and later entered into
web design. And web designers,
who have always been web designers and have no prior design
background.
Which school is better? Neither.
It doesn’t really matter what school of thought or training
you come from. It’s all about how you adapt and adhere to
certain principals and standards.
I came from the school of print designer turned web designer.
I was fortunate to jump on early (around 95` with Adobe® PageMill),
but I’ve made several mistakes along the way.
One might naturally think that a web designer who has a design
background or education would be a more skilled web designer. This
is definitely not the case. In fact I feel that most graphic designer’s
turned web designers really miss the boat in some crucial areas.
This is the same boat I missed for several years.
Yes, like any medium you must follow a set of guidelines and specifications.
And Yes, we as designers, no matter what school, must strive to
create the most effective design solution for its particular
problem. But in web design, we must strictly adhere to rules. These
rules are the Web standards. Don’t get me wrong, I’m
not advocating that every website should look the same. That’s
where our design intuition comes into play. What I’m saying
is to follow the basic standards that users have come to expect.
I’m not going to design a business card and put the contact
information on the back. That would NOT be normal. People are NOT
use to that. Yes, it would be different. But NOT practical.
However, if you’re designing a site for an ad agency or
for a photographer, musician or creative of sort, there will be
much more freedom to break the rules and standards, as your audience
will be a very small niche and expect these kinds of creative endeavors.
The vast majority of your work will be for the “norm”.
Normal everyday people who are using the internet to find information
about a service or product.
This is the BOAT that I missed for several years.
I was so caught up in “design mode”. I was consumed
with making my sites so different than everyone else’s, that
I was really missing out on what my audience wanted and expected.
Web Standards.
There is a reason why 80-90% of most websites have navigation
panels that are on the left or top of the browser. There are reasons
why the company logo is always in the left hand corner. There are
reasons why most hyperlinks are in blue. There are reasons why
most sites have the same naming conventions like “Contact
Us” or “About Us”. There are reasons why Internet
Explorer browser is 80% or more of the market. Yes, these are basic
rules and I’m sure we all follow these rules. However there
are still many web designers who are missing that boat. These are
the Web Standards. I didn’t create them. And NO, I don’t
necessarily agree with all of them. But they are what they are.
For some reason they just resonated with people. And this is what
people expect. This medium is only about 10 years young. And we
are still learning how people use this medium. But there’s
no denying that people are use to seeing something a certain way
and don’t like change. Don’t make them work to find
what they want. Just give it to them.
It’s simple really. In order to have a successful website
you just need to learn who your audience is, and what they want.
Are they men, women, age 20-54, with little to no internet experience?
What are their tools for viewing your site? Netscape 2.0? I doubt
it. But you never know. Are they mainly PC or MAC? And, what are
they looking for on your site? What do you want them to do when
they get there?
Ok. Well it’s not that simple. There’s a lot to learn.
Many questions to ask. But once you find out these answers…you'll
be well on your way to designing a great looking and functional
website that your users want.
I won’t begin to run down the list of do’s and don’ts
of good web design. That’s for another article. But I will
tell you that once I realized that I must adhere to these standards,
and to not design something just to be different. It made me much
more of a valuable, professional and successful web designer.
If you can bring in the ideals of form and function to the design
of a website, and strictly adhere to the standards of the web,
I think you’ll find that your clients will be happy, because
their customers will be happy. If standards are what they want.
Then give it to them. It’s the fine balance of great design.
Form and function.
Finally.
The two words that were rammed into our head all through design
school, come to fruition! I guess they knew what they we’re
talking about after all.
Print to web.
Take the leap, but don’t miss the boat. •
About the Author | More
by Todd Bertsch
Todd Bertsch received a Bachelors degree in Fine and Applied Arts, with a
concentration in Graphic Design, from the University of Akron. He has
been working for both design firms and his own design consulting firm
bertschdesign for over 10 years. He's also the Editor/Creative
Director
of the popular graphic design resource portal designdump.com.
06/21/05
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