Many people think that the terms ‘design’ and ‘art’ are drastically different from each other. However, this is not a right concept. At the same time, these two terms are not exactly similar. They overlap each other and yet, are different from each other.

In this article, we will first offer a comparative analysis of website designing and art. Thereafter, we will offer few tips that will help web designers to enhance their skills. …

Difference Between Design and Art

As compared to design, art is a broader concept. Art includes everything, even website design. Another difference between art and design is that the latter is more restrained.

Artists possess the freedom to infuse their unique personalities in their creations. Designers, however, are denied of such freedom in most cases. They need to follow a particular pattern to ensure that the design is useful and function. Artists, on the other hand, are free from such restrictions. They are not required to follow any rules. Rather, they are expected to break rules and develop their own styles.

Designers also need to pay attention to the latest market trends. Furthermore, they should ensure that their creations consider preferences of the target audience. Artists, on the other hand, may or may not follow current trends. Additionally, they do not need to consider preferences of any particular audience.

Design and Aesthetics

With any web design company, functional designs, rather than beautiful designs are more popular. This is because of the fact functional designs encourage users to act. This in turn, fulfills the ultimate purpose of a site-that is, increasing conversation rates. Of course, a functional design that is aesthetically pleasing can enhance value of the site even more.

Art, on the other, places utmost importance to aesthetics. Art works do not have any function to fulfill. Rather, they need to be aesthetically appealing.

Expectations from Design

Most users expect designs to convey purposes of the site in a simple way. If the designs fail to highlight goals of the site, they will create a poor impression on visitors.

Many sites, in the quest to incorporate interesting designs, mess up the purposes. This in turn, shatters user expectations.

Separating Art and Design

As stated earlier, web designers usually have to refrain from utilizing creativity in an unrestrained manner. This means that as web designers, we are expected to develop designs that are functional and fulfill user expectations.

Here are few tips that will help you to separate your designs from art works.

• Choose neat and clean web designs. Avoid anything in excessive. For best results, use principles of minimalism and reductionism.
• For creating website designs, you have to pay attention to issues, such as usability, speed of the site, and accessibility. These factors may not always allow you to satisfy your creative urges. However, you can push the boundaries of restrictions with the help of your imagination.

Consider these points to develop useful and creative web designs.

A website can have different audiences. These can include curious visitors, past and prospective customers, and referral partners. Every audience has different requirements and may look for unique things in a site. To create an all-rounded web design, paying attention to needs of various audiences is critical.

You can achieve this by balancing crucial elements of a site. These elements can include content, graphic design, Flash animation, navigation style, coding, and call-to-action statements, etc. Ensuring that these elements complement each other will help you to develop a site that fulfills requirement of various audiences.

1.  Do not opt for an Extreme Strategy

Many website designers believe that implementing excessive elements can spice up a site. In fact, too many elements can make a site complicated. This in turn, can interfere with the desire of a visitor to find an element quickly. For this reason, using selective elements is critical.

We agree that this is a good strategy to simplify the site. However, this does not mean that you should stick to a single element. We discuss more about this topic in the next point.

2.  Avoid Over-emphasizing Requirements of a Particular Audience

If you use a single element and focus on requirements of a particular audience, others may feel deprived. Let us assume that you own a website design company. If you emphasize on including web design samples and avoid incorporating any useful information, it may satisfy your past clients (since they are already aware of your services). However, such a strategy can deprive prospective clients and people who have reached your site via search engines. Since they will not get any information about your company, they will not feel compelled to opt for your services.

In this particular scenario, the ideal strategy would be to include both design samples and relevant information.

3.  Questions you should ask

We discussed the importance of creating a site that considers requirements of various audiences. Now, the question arises, how you can balance these elements?

The best way to maintain a refined balance between different elements is by asking yourself certain questions. Honest answers to these questions will help you to understand how you should balance these elements. We highlight these questions.

• How are people finding your site?

This is the most critical question. Find out how people are coming across your site. Did they find your site via search engines? Did someone refer your site? Did they come to know about you at networking events? Finding out the source through which people came to know about you can offer you information about psychology of the visitors and their different requirements.

• What is their aim?

Every visitor has a different requirement. A past client may want to know whether you can take up a new project. Potential clients may want to acquire information about you. Curious visitors may simply explore your site.

Understanding aims of different audiences is critical. It will help you to create a site that gives equal importance to all audiences.

• What is the goal of your site?

For best results, considering goals of your site is also important. A site may want to attract new clients or acquire the topmost rank in search engines. Alternatively, you may want to connect with people. Understanding aims of your site will help you to fulfill your business goals.

• Is anything contrary in your site?

While designing a website, ensure that you do not put in contradictory elements by mistake. Remember that if contradictory elements exist in your site, it may confuse your visitors. For this reason, make sure that all the elements complement each other.

Considering these 4 questions will allow you to create a site that pays attention to requirement of various audiences.

Various ways of perking up the overall look of a site exist. These can include playing with colors, textures, and background patterns. However, if you want to implement an unconventional strategy, opt for character designs.

Most visitors will agree that character designs brighten up a site. At the same time, the designs lend a unique identity to the site. Character designs can make users feel comfortable and win their hearts with their friendly approach. However, you have to use these character designs in the right manner.

We offer few tips that will help you to incorporate characters in web designs and create a powerful impact.

1. Try to use hand drawn characters

Using hand drawn characters, while designing a website, is a great idea. They add a personal touch to the website, making it appear more friendly and inviting.

Using hand drawn characters in web design can encourage visitors to leave comments and interact with the site regularly. Of course, you need to put in great content as well. Otherwise, readers will not be interested in leaving comments.

2. Opt for a detailed character

Creating a character that highlights purposes of the site is advisable. This will justify presence of the character in the website. If you have a web design company, for example, you can create a cartoon character with brush in hand and make it stand against the image of a blackboard. Write purposes of your site on the blackboard.

This strategy will add a unique quotient to your site. Furthermore, it will leave a memorable impression on the minds of your target audience.

3.  Create a character that your users can relate to

Creating a character that users can relate to, can make them fall in love with it. The reason is that people love characters that possess humane qualities and at the same time, are a little distinct. Of course, the process of drawing such a character may not be easy. You need to make users understand the viewpoint of the characters.

Most people are aware of the fact that as compared to text, images can deliver a message faster. Consider this secret, while designing the character. If you have a burger delivery service, for example, draw a character that is eating a delicious burger. By viewing the character, visitors will able to interpret purposes of your website easily.

4. Using characters in sites with simple designs is a great idea

If you want to pep up a simple website, opt for character design. It can brighten up the site, while retaining its simplicity at the same time.

Using bright colors, while creating the character, can be a great idea. The reason is that it can attract attention of the users. To make sure that visitors notice the character, you can also place it against a contrasting background.

5.  Use them in creative ways

Many people think that the best way to fill up empty spaces of a site is by incorporating ads. Placing ads may be necessary from a commercial point of view. However, if you want to add a personal touch to your site, fill up the white spaces with creative character designs.

Remember that it is not compulsory to put character designs in headers. You can place it at any suitable place to convey your message to the visitors.

The importance of character design lies in the fact that it always makes visitors smile. Combine it with good content and clean web designs and you may end up creating a stunning website.

Regarded mostly as the second best, after Adobe, in graphic design industry, Corel offers a plethora of design tools at competitive rates for web and graphic design. Its new version, PaintShop Pro, sports a streamlined interface, new image editing tools and visible speed improvements. It comes in a regular Pro version which costs $79.99. Users with deep pockets can churn out $99.99 for PaintShop Pro X4 Ultimate Edition which comes with added goodies. As of now, it is available only for Windows OS.

PaintShop Pro X4 does not suffer from interface clutter, which was a drawback of its predecessor. This software offers three modes to users – Edit, Adjust and Manage. Layout keeps changing as a user alters between different modes.

In this version everything feels snappier, be it editing a large image or applying effects to it. Corel has done a nice job of graphics hardware acceleration in this app and it shows. For orations that take up some time, this app offers a progress bar, which is helpful for users. This app even starts up faster than Adobe Photoshop Elements and does not crash under strenuous operations. This is a marked improvement as previous Corel apps were prone to crash under similar settings, making it suitable for any web design company.

When it comes to ease of use and features in image importing, PaintShop Pro X4 cannot really beat Photoshop Elements. It can import images from phones but struggles with SD media cards at times. This app, however, offers impressive photo organizing features. It offers decent image editing features and also offers advanced adjustments like tone curve manipulation and chromatic aberration correction. Version X4 comes with two new features – Clarity and Light Fill. This is ideal for website design professionals who prefer using high quality images in their work.

As far as improving image quality goes, PaintShop Pro X4 does not disappoint users. It lets you add objects like clip art and texts in images. There are various brush effects available in its panel but nothing that you cannot find in similar applications.

Photoshop Elements offers more extensive control as far as Brush sets are concerned. However, it offers some interesting new effects like Photo Blend, vignette effect and Selective Focus. Photomerge Group Shot tool in Photoshop Elements yields effects similar to Photo Blend and offers more tweaking options. Same can be said of its HDR tool.

Corel has woken up to popularity and scope of social media integration in its design apps. PaintShop Pro X4 offers photo publishing to popular social media sites including Facebook directly from its interface. This app also lets you email photos in a straightforward process. Corel, however, lacks any online backup service. There are various image export options in PaintShop Pro X4 and they will fit bills for majority of users.

Web content writing is different from print media writing. The write-up style of a newspaper article will not suit the web audience because online reader psychology is different from that of print media readers. You need to follow some basic rules when you write for websites, blogs, newsletters, etc:

• Pay Attention to Grammar, Words, Ideas – Beginning a sentence with “but” is grammatically incorrect, as is beginning with “and” or “yet”. The beauty of web content however is that it does not follow any hard and fast rules of grammar and readers don’t really mind. However, while liberties can be taken, you should maintain some modicum of sense in what you are writing.

Most of how an idea is conveyed depends on your style, and not grammar. For instance “We deliver and this is not just a guarantee, but promise!” is grammatically correct. But to make your idea more effective in a salescopy, something like: “We Deliver! …And, this is not just a guarantee, but a promise!” has more impact.

Use of “its” instead of “it’s” and vice versa, is a common mistake committed by many content writers. When you write “its”, it means ‘possessing of’. For example, “its color is red“. When you write “it’s”, it is the short form of “it is”. For instance, “it’s going to be a long cricket match.” If you mistakenly put “its” in the place of “it’s”, it’s a grammatically incorrect sentence.

Most of us like to use the word “also” a number of times in a long paragraph, but continuous use of “also” can make your content read poor. For example, “he likes to play cricket, and also basketball, soccer, and is also interested in tennis” could be written as “he likes to play cricket, basketball, soccer, and is also interested in tennis”

• Write Short Sentences in Short Paragraphs – Avoid writing long flowery sentences in a web copy. Whenever you write for a website, you should keep your sentences short and include a single idea in one sentence. Instead of a long sentence and multiple ideas, you can use bullet points to list down and explain a complicated topic.

Web users generally scan sentences and if you write a long sentence combining ideas separated by 2-3 commas, the sentence is tough to scan. If you want to contradict an idea you have presented in the previous sentence, start the next sentence with “however”. Same is applicable for “and” use as well. If you want to continue an idea presented in a preceding sentence, begin the next sentence supporting that idea. There is no need to put an “and” in between.

Of course, if you are writing an online story, you can use long sentences and paragraphs, because you can expect people to actually read your content and not scan through it. So ultimately, it all boils down to what you are writing and to serve what purpose.

Remember, content for subjective websites for marketplace/products/services = short sentences and paragraphs while content for descriptive/informative websites = write as you wish.

• Note Capital Use in Headline/Sub-Headlines – The first letter of each word used in a headline/sub-headline should be in capital. However, you don’t need to write prepositions used in a headline/sub-headline in capitals.

To grab a readers’ attention, you should include a main headline and preferably sub-headlines before each new paragraph to give your readers’ an idea about the points you have discussed in the respective following paragraphs.

• Trust Your Eyes. Not Auto Grammar/Spell-Check – When you revise content for grammar/spelling errors, don’t rely completely on grammar/spell-check softwares. What may seem correct to the software may not be correct in reality. For example, in spelling, “can I have a peace of the cake?” and “can I have a piece of the cake?“, the latter is correct. In grammar, “I am eating break fast” and “I am eating breakfast“, the latter is correct.

• Write to Present Information - Online readers expect comprehensive information and facts from your website/blog and not vague ideas. Sentences like, “some people think that font size can affect website design” is generic. However, when you write “according to a survey, 20% web designers in USA feel that font size can affect web design”, you instantly earn the readers’ trust.

• Think before Using Apostrophe – Apostrophe use in content will depend on your target audience. If you are writing for a corporate website, your readers would probably expect “do not” instead of “don’t” and likewise.

• Avoid Acronyms – Avoid acronym use in content unless specified you will be using acronyms for certain words. For instance, NAAC is the acronym for National Assessment and Accreditation Council. If you want to use NAAC in your content, make sure you mention “National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)” to help readers understand what NAAC stands for the next time it appears in content.

• Don’t Change Your Approach - If you start writing an article in first person; don’t switch to third person midway. For example: “Your graphic design should impress their viewers“. Stick to “Your graphic design should impress your viewers“

• Use Hyperlinks - Use hyperlinks to offer your readers ease of navigation. If you run a web design company, hyperlink the word “website design” in the “about us” page content to the “website design services” page. For example: “We are a web design company offering website design services“

• Avoid Literary Terms – Web users seldom have the time to decipher fashionable or literary meanings. You should avoid similes and metaphors in web content and use simple, direct sentences. For example, avoid metaphors: “his Nile-like eyes looked at me lovingly” or similes: “his eyes were like Nile itself, so blue“. KISS it to “He looked at me lovingly with blue eyes“.

Of course, a lot of your writing style will be determined by what your article is all about and what purpose it will serve.