Like every creative sphere, website design industry is too fraught with limitations both in terms of creativity and in terms of professionalism. As a designer, you know how frustrating limitations can be. Limitations in web design can have crippling effects on your creative impulse that can maim you from designing an esthetically pleasing website. There are limitations over screen resolutions, users interface and browsing platforms and many more that force you keep your creative impulse in check while designing and developing a website.

Limitations are All Over: Limitations are not bad all the time. They guide us what to do and what not to do, and thus make us aware of the possible negative outcome of following a non-standard method while developing or designing a website. For example, is you are using large background images as opposed to gradients for adding a creative touch in your website, you are driving it to the brink of being becoming invisible to most of the search engines since search engines abhor low loading websites.

Here in this article, we are going to cover some restrictions that we strongly believe to have positive impacts to express ourselves in a better way. It may sound oxymoronic but this is the truth:

Freedom is not a good thing: Well, this may sound a bit wacky but the fact is that if there is no restriction, things can go haywire and turns things utterly ridiculous and crazy. The same goes true with the basic website design principles. If you do not abide by these rules, you are certainly going to face the music. You might have to face a barrage of problems with the funky structure of the website, even you might find it overwhelmingly difficult to tame CSS etc. The same thing happen with flash based website if you make it extremely heavy loads of animation.

Limitations Over Color: – If you want to be a professional website designer, you need to limit your color palate as it is highly important for designing an aesthetically pleasing website. You might find your calling in bright colors but you should not ignore the fact that bright colors are a big turn off for most of the visitors. What visitors look for is an ideal atmosphere and not something glossy that can dazzle their eyes. So, you need to apply colors judiciously to ensure a better browsing experience.

Topographical Limitations: – Web topography is something that can make or break the fate of a website. Since most of us are accustomed with standard web topography, we find it hard to go through a website where the structure is turned upside down. Unless your approach is exceptionally good and impressive, visitors are mostly likely to bounce back from your website once they bump on it.

Minimalism: Minimalism is a new trend in website design industry where the force is on applying an extra layer of limitations in website design voluntarily by using simple structure and by shunning complexity and redundancy as far as possible.

You can be a die-hard blogger but that does not necessarily mean that your blog will be flooded with visitors who will keep visiting your blog for finding interesting information for time and again. No, it is not that easy. Your blog needs to acquire a distinct identity otherwise, it will likely to get sidelined by other blogs who are into the same field. Therefore, it is quite clear that you need to make your weblog look interesting and elegant if you wish to create a niche for your blog. Now, you do not need to spend sleepless night for giving your website design blog a different look. Here we have compiled a list of common tips that can help you to cruise though some common problems:

Keep It Simple: Making a website or a blog overtly complex is certainly not an ideal option. You need to work hard to make your website look simple yet elegant. You should never try to experiment with the navigation systems of your website since it can have serious backlash later on. Try to keep the overall structure of your website as simple and as straightforward as possible.

Keep The Content Clear: Do not use any fancy fonts just for sake of giving it a visual twist. Try to use web safe fonts since people will come to your website for gathering information. The information has to be presented in an organized way. The bottom line is that texts should be good to read at otherwise, your visitors are likely to bounce back anytime soon.

Try a Different Color Scheme: – Color scheme of your blog needs to be pleasing to the eyes and therefore, you need to give it an aesthetic touch. Use of bright colors is a big turnoff for most of the visitors and therefore, you should try to use a sober color combination that will encourage visitors to spend more time on your blog. However, if you are not sure about the color scheme, you can try some other options.

Use White Space Judiciously: – White space in a website plays an all-important role by shifting the attention of the visitors to some other important elements and therefore, you need to be a little careful while using white space in your website.

Feature Images: This is probably the most vital thing that you should not overlook. Texts, no matter how well written it is, are bound to make people bored unless you are using it with some relevant images. Images are like sauce to a curry; they give a post an interesting twist that can go long way to keep the readers engaged for a long time.

You might have mastered the art of website design and possess a certain level of authority on Photoshop but still you find yourself struck in the middle of a project. This is not uncommon given the ever-increasing complexities and cutthroat competition in web design field. Since you are not getting enough time to hone your designing skills, you will run the risk of losing your creative edge that can cost you dearly in the long run. Therefore, we suggest you to take a short break from your busy schedule and try to refresh the basics of website design. Here in this article, we are going to discuss 7 basic website design tips that will help you reinvent your passion for website design:

1. Use of Contrast: – A slight change in the contrast can make a website look elegant and great. Sometimes, you might find that there is something missing in the final design. At that particular moment, you can try out something different by making some subtle changes in the contrast. If there is anything that deserves to get the attention, you should make it look prominent by making subtle variations in the contrast.

2. Try Gradients: – This technique is widely used and employed by a sizable section of website design for giving a website a stark visual twist. It can yield an impressive outcome but you need to how to use dexterously. This technique should be employed judiciously and with meticulous precision and it should complete the theme of your website.

3. Make Your Website Colorful: - Choosing the best color scheme for a website is certainly a challenging task. It requires intuition and an eye for details otherwise; you might find yourself wasting hours after hours fruitlessly while making a decision in this regard. It is nerve-wracking and often time drives a person to the brink of insanity. Remember one thing that you should not spill colors on a website all the time. All you need to do to use color properly and shun variations if it is not required.

4. Letter Spacing: - Spacing between letters can play a crucial role in determining the look and feel of a website. There should be enough space between letters otherwise visitors will not be able to figure out what you actually want to convey through it. Make some changes in the letter spaces and you will be in for a shock.

5. Case: - Chance in Case can be done fairly easily but have you ever thought it immediate impact on the design of a website. Use of uppercase, lowercase or both of them can make your website look dramatically different. But sadly enough there are not many website designers that try to utilize the advantages of this and even some do not think it worthy enough to give much attention.

6. Blur: – Blur is a powerful and highly effective tool that will let you put emphasis on certain element of a website by blurring something just next to it. The impact of the project can be increased dramatically by blurring different objects either in the background or in the foreground. This is a case of shifting focus to an object by blurring one object.

7. Focus On Alignment: – Give your website something extra that will help you website to stand tall in the crowd. You can make slight deviation while maintain clean and straight line to give a pleasant surprise to your viewers. By alerting alignment in the design, you make a design memorable and highly effective. This technique does not apply to text only but it is now used extensively in the field of template design.

Designing a website is simply the best way to showcase your creative impulse and passion since it allows you to get connected to a much larger section of audience which is still unthinkable in any other traditional methods such as exhibiting your works in an Art Museum or something similar to that kind. Moreover, there are options to make changes in a design even after the completion of the project and this is what has given it an edge. This might sound good for the website design industry but the same does not hold true for the website designers since, it ruffles their feathers a lot to make major changes in the structure of the design to make it look all the more interesting and impressive. You know how irksome it is to make changes in the design of a website but iterations have almost become an inseparable part of website design. If this is not enough, they have to deal with some algorithms, not mathematical of course, and that do not give them enough room for  making experiments.

Iterations: Do They Impossible To Avoid?
Well, it seems, there is no way to escape iterations. No matter how efficient or talented you are as a designer, you might find it overwhelmingly difficult to come to term with your clients. Usually, it is the communication gap that leads to umpteen number of modifications and if you fail to put a tap on it, it will sooner or later snowballed into a major crisis that can have detrimental impacts on the creative process. Though it is not that easy to translate the requirements of your clients properly, you need to try your best as far as possible. But the number of iterations can be kept to a minimum by if you can manage to master the art of some simple design algorithms that can prove highly effective in the long run.

Here are some of the common elements of web design algorithms that you need to give utmost attention before proceeding further:

Theme: – Choosing the theme of is certainly one of the few crucial steps that you should give utmost attention. You should take different approaches while designing different websites.

Style: – The style of a design can be bracketed into a specific category. Depending on the style and pattern of a website, you need to bracket a website in any of these categories:

• Artistic
• Photo Manipulation
• Professional
• Cartoonish

Now if you have to deal with a design project that does not fit in any of these categories, it should be categorized as – “Other”. But first of all, you need to scan the proposed requirements of clients thoroughly before putting it in any of these categories.

Elements: – A wide variety of elements are used in the website design process. As these elements directly correspondence to the theme of a website, you need to be a little bit particular. For example, if you are to design a Tech website, you should not use any element that is not related to it. Make sure that the elements are going to play constructive role and not the other way round.

Take Criticisms In Your Stride: – Be open to constructive criticisms because it will help you to hone your skills. Asks other designers and give attention to their feedbacks.

A search engine friendly and user-friendly website is an asset of an organization since it can help an organization to get better exposure in the virtual world. But making a website search engine friendly is not everyone’s cup of tea. Unless you have a fair level of authority on search engine optimization, you might find it overwhelmingly difficult to design an SEO friendly website. Having a good website is certainly an advantage but you need to master the art of drawing traffic to your website by making your website visible to search engine and that should be done from the initial stages of the website design. Here in this article, we have discussed some of the golden rules of SEO website design:

Make It Light: Google has already made it clear that it will eliminate those websites, which take awfully long time to load. So, it is clear that you need to improve page speed of your website at any cost if you do not want your website to be knocked out Google or any other search engines. Moreover, users usually avoid those websites that take long time to process a request.

Avoid Java Script: – Google and other search other search engines cannot read JavaScript and that means, you need to avoid this script in a website as far as possible. Try to use it sparingly or at the footer section of the website to have minimal impacts on the visibility of a website in major search engines. Do not embed text in the Java Script because Google will never be able to read it or index that text.

Use Text In the Flash: – Until a few days ago Google was unable to read or crawl anything that is embedded in a flash file i.e. SWF file. But the scenario has changed a lot recently. Google crawler is now powerful enough to read texts of a flash file. Therefore, if you are designing a flash website, you need to use as many texts in the flash file as possible to get better exposure in different search queries.

Do Not Use Inline CSS: – Use of CSS has become a common practice among website designers and developers since it offers a number of advantages and amazing flexibility. But you should not use Inline CSS instead you should create a separate CSS file that should be linked with the HTML page.

Do Not Use Too Many Images: – Never use too many images in a website. You can make a website light by using gradient instead. Try not to use textures if you can manage without them.

Do Not Use Frame: – Frame website design has long become a passé. Frame websites have a peculiar structure, and they fetch information from internal files and that means a sizeable section of the website will remain invisible from search engines:

Give Proper Names To Images: It is quite common among website design to name images as: image01, image02 etc. But if you want to make your website more relevant to search engine, you need to give them proper names such as websitedesign-footer, web-design-header etc.

These are some of the tips that you can try to increase the visibility of your website a bit further.

Modern designers are getting increasingly dissatisfied, disillusioned and enraged with the limitations of web interface. Though the transition from type-led minimalism website design to detailed and elaborated interface, as in the case of some highly sophisticated movie and video game websites, is giving them a chance to give wings to their creative impulse, they are finding themselves tied up, when it comes to choosing fonts. Either they have to make a choice from the fonts that are already been installed or they have to covert the entire thing into an image, which is utterly ridiculous and unrealistic.

Clash Between Usability and Performance: – Most website designers torn between these two contrasting concepts. For the time being, they have to compromise either on the performance or on the usability, as clarified Jonathan Snook, front-end engineer of Yahoo. This goes true with SIFR (scalable Inman Flash Replacement) which is famed for offering a greater level of flexibility, but it can have detrimental effects on the performance of a website as well as on its usability. Cufón is another application that can convert font files into vector objects. But it has own set of problems that are big enough to overlook easily. But future is not as bleak as it may appear. 2010 can experience a dramatic chance in the use of fonts but there are some technical issues that have to be resolved first before proceeding further.

Why Change is Inevitable: – At present browser-landscape is relatively stable but experiments are underway to make it more engaging, more interesting and more flexible. Web designers are making strong arguments in favor of using different varieties of fonts in websites. If we can use different artistic fonts in print industry, we do not see any reason why web industries will remain immune from these changes.

Similar Sites: – Imposing restrictions on the use of fonts have already created number complex issues. For example, content-based websites are started looking alike. Take a sneak peek at these two sites:

CNN

New York Times

Do they look same? If you think they, time has finally come to give some serious thought on it. But despite this, currently most website designers prefer those fonts that are likely to be installed on majority of users.

The Rise of @Font Face: – @Font Face is giving website designers’ unlimited opportunities to use varieties of fonts without compromising anything on ground. Users will not have to install fonts in their machine for viewing a webpage rather fonts will be embedded within the page.

WebGuru India is elated to unveil a PSD web template shop where our visitors would be able to breeze through a colorful collection of some unique PSD web templates. As we always strive to offer more to our visitors and clients, we have decided to launch this web template shop that we strongly believe will help our visitors in making a perfect choice. Here you will find a wide range of psd web design templates that are placed in proper categories for making it easier for you to find the perfect PSD template that you are looking for.

Wish More, Have More
In fact, this is our philosophy at WebGuru India. This web template section is replete with only those designs that are crafted in the hands of our professional website designers at WebGuru India. Each of these PSD web design templates is thus designed in accordance with the ongoing trend of the market. What more could you want than this?

However, we have something more in our kitty to offer you. PSD templates need to be converted before you can upload them online. Now, if you are unable to convert these PSD web templates into HTML, you can opt for our PSD to HTML services, which we are offering at reasonable rate.

Not Just Another Web Template Shop
Yes, this is something more than just a web template shop with some PSD website templates listed haphazardly. Our web template section is distinctly different. We are offering 24X7 technical assistance and the PSD web templates that are listed in this section are all designed with meticulous care. All our templates are user friendly as far as design is concerned and are flaunting professional look. Therefore, if you are getting impatient to check out our new web template shop, just click and get lost in the captivating and colorful world of website templates.

With the adoption of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) in the domain of website design, a new era has started where the art of topography underwent complete transformation. Web designers are now enjoying more liberty while choosing fonts or typefaces, which was unthinkable before. Here in this article, we will discuss the suitability of various web design fonts for making it easier for the readers and visitors to select the best possible font that suit the purpose.

Before we start pinpointing the slight difference between various types of font, we have to comprehend the simple fact that the web design and printing are two different areas and therefore you can’t use the same font in them. Apart from discussing various facets of the common online fonts, we will highlight some new fonts as well. Continue reading ‘Importance of Using Proper Fonts in Web Design’ »