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The star of the catalog show
Printing catalogs is not just about putting on everything designers learned in design school. Or choosing the proper layout and fonts. There are many factors that should be considered first. There are also some sure fire tips to make the factors work for ...
Webpage Tips
As a working mother of two, I must admit that sometimes my house isn’t ready forcompany. Yes, you might trip over a few pairs of shoes when you walk in and youmight have to wait for dinner while I dig around for some frozen pot pies and someclean dishes ...
Why are you so Oblivious of your Typefaces?
Your website is like your body, where each part plays a crucial role. The pain of any part of it is felt by the whole. With regards to your web design, you must treat each element with considerable consideration because oblivion of one element may spell ...
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The Number 1 rule that every web designer should follow is to create a fast loading web site. You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While designing a web site always think about how long it will take to load. Try out our tips to build a great looking web site that also loads fast.
Minimize the use of images - The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don't make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. Notice the popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon etc., they have very few images because the load time is more important. Very often simple designs are the best.
Optimize images for the web - Once you have decided on the images that you need on your site, make sure that it is optimized for the web. They should be in the gif or jpeg format. You can also minimize the size of the image by choosing the number of colors you need, from the color palette. The less the colors you choose, the less the size of the image. You can also use online tools like Gif Wizard to optimize your images or to get a recommendation on how to cut down the size of an image.
Use Tables creatively - You can get some great looking designs by using tables creatively . Tables load very fast because it is just HTML code. Tables can be used in the homepage, menus or anywhere you like.
Cut down the use of animated gifs - Don't use animated gifs unless it is necessary. Animated gifs take a long time to load and can also be very irritating. But since they catch your attention you could use small animated gifs to draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site.
Design simple icons - Instead of
using big, bulky images use simple and small icons that add a little color and draw the attention of a visitor.
Use background images instead of big images whenever possible - Use background images whenever possible. This is usually a very useful tip for headers and footers. Instead of using an image of width 580 which is a uniform design you can use just a part of that as a background fill. This reduces the size of the web page as the image is small. The code will look like this :
Try out CSS Styles - Have fun with CSS styles to get some cool text effects. Again, a CSS Style is simple HTML code so it loads very fast. You can create cool rollovers using CSS Styles.
Use Flash sparingly - There seems to be a lot of hype about Flash but I recommend that you minimize the use of Flash on a site. Don't make entire sites using Flash. It may look great but it takes hours to load and can really put off visitors. If you do want to use Flash use it within an HTML site and make sure it loads fast.
Design most of your site in HTML - As much as possible try to design your site using HTML. You can create great designs by just using HTML code. Use tables, CSS Styles and simple fonts to design your site. Minimize the use of animated gifs, Flash, bulky images etc.
Keep checking your load time - Last but not least, before you decide on the final design of your web site, check its load time on NetMechanic. This site gives you a free analysis of your web site which is extremely useful.
About the Author
Rachna is the CEO of Entheos, a Web Design firm, with the vision to expand its horizons to encompass new areas of service on the Web. Rachna is a creative Web Designer with capabilities in Flash, Dreamweaver and ASP. She has written over 50 articles and tutorials on Web Designing and Web Promotion.
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Women to Know: A fan of fontsHerald Times ReporterStephanie Carpenter, assistant director of the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, poses inside the museum's working pressroom. / Sue Pischke/HTR This article appears in the Sunday, Feb. 12 Lakeshore YOU section of the Herald Times ... |
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Bad fonts just leave me feeling uncomfortableHong Kong StandardCertainly, I have toyed with different fonts for homework and projects ever since I started using the computer, but I had never thought of it as a major design specialty like painting or sculpture. In fact, it influences almost everything we lay our ... |
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Avería: an "average" fontBoing BoingBy Cory Doctorow at 12:05 pm Saturday, Feb 4 Dan Sayers ("I am not a type designer") decided to explore "generative" type-design by seeing what happened when he "averaged out" a large number of fonts. Once he got his teeth into the problem, ... |
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