The web design and development industry are on the rise today. Every single company aspiring for success in the market needs a high-quality website that draws new visitors and converts them into loyal customers. Businesses in this day and age do not have the luxury not to launch a website. It is an important way to reach out to a considerable part of their target audiences without always being in the office or online.
Front-end design is something many companies neglect when looking for website design and development contractors. But, today, when the competition is higher than ever in all market niches imaginable, it is crucial that the site provides users with the best experience possible. Whether you are a self-employed web designer or a part of a web design company in San Francisco, you must discuss front-end design with your clients in advance and make certain they understand its importance. After all, you (and your agency) are going to be the first ones blamed if the site doesn’t convert well.
Plus, with the incredible amount of web design agencies present on the market today, providing high-grade front-end design will put you one step ahead of the competition because most design companies want to get new customers as soon as possible without wasting time on things they consider insignificant. But, we all know that the better work you do, the more praise and recognition you will get in the long run.
We are going to review some of the most vital front-end design principles that will help you create great websites for your clients, no matter the height of their standards or complexity of their requirements.
Tip #1 – Use Graphics Programs to Accomplish Your Tasks
You rarely complete a project, and from start to finish, maintain every single aesthetic mutation in the design files. And sadly, designers aren’t always around at the drop of a hat to fix something quickly.
Therefore, there always comes the point in a front-end job where you have to make some aesthetic tweaks. Whether it’s making the checkmark show up when you mark the checkbox or making a page layout that the PSD missed, front-enders often end up handling these relatively minor tasks. Naturally, in a perfect world, this wouldn’t be the case. But the world isn’t perfect, so it’s best to be flexible.
For these situations, you should always use a graphics program for mockups. No matter what tool you choose: Fireworks, GIMP, Illustrator, Photoshop, or anything else. Spend a minute launching a real graphics program and figuring out how it should look. Then, go to the code and make it happen. You may not be an expert designer, but you’ll still end up with better results this way than doing the alternative.
Tip #2 – Match the Design Instead of Trying to Beat It
Your job is not to impress everyone with a unique checkmark. You have to match a detail like this to the rest of the design. Those without a lot of design experience can easily be tempted to leave their mark on the project with seemingly minor details.
Instead of asking if your checkmark looks amazing, you should be focused on making sure it matches the overall design well. You should always be focused on working with the design instead of trying to overcome it.
Tip #3 – Avoid Tunnel Vision
In most cases, you’ll be working on small parts of the overall design. It’s important to remember that the parts you’re making are small parts of the masterplan. Make your checks as essential as a checkmark on a page should look – no more, no less. Don’t get tunnel vision about your small part and make it into something it shouldn’t be.
Moreover, a good technique for doing this is to take a screenshot of the program so far, or the design files, and design within the context in which it will be used. That way, you see how it affects other design elements on the page, and whether it properly fills its role.
Tip #4 – Use Alignment and Whitespace With Intelligence
This is a huge piece of practical advice for improving your designs and better implementing the designs created by others. If the design you’re working with seems to be using spacings in units of 40 or 60, make certain spacing is in multiples of 20 units.
This is a straight forward yet simple way for someone with no eye for aesthetics to make a significant improvement promptly. Make certain the elements are aligned down to the pixel and that the spacing around every edge of each element is as smooth as possible. Where you aren’t able to do that (like places requiring additional space to indicate hierarchy), make them exact multiples of the spacing you’re using elsewhere—for instance, two times your default to create some partition or three times to create more.
A lot of developers achieve this for particular content in design files. Still, when it comes to adding and editing content or producing dynamic content, the spacing might go all over the place since they weren’t fully aware of what they were incorporating.
You should understand how designers use whitespace and then follow those concepts in your build. You should spend time on this. Once you think you’re done, take a few steps back, and measure spacing to make certain you’ve aligned and consistently spaced everything as much as possible. After that, try out the code with various types of content to ensure it’s flexible.
Tip #5 – Take Care of Hierarchy and Relationships
Pay particular attention to how the design blends in with the hierarchy. How close are the titles to the text’s body? How far are they from the text that’s above them? How does the designer indicate which elements, titles, or text bodies are associated and which of them aren’t? They’ll normally do these things by boxing associated content together, using varying amounts of white space to indicate those associations as well as contrasting or similar colors to outline related and unrelated content.
Your job is to make certain that you recognize how the design accomplishes hierarchy and relationships and to ensure those concepts are evident in the finished website. If necessary, take additional time to make certain that your job was done well.
Final Thoughts
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the competition on the market is high today in every niche and industry. The web design industry is no exception. Creating websites that provide your customers with an advantage over their competitors will provide you (and your agency) with an advantage over your competitors.
In other words, this is a win-win situation for you and your clients. They get a great website, and you get excellent feedback and some good karma for your field. You get referred to, and the word-of-mouth provides you with additional customer sources. Even when it seems you can sacrifice quality to finish a project quicker, think twice because all you’re doing is risking your reputation and future success.
