The Overlooked Portion of Design

Having a good quality design gives your site the professional edge and saves costs in the long run. Design requires more than relevant pictures, illustration, and pretty boxes. When designing for both large and small scale sites, it is important to understand the technical aspects for a pixel perfect site that mirrors your company image.

Here are a few steps that are essential to understanding the process of the technical side of website design:

• Interface Design and sketches clarify how the site may work. This step clears up any idiosyncracies in communication between client and team. It also helps the team troubleshoot any navigation and flow challenges before the design process begins. Don’t be frightened when sketches are given, they are not a reflection of what your site will look like, but only how it will behave.
• Style Sheets are compiled for the programmers and future team members. This is time-consuming, but necessary. These style sheets have fonts, colors, sizes, and any generic flow objects that are used consistently throughout the site. This will be handed down to any person who works on the site in the future. Having all of the information about the design in one document or folder will eliminate many issues that occur over the growth span of the site.
• Make sure your designer is building out every state for each button, error, and page before any development can occurs. Much of the unexpected development costs happen because the functionality was not completely finished. If all of the states, flow, and functionality have been planned out accordingly, then the development is a more easeful process.

These are just a few of the steps that help create a professional, clean, and congruent site. The technical side is just as important because it will save costs and time for the future!