Web design fundementals

Overview
This course is for people who find themselves with web design responsibilities but who have had no formal design training. The course will highlight the essential building blocks of good design, what works and what doesn't on screen and how to make the best use of type, colour and space. You will also cover usability issues and highlight how to solve common web design problems. This course is designed to help you develop new skills and improve your confidence when making design decisions.

Prerequisites
Some experience of using web sites. The ability to use at least one mainstream web browser. Some understanding of basic web page building.

Course Content Day One What is design?

• Examples of good and bad design
• Questions to ask before you design anything
• Defining your audience
• Maintaining a consistent brand identity
• Good navigation

The essential building blocks of web design

• Relevance
• Contrast
• Proportion
• Consistency
• Restraint and detail

Short cuts to good design

• Maintaining a swipe file
• Good information architecture

Laying out a web page

• HTML and web architecture
• Using web applications such as
• Macromedia Dreamweaver
• Organisational tools
• Using white space
• Rules, borders, boxes and drop shadows
• Maintaining online and offline consistency

Day Two The power of type

• Constraints of type on the web
• Text legibility
• Text hyperlinks
• Special type effects
• Less is more

Working with colour

• Choosing colours
• Colour psychology
• Developing a colour theme
• Using Hexadecimal colour
• Understanding RGB
• Web safe colours

Effective use of images

• Using images for maximum impact
• Optimising images
• Using images as navigation aides
• Creating texture and gradient fills with images

Solving common design problems

• Minimising text
• How fonts work on the web
• Browser and plug-in compatibility
• Cross platform issues

Questions and answers