Why learning web designing skills are important
Today's world runs on the internet with almost every aspect of daily life, trade and commerce, communication, entertainment, and overall convenience at least partially relying on the power of the web. A website is the face and identity of the person, location, product, service, or organization that it represents. In today’s day and age, even the smallest and most unlikely things advertise themselves or have some kind of presence on the internet(possible examples being a roadside food cart or a neighborhood garage sale.) The ability to create your own website is increasingly rising in demand as an office skill in many corporate sectors and places of employment. Apart from it giving bonus points on your resume, it has innumerable benefits for personal reasons as well. Do you write or create art and want to showcase your talent online in a portfolio? Are you part of a band that wants to make its presence known online? Do you wish to make a memorial page for a deceased relative, friend or pet? For these many reasons and more is why web design is increasingly being considered a life skill.
Programming requirements
The first step towards creating your own website is to understand how its backend structure(the part of a computer system or application that is not directly accessed by the user, typically responsible for storing and manipulating data.) works and how it is responsible for the way its display looks. These are done with the use of two programming languages, HTML and CSS.
HTML
Hypertext markup language (HTML) provides the directions for how the content, images, navigation, and other elements of a website displayed in someone’s web browser. HTML tags are the instructions a browser uses to generate a website. Headings, paragraphs, links, and images are all controlled by these tags. You’ll especially want to know how header tags like H1, H2, and H3 tags are used for content hierarchy. In addition to affecting layout structure, header tags are important in how web crawlers classify a design and affect how they show up in organic search rankings.
CSS
CSS is the language for describing the presentation of Web pages, including colors, layout, and fonts. It allows one to adapt the presentation to different types of devices, such as large screens, small screens, or printers. CSS is independent of HTML and can be used with any XML-based markup language. The separation of HTML from CSS makes it easier to maintain sites, share style sheets across pages, and tailor pages to different environments.
User Experience and User Interface
User Experience (UX) basics
A website is more than just floating text in space. The color scheme, content, typography, layout, and imagery all come together to serve your audience and stir emotion. Someone wandering through the digital space you’ve created should have a clear path free from obstacles.
UX focuses on understanding your audience. What are they looking for — and how will your design make finding it easy? UX is about getting into the heads of your audience and seeing your design through their eyes.
When building your first website, keep these guiding UX principles in mind:
Make things simple and intuitive
Communicate concepts in a logical succession
Meet your audience’s needs and resist the temptation to showboat your skills at the expense of usability
Learning about your audience will help you craft a design that’s tailored to their wants and needs..
User Interface (UI) basics
If you’re new to web design, you might be confused by the difference between UI and UX. Most of us were. Know this — they’re two distinct concepts.
Where UX is concerned with the overall feel of a design, UI is about the specifics. If you were in an elevator, UI would be the size and arrangement of the floor buttons, while UX would encompass the colors, textures, and other interior design choices of the elevator space. UI is about giving someone the tools they need to experience your website free from complications.
When constructing your first website, keep these UI principles in mind:
Functionality of interactive elements should be obvious
Uniformity must guide usability — actions should follow logical patterns
Design choices should be made with a clear purpose
Key web design tools
Before you can get up and running as a Web Designer, you’ll need to learn an array of web design tools and software, each offering unique and high-tech features that let you create beautiful and unique designs. These are some of the most recommended and widely used software and templates used in the industry.
WordPress
Currently the most popular web designing tool and powering 27 percent of the Internet’s websites, WordPress boasts over 1,000 built-in themes and plugins that will allow you to easily build, edit, customize, enhance, and optimize websites.
InVision Studio
Even though WordPress is still overall most popular, InVision Studio is considered by many Web Designers to be the best overall tool for designing a website thanks to its array of features and rapid prototyping. With gestures and interactions like clicking, swiping, and hovering, you can also create custom transitions and animation.
Photoshop
Web Designers need to be able to make eye-catching and creative images -- that’s why Photoshop is without a doubt the most crucial Adobe suite for Web Designers. Its limitless array of color options and different gradients give you everything you’ll need to put together dazzling patterns and prints.
Dreamweaver
Another part of the Adobe suite that Web Designers should get familiar with is, Dreamweaver which allows you to directly code your website design even if you’re not a programming pro. Ready-made design templates and other tools are especially helpful for newcomers who still want to put together an attractive, responsive design.
Sketch
Typically used mainly for user interface designs, Sketch is an essential tool for creating interfaces and prototyping. When you’re working with vector drawings and graphics, Sketch can make life a lot easier.
Basic elements of Web Design
Line
Every letter, border, and division in a layout is made up of lines that make up their greater structure. Learning web design means understanding the applications of lines in creating order and balance in a layout.
Shapes
The three basic shapes in visual design are squares, circles, and triangles. Squares and rectangles work for blocks of content, circles work for buttons, and triangles are often used for icons that accompany an important message or call to action. Shapes also have a sense of emotion, with squares associated with strength, circles with harmony and comfort, and triangles with importance and action.
Texture
Texture replicates something in the real world. Through texture, we get an idea of whether something is rough or smooth. Textures can be seen throughout web design. From paperlike backgrounds to the colorful wisps of a Gaussian blur, you must be aware of the different kinds of textures that can make your designs more interesting and can give them a sense of physicality.
Color
To create designs that aren’t an eye strain, you should educate yourself in color theory. Understanding the color wheel, complementary colors, contrasting colors, and the emotions that different colors are tied to will make you a better web designer with the display being pleasing to the eye.
Grids
Grids have their roots in the earliest days of graphic design. They function so well in bringing order to images, texts, and other elements in a web design. It is essential to make a website look neat and professional.
Fonts
Fonts can impart different tones or emotions as well as affect readability. If you’re learning about web design, knowing how to use typography is essential. Typography serves several purposes in web design. First, it serves the utilitarian purpose of making content legible. But it can also serve as decoration, and the tasteful use of stylized typography can add to the overall aesthetic.
Layout
When it comes to the success of a website, the most important aspect of the site is the page’s layout. The website must be clean with an easy-to-follow navigation system to contribute to a usable web page layout. A layout that is easy to follow will give the site’s visitor easy access to valuable and important information. If content is difficult to find on a webpage, visitors get agitated and choose to leave the site with the possibility of not returning.
Conclusion
For further information about this subject and a chance to study exactly what you want to learn about,visit us at A2N Academy! Enroll in our course on Web Designing and master the art of creating your own website from start to finish in any style and preference you want for both career and personal goals. Take full advantage of the digital age to create your own brand, identity and purpose on the world wide web.