by Chris Wan

Created on: November 02, 2008

Web design is a complicated and important profession. Nowadays, there is a skewed, perverse perception of web design. Many businesses, particularly small ones, equate a pretty website to a functional and effective website. The ignorance is contagious, particularly rampant among businesses and amateur designers. This assumption is sadly false; There's more to websites than meets the eye.

Web design is split into design and style. Each has a very different purpose, yet they are both interwoven in a website. Sometimes, the line between design and style will become blurred, but it will still be there

Design pursues functionality, accessibility, and findability. A website's layout must be designed to subtly elicit certain emotions and actions from visitors through the placement, alignment, order, and contrast of elements. Good design is achieved if a website can guide visitors from point A to B with ease and comfort.

Style seeks to describe a brand. Style communicates the brand to visitors through visual details like patterns and textures.

These are only brief, vague insights into web design, yet many web design company overlook design and focus on style. Therefore, you must be able to discern the good companies from the bad.

It should be noted that companies and firms are not the sole capable providers of good web design. You may think that having more people working on a website is more effective, but that is not entirely true. Web design is not formulaic. Web design cannot be mass produced on an assembly line. It cannot be stamped and printed for 50 dollars. While web design is precise, fixed, and planned, design is also flexible, fluid, and creative. There is no correlation between a design team's size and the quality of its produced design. So, please, don't alienate freelance web designers.

Oh, there are so many offers for web design on the internet nowadays. The unknowledgeable and foolish simply enter "web site design" into Google and click on whatever sounds good. But you aren't one of them, well, no longer at least. To find good web designers, it would make sense to go to where good web designers go.

Professional design culture e-magazine A List Apart is one. Within the web design circle, ALA is one of the most respected and esteemed professional "publications". Many of the world's leading web designers have either contributed to or been noted in the magazine. Its editor-in-chief is Jeffrey Zeldman. Haven't heard of him? He is the founder and executive creative

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