From print designer to web designer...Take the leap but don’t get wet…I did.

By Todd Bertsch   |  as seen on CSStinderbox.com

There are two schools of web designers. Graphic designers who mainly focused on print design their entire career and later entered into web design. And web designers, who have always been web designers and have no prior design background.

Which school is better? Neither. It doesn’t really matter what school of thought or training you come from. It’s all about how you adapt and adhere to certain principals and guidelines.

I came from the school of print designer turned web designer. I was fortunate to jump on early (around 95` with Adobe® PageMill), but I’ve made several mistakes along the way.

One might naturally think that a web designer who has a design background or design education would be a more skilled web designer. This is definitely not the case. In fact I feel that most graphic designer’s turned web designers really miss the boat in some crucial areas. This is the same boat I missed for several years.

Yes, like any medium you must follow a set of guidelines and specifications. And Yes, we as designers, no matter what school, must strive to create the most effective design solution for it’s particular problem. But in web design, we must be aware of usability guidelines. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that every website should look the same. That’s where our design intuition comes into play. What I’m saying is to you should follow at least, the basic usability standards that users have come to expect. I’m not going to design a business card and put the contact information on the back. That would NOT be normal. People are NOT use to that. Yes, it would be different and perhaps "cool". But NOT practical.

However, if you’re designing a site for an ad agency or for a photographer, musician or creative of sort, there will be much more freedom to break these rules and guidelines, as your audience will be a very small niche and expect these kinds of creative endeavors. The vast majority of your work will be for the “norm”. Normal everyday people who are using the internet to find information about a service or product.

This is the BOAT that I missed for several years.

I was so caught up in “design mode”. I was consumed with making my sites so different than everyone else’s, that I was really missing out on what my audience wanted and expected.

Usability Guidelines

There is a reason why 80-90% of most websites have navigation panels that are on the left or top of the browser. There are reasons why the company logo is always in the left hand corner. There are reasons why most hyperlinks are in blue. There are reasons why most sites have the same naming conventions like “Contact Us” or “About Us”. There are reasons why Internet Explorer browser is 80% or more of the market. Yes, these are basic rules and I’m sure we all follow these rules. However there are still many web designers who are missing that boat. These are the usability Standards. I didn’t create them. And NO, I don’t necessarily agree with all of them. But they are what they are. For some reason they just resonated with people. And this is what people expect. This medium is only about 10 years young. And we are still learning how people use it. But there’s no denying that people are use to seeing websites a certain way and don’t like change. Don’t make them work to find what they want. Just give it to them. Which reminds me of a great, simple book by Steve Krug "Don't Make Me Think". I'm sure most of you have it, or already read it.

It’s simple really. In order to have a successful website you just need to learn who your audience is, and what they want. Are they men, women, age 20-54, with little to no internet experience? What are their tools for viewing your site? Netscape 2.0? I doubt it. But you never know. Are they mainly PC or MAC? And, what are they looking for on your site? What do you want them to do when they get there?

Ok. Well it’s not that simple. There’s a lot to learn. Many questions to ask. But once you find out these answers…you'll be well on your way to designing a great looking and functional website that your users want and can easily use.

I won’t begin to run down the list of do’s and don’ts of good web design. That’s for another article. But I will tell you that once I realized that I must be aware and follow these usability guidelines, it made my websites much more functional, and my users really happy. Which in turn makes the clients happy.

If you can bring in the ideals of form and function to the design of a website, and be aware of the usability guidelines of the web, I think you’ll find that your clients will be happy, because their customers will be happy. It’s the fine balance of great design.

Form and function. Finally.

The two words that were rammed into our head all through design school, come to fruition! I guess they knew what they we’re talking about after all.

Print to web... Take the leap, but don’t miss the boat.

tb.