If you are having a new website built and want a really great hunting one then there is a temptation to combine graphic and webdesign skills from separate people. But who might lead the project? For the best prone end result, you might consent to the website designer to lead the way, writes Keith Lunt

Website design and graphic design are two totally different worlds. lots of graphic designers sell themselves also since website designers, but I don’t know of anyone who has started life as a website designer who then sells themselves since a graphic designer.

I have no problem with graphic designers who design the styles of sites. When worked alongside an experienced website designer, or where the graphic designer truly has stacks of website design experience, the results can be spectacular, for the reason that a few of our webdesign Southport portfolio will attest to. The problems I have encountered is when graphic designers decide that they may perhaps design a website and I should then build it for them.

Oh boy, the problems I have experienced there! One graphic designer designed his own site and asked me to code it. Great, but it didn’t in fact work. He wasn’t used to the idea of there being navigation buttons to locate between screens. He was used to people just turning over the pages. He also had stipulated that a quantity of parts of the screen be set sizes, but that the screen fill the full width. What sized screen I asked him?

He looked blankly at me because there is no concept in paper graphic design or variable width media. You pick A4, A3, A5 etc and set up out with that. Did he want it to fill a normal screen or a widescreen. What about the fixed width elements ? how are they to be padded? The questions were simply met with ‘Whatever looks best’, so I did. When he saw the result on the screen it wasn’t what he imagined. The same happened with about another 3 versions off the drawing board. It is a totally different know-how designing for a screen or designing for paper.

I was working with another graphic designer on a site and we sat down to pencil out the basic layout. He had his A4 sheet in portrait mode, so I flicked it around 90 degrees into landscape. The thanks I got was a smarmy smile and a ‘Don’t you realise that designs are better in portrait layout. Long and narrow posters guide the eye down the text better’ and a smug look. So I asked him if he turned his monitor because of 90 degrees to also make that portrait when he was browsing websites.

A bad start, but when designing a screen you start with a screen shape. Even if the first step is to draw a rectangle in portrait shape, at least that reminds you to fill the background with something suitable.

I’m always happy to work with graphic designers in my website design Southport work and I’m creating up a list of contacts that are terrific to work with. But when designing a website, the website designer, not the graphic designer, should lead the way!

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