Designs That Sell , What Does it Take?
Website design is definitely an art, and one that is worthy of careful study as well as practice.  When I first began designing websites for clients I have to admit that I did not have a clear concept around design or what it took to create a good web design.

Read Our Feature Articles:
Website Design Using Proximity
Website Design Using Alignment
Website Design Using Repetition
Website Design Using Contrast

My mindset reminded me of the old saying, “I may not know art, but I know what I like.” I would see a website that I liked, but didn’t really know what it was about the website or the art behind the web design that made it so appealing. One would think that I could go to another designer and have a deep conversation about the many ways to accomplish the creation of a great website design – but, alas, such is not the case.

Tucson, Arizona is a great town, a cross between sleepy small town, funky hippy locale, and up and coming metropolitan city.  There are plenty of web design companies in Tucson, let alone the United States. And the one thing that I have learned about those of us who make our living in web design is that we can be very dogmatic about our trade.

Over the years I’ve heard website design gurus say things like, “Never use tables in a website”, “Always use CSS when formatting text”, “Never use Flash in a website”. But as I grew as a web design professional, I learned that website design is an art, and cannot be bound by hard and fast rules. Now Flash is perfectly acceptable to use in your website, tables still play a role in design, and on, and on.

I also learned that while web design does not have hard and fast rules, there are good practices one can follow in the pursuit of a great web design. Tucson has no shortage of excellent artistic influences, but my biggest influence came outside of Tucson, from a book by Robin Williams called the Non-Designers Design book. I picked up a copy while at a Society for Techinical Communication conference in Minneapolis, MN in 2007 and my web design career has never been the same.

In her book the author explained that once you can name or label what it is in a design that makes it effective, then you have power over that practice or technique, and you can find new and inventive ways to re-use it in the future.  In web design people often do things because it “Looks good”. The problem comes when we use several different graphics, or fonts, or alignments, or whatever from several different sources because they all looked good – never truly recognizing that although these elements may look individually, they don’t necessarily look good together in a website.

So when it comes to web design and designing great looking websites, what are some principles that can enhance your design and make you a better web designer? I follow the priciples of P.A.R.C., which stands for Proximity Alignment Repitition, and Contrast. Once a web designer, or any designer, masters these concepts, they will be able to tighten up their creations and finally gain full control over their work. The articles in this series were written to give website design professionals insight into the things we can all do by using PARC as a means to creating better website design, and developing our skills as website design professionals.

FX Studios is a website design firm in Tucson, Arizona. The company produces effective, affordable web design for clients in Tucson, Phoenix, and Casa Grande Arizona. We also offer website design in San Diego California, and Las Vegas, Nevada. If your company or organization has questions on website design or other media integration feel free to call us at 1.877.388.3281.