Questions tagged [website-design]

Questions about designing the aesthetic look of websites, both practical and theoretical. For questions about coding the structure of a website, please go to Stack Overflow. For questions about the user experience, please go to UX.SE. Ask anything related to designing graphics and visual layouts here on GD.SE.

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55 votes
4 answers
147k views

Is it mandatory to keep images at 72 dpi for web design?

I have been designing web banners for more than a year but never considered the DPI. I was using the default 72 dpi, but now I want to know is it necessary to create web designs in 72 dpi? What if we ...
Vikaas Kool's user avatar
31 votes
3 answers
31k views

What's the best way to animate an illustration for the web?

I have a couple of illustrations done in Illustrator and I am planing to animate it for a website that I am working on, I've heard of Create.js toolkit with flash, but is it the best way to go or is ...
Nour's user avatar
  • 433
31 votes
3 answers
64k views

Text not very readable on different image backgrounds

I've come here seeking for a bit of design help or advice on how I could possibly improve the following: Like the title says, I'm having a website banner with multiple text displayed on different ...
AyB's user avatar
  • 413
44 votes
13 answers
4k views

What web graphics formats to use?

Web sites can contain JPEG, GIF,PNG, SVG format graphics. Which ones should be used, and when?
Dori's user avatar
  • 1,966
31 votes
11 answers
53k views

What DPI should be used for what situations?

I've been seeing the word 'DPI' pop up quite a lot when I export my work out in Photoshop and Illustrator. While I know that DPI stands for 'dots per inch', and that if you have too low of a DPI on an ...
JFW's user avatar
  • 4,895
25 votes
5 answers
45k views

Charging an Intellectual Property transfer fee for design work

So, you've finished a design job (eg. a logo design) and the client asks for your IP surrounding the logo, eg copyright, original artwork files, notes, sketches, all of that stuff that went into ...
Quakesoldier's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
5k views

Which is a better design pricing model?

I'm curious which pricing model other feel best fits freelance design, in what situations, and why. I am not seeking dollar values. There are a few basic pricing models a freelancer can use: Time-...
Scott's user avatar
  • 208k
15 votes
8 answers
44k views

Where can I get images for commercial use?

I am running a web site design service for local small business owner. I want avoid legal issues on the images I use. Usually, the images found on Flickr are forbidden for commercial use. Where would ...
25 votes
4 answers
1k views

How to hire a graphic designer?

I am developing the backend for a website. I always had the trouble of making an attractive design for my websites and have never hired any graphic designer yet. I have no logo nor web template. What ...
Newton's user avatar
  • 347
34 votes
3 answers
4k views

How can I improve my color selection skill?

I'm a web developer, started to become a web designer. However, I think my understanding of colors is not practical yet. There are tools out there that can give you color harmonies, and more stuff, ...
Saeed Neamati's user avatar
32 votes
5 answers
12k views

What are the steps in designing a website?

Calling all Web Designers :) I am starting to make a website for a small business in my hometown and it will be my first proper project. I have made sites in the past, which I have done for leisure. ...
user3830113's user avatar
22 votes
8 answers
7k views

How can I start to learn web development?

I'm very interested in learning web development and have learned some basics regarding HTML and CSS a few years back from W3Schools, but I never learned how to develop websites that are up to today's ...
75 votes
4 answers
355k views

Helvetica Neue equivalent on Google Fonts?

Does anybody know a font on Google Fonts that is very similar to Helvetica Neue?
amannnn's user avatar
  • 853
32 votes
13 answers
6k views

Do web designers need to know how to code?

As a web developer, both front-end and back end architect, I work with many different designers and sometimes find it frustrating working with design comps where no thought was put into how to ...
Chris_O's user avatar
  • 1,477
13 votes
3 answers
10k views

How do you animate SVG for the web?

Vector graphics are now taking over the web and even mobile applications. Icons, buttons and elements of web pages or mobile apps are now becoming increasingly vector based, dropping bitmaps because ...
Emanuele Sabetta's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Coming from a programming background, where should I start to learn web design?

I'm a web developer mainly working in front end developing. My main fields are HTML5, CSS3 and Flash ActionScript 3.0. Here in Iran, teamwork means nothing for most of the people, but I think it's ...
user avatar
20 votes
5 answers
13k views

What is the difference between "flat style" and "material design"?

After Windows 8 came out all spoke about "Metro UI" and later about the "Flat design". Now, after Android Lollipop came out all speak about "Material design". Can somebody explain the difference ...
user3631654's user avatar
13 votes
4 answers
106k views

How do I get my vector logos to look super sharp on the web?

I do a lot of work with Illustrator, but I've never been super happy with how my work looks on our website. I've tried various techniques - saving from Illustrator, and opening in Photoshop and saving ...
Possikiem's user avatar
  • 131
4 votes
2 answers
656 views

Whose persona should I consider while designing my portfolio?

Recently I came to know about Personas and how to implement them. I read few design processes and came to know how to execute it. Through my learning I found two kind of personas i.e. 1. Persona of ...
bharat's user avatar
  • 411
52 votes
8 answers
18k views

Designing around an awful logo

I'm looking for some opinions on how to approach an interesting problem I've encounted. I dabble in UX/graphic design, specifically for the web. Mostly static sites. I do this all on my own time as ...
Doug Stephen's user avatar
12 votes
8 answers
18k views

Designing A Website from Scratch – Illustrator or Photoshop?

If I'm designing a website from scratch and I intend to slice it and code it up in Adobe Dreamweaver later, should I create the design of the website in Illustrator or Photoshop? Why?
JFW's user avatar
  • 4,895
8 votes
1 answer
965 views

Web colors: how to compensate for differences in monitors

This question has to do with color in the context of web pages. Computer monitors and mobile screens can vary a lot in their color rendering, meaning that a given color on one monitor can look much ...
ixodid's user avatar
  • 81
27 votes
10 answers
20k views

Do web frameworks such as Bootstrap or HTML5 boilerplate offer anything to a designer (not developer)?

Note, this is about design much more than development. I build sites from scratch with completely hand written CSS and HTML. I've known about pre-build css templates such as Bootstrap or HTML5 ...
Scott's user avatar
  • 208k
11 votes
5 answers
26k views

How can I make my Photoshop text appear like it does on the web?

Do I really have to design everything in Photoshop with anti-aliasing set to "none"? I'm sure there is a better way. I'd like to have a setting so that when picking a basic web-safe (such as ...
jonn_g's user avatar
  • 117
109 votes
12 answers
392k views

Is there a free 'Helvetica Neue' alternative?

Does anyone know any other fonts similar to Helvetica Neue (free for commercial use)? I'm working on a big website project where 'Helvetica Neue' is used heavily. I need a font that looks almost the ...
drpelz's user avatar
  • 1,327
16 votes
5 answers
27k views

What should I do regarding color profile when designing for the web?

I have read this article by Doug Avery where he explains how to disable Color Management in Adobe Photoshop and the follow-up article in response to the uproar of the commenters arguing against it and ...
kettlepot's user avatar
  • 315
10 votes
5 answers
4k views

What makes a design professional?

Can anyone define why something might not look "professional"? What differentiates between professional/unprofessional designs? I have clients who have said my design does not look very ...
Jack's user avatar
  • 7,164
9 votes
13 answers
2k views

Why do people keep telling me my site looks awful?

I've developed a website, and recently was looking for a job. Practically all interviewers, after taking a quick glimpse at it, told me my site was designed awfully (but liked the concept). I should ...
Oren A's user avatar
  • 203
8 votes
9 answers
4k views

Tools for *lossy* PNG compression?

I'm trying more and more to get by sans PhotoShop for my personal/freelance work. I do primarily web work these days and don't do enough side gigs to justify keeping up with the Creative Suite beast. ...
DA01's user avatar
  • 50.2k
5 votes
8 answers
3k views

Is there graphic design software made for beginners, suitable for designing websites?

I'm teaching web development to beginners, and it would be useful to show them the basics in design, meaning using a graphic design package to come up with a layout, before turning it into code. To ...
daveyfaherty's user avatar
4 votes
5 answers
41k views

What's the width to mockup websites for desktop and mobile now?

Recently, I was practicing web design beyond code things. But after I opened Sketch and just started to make a rectangle of my site, I got stuck. What width should I use? I'd search for the ...
p3nchan's user avatar
  • 205
2 votes
2 answers
7k views

How to create a speckled/pixelated background?

How would I replicate this speckled/pixelated background effect? You might need to zoom in to see the effect fully.
r0skar's user avatar
  • 139
1 vote
5 answers
25k views

How to save a sharp logo for my website

I'm pretty new to photoshop and illustrator and trying to create a simple text-based logo to use on my web site, for example: http://codepen.io/d3wannabe/pen/BWrbZa You get wildly different versions ...
d3wannabe's user avatar
  • 113
65 votes
17 answers
327k views

Web Safe Alternative to Myriad Pro Font?

Are there any fonts that I can use in my font stack that are more or less similar to Myriad Pro and web safe?
Atif's user avatar
  • 3,426
37 votes
7 answers
68k views

Favicon best practices regarding size and format

I'm busy on a WordPress site and have come to the stage to add the finishing touch, being the favicon. I'm primarily a developer so graphics and icons aren't my strongest point. What are the best ...
coconutpear's user avatar
27 votes
10 answers
22k views

Alternative to Lorem Ipsum (dummy text) for websites

Lorem Ipsum has been the known default for dummy text. Per a search the last discussion in regards to alternatives is two years old. I thought I would post a new thread on this topic. So, what are ...
user9447's user avatar
  • 18.3k
23 votes
2 answers
45k views

When should I use SVG or SVGZ for my web graphics?

From my understanding, The SVGZ is a compressed file type of an SVG. I love using SVG images and have had a lot of experience with them. All of the times I used them I have never had a graphic that ...
Josh Powell's user avatar
20 votes
2 answers
15k views

How to make a color appear the same on different backgrounds?

Background on color perception: Due to the nature of the human eye and visual processing by the brain, there's an optical illusion that the same color will look different depending on the background. ...
Baumr's user avatar
  • 426
13 votes
1 answer
2k views

How can a design be balanced and yet have a focal point?

The concept of a focal point seems to be a fundamental one in web design, yet doesn't a focal point mean a page cannot be balanced? Surely by definition a focal point means that the page's 'weight' ...
james6848's user avatar
  • 301
13 votes
10 answers
33k views

Good color palette, usable for the color blind.

I'm designing a chart right now, that will slowly have more items added to it. I'd like to create an list/order of colors for the items, that will be most usable for the color blind to differentiate ...
user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
20k views

Responsive web design is based on screen resolution or screen size?

For mobile devices the resolution is actually big, only screen size is small. based on that: For websites design, do we target screen resolution (e.g 1920x1080)? And for mobile apps. do we target ...
Engineeroholic's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

What are some common mistakes that a designer can make when designing for web, and how can they be avoided?

What are some common mistakes to avoid while designing? I know color, text and images play a major part in designing, but there are so many other things that we need to take care of! I don't know ...
Jack's user avatar
  • 7,164
7 votes
5 answers
7k views

How to optimize images to improve pagespeeds / webpage loading times?

This is almost a StackOverflow question, however it's completely related to Photoshop and other tools. With every Pagespeed test I do for all my website I get the comment "Optimize images by lossless ...
Sander Schaeffer's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
2k views

Designing interesting looking websites in greyscale, minimal tones

I know a business that wanted a website to match their brand, and it would seem that they are allergic to colour. I think designs in greyscale can look amazing, especially in print, but it feels near ...
Adam Elsodaney's user avatar
5 votes
7 answers
1k views

Modern design - What's that?

I am working on redesigning my website and iterating through fivesecondtests. The overall feedback is improving but no matter what I change, several people have mentionned that my designs look "...
Sylverdrag's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
7k views

How to "draw" pointed corner drop shadows in Adobe Illustrator CS5

I have this image which I want to re-draw/reverse engineered so that I can use it at different sizes as resizing it cause it to look bad. But I can't seem to figure out how to do it. The drop shadows ...
Jawad's user avatar
  • 645
4 votes
9 answers
2k views

What is the best program for image optimizing for the web?

What programs besides Photoshop are good for saving and optimizing images for web?
Nina's user avatar
  • 49
3 votes
2 answers
5k views

When creating PDF from an image, what determines the screen dimensions when viewed at 100%?

I would like to use pdf for ease of use and annotations when creating previews of my screen designs. However, no matter how I create my pdf, I can't seem to figure out what determines the 100% view of ...
kontur's user avatar
  • 3,628
1 vote
3 answers
2k views

How to choose colors for a website layout?

Given that I'm new to graphic design and I'm trying to design the homepage of my website, I can't really understand the reason why I can't make the homepage color "shine". I'm sorry for the ...
donald's user avatar
  • 311
43 votes
5 answers
15k views

What is the purpose of using a very dark color for text instead of a pure black?

I have seen that some web designs implement an almost black font color (hex #001c00) in their designs instead of a pure black color (hex #000). Does the design actually benefit from this or is this ...
Aistis's user avatar
  • 533

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