Curvine Web Solutions Blog

Many of our clients are Graphic Designers who need help taking a great design and making it into a fully functional Web site. We’ve prepared this list of tips that every graphic designer needs to know when making a design for the Web. We’re aiming this list at print designers looking to make the transition.

1. Know your Target Screen Resolution: In print, you need to know how long and wide a piece will be. On the web, that length and width is measured in pixels. For mass market Web sites, you should target your site to be no longer than 775 pixels across. The actual resolution is 800 pixels across, but we need to leave room for the browser window border and the scrollbar which may be on the right side. For Web sites targeted at a younger or more technical audience, you may be able to design for a high screen resolution — plan for 1000 pixels in this case. In any case, be prepared for your site to look different depending on the screen resolution settings on the user’s computer: some computers will show your Web site very small, on others it will take up the full screen. Vertically, there is no maximum length, but note that the user may need to vertically scroll to see your entire page.

2. Are you fluid? Sites like Amazon.com can fill up the browser window — try loading the front page and resizing your Browser Window. Witness how it distributes the extra space that appears when you resize the window. This is called a Fluid design. You can ask your HTML producer to do this, you just need to specify where the extra space should go.

3. Use Text When Possible: On the Web, there are two different types of text: text that is an unusual font and actually stored as a graphic, and text that uses an ordinary font that is stored as text.  Text loads faster, but can vary somewhat from computer to computer. A graphic loads the same everywhere, but loads slower and can’t be read by a search engine. Text that is stored as text can only be one of 6 very ordinary fonts and can be edited easily, text as a graphic can be any font you wish to use, but is harder to make changes to. Our advice is to use text as much as possible, but use graphics when you need to — this means that body text and navigation elements should usually be kept to one of the 6 fonts that are on most people’s computers: Arial, Courier New, Georgia,Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet MS.

4. Hire someone to help with HTML production: as a print graphic designer, we would recommend you have someone else help with the technical work (we, of course, think you should hire us, but any Web programmer will do). The skills that make you a great graphic designer will make the technical work involved with producing Web sites harder. It is a classic left brain / right brain issue — very creative folks will have a hard time with technical work, and vice versa.

That’s it from us, we welcome your input below.