id: 3
Category: Website Creation
Rated:
One of the first things you need to do when making a site is make a layout. However, you can't just slop something down and use it. That’s laziness and can often make a bad layout.
A layout for graphic site you should think of as an introduction to what the webmaster and other staff members are capable of making. It shows how well they code and how good they are in graphic design. A layout is more then just something used for a person to navigate through the site.
For this reason I have put together a list of guidelines to think about when making your site layout.
- - Colors. You want to keep to a color scheme that matches (ex black and white, blue and white etc...) Avoid using anything that doesn't match or hurts your eyes this means NO neon colors or bright things that would hurt the eyes. Would you like looking at a page that has a neon green background and pink text?
Make sure when colorizing your font it is readable! You shouldn’t have a light gray background and white text. Who can read that? If you can't read it or have a hard time seeing it, chances are your visitors do too.
- - Layout picture. Don't try to make it complicated. You want it to be simple enough that people can find things easily. Color scheme, something appropriate to the topic, then purpose of the site, and for all ages is best. Again avoid neon colors and try not to use to many paint brushes, this can make it look sloppy and people will be like: "Ok what is this person doing? Is the rest of their stuff gonna be like this?" Also try and make an original layout.
- - Navigation. Navigation should be something easy to locate and navigate. A good rule I have used to determine if my navigation is good enough: tell yourself to find a random page (ex. downloads) and if it takes you more then five seconds to locate this page your navigation should probably be redone.
Label things well. Your pages about the site and contacting should be under a title called Site and if you have pages all revolving around the same thing, for instance, different layouts. You should have all the pages that are similar under a title such as layouts. This will making finding pages so much faster and easy!
- - Credit. Anything you used in the making of the layout you must give credit to! This should be on both the credit page AND on the layout, either at the bottom of the page under all the content or under the navigation. Remember to read the terms of use when using other peoples things!
- - Type of site. Your layout should correspond to the type of site you have. If you have a business site your layout should probably look professional. It is also a good idea to have any sort of logo your business has.
You should not find a anime layout for a business that does carpeting. Likewise, you wouldn't want to see an anime site with a layout on carpets.
