When Jeffrey Zeldman was asked to define web design, he answered:

“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.”

These are beautiful words, don’t you think so? They are also difficult words that won’t help you to understand web design nor develop the corresponding skills (wikipedia’s definition is even worse).

Thus it’s important to start by giving a definition that works i.e. a definition which will help you to be a great web designer.

“How to make a website” series

This article is the first one of a series untitled “How to make a website”. In this series, I’ll show you step by step how to make simple, effective, and standard compliant websites.

All the articles will be short so that they are easy to digest and memorize. With a little commitment, you’ll soon be able to call yourself a web designer. Enjoy!

Understanding web designs

I could have written “understanding web design” but I decided to add a “s”, for the nature of web design is polymorphous and ever changing. Web design is very similar to arts that require skills and techniques.

“What is the nature of art?” is quite the philosophical question, isn’t it? One could only answer with beautiful, ineffective words. Trying to define web design precisely would end up in playing with words too (as Jeffrey Zeldman did), without ever giving a proper answer.

Nonetheless, if I only said that web design is polymorphous and ever changing, I wouldn’t help you either… and I promised to give you a definition of web design “that works”.

Hence, here is a broad but useful definition of web design:

“Web design is the art and techniques of creating and optimizing websites, a way to initiate and perfect the relation with their users.”

Arts and techniques

Unlike some arts which can flourish on inspiration only, web design requires techniques too. These techniques include skills, knowledge, and best practices that every web designer has to build over the years.

Here is a list of elements involved in the web design process:

  • Programming
  • Design
  • Typography
  • Usability
  • Accessibility
  • Search engine optimization
  • Marketing
  • Security
  • Etc.

As you can imagine, it’s not possible for a single person to master everything. That’s why every web designer has to know only a little of everything and, then, choose one or two skills in which he wants to excel.

If web design requires not only inspiration but techniques too, which presuppose rules, constraints and commonalities, how can that also be an art?

In fact, beside design (illustrations, photos, etc.) in which he can let is art flow and nourish the whole project, the web designer often has to find his own freedom between rules, constraints and commonalities, and exert his art and inspiration on details.

Details give websites a soul.

Creating and optimizing

A big mistake would be to consider that the web designer’s job is over once the website is published. It would be like giving birth to a child without ever taking care of him: the child would probably be bound to die.

Every website should be created with a purpose (e.g. 20% increase of sales, 1000 subscribers in 6 months) and, if possible, ways to evaluate if it is successful or not.

Therefore, when a web designer creates a website, he needs to make it easy to modify and optimize. Then, once the website goes live, he has to set up tools to gather data and track how the website behaves.

Time gives websites a path to perfection.

Initiate and Perfect

A website’s existence has no meaning without users. The problem is that people who first visit a website are not users yet. They are visitors.

One of the most important trials for a website is to initiate a relationship with its visitors i.e. turn visitors into users.

The turning point can be good design, usability, or information. But whatever it is, it has to catch the visitor’s attention in the very first seconds: if the visitor uses the mouse wheel to unveil more content, or click anywhere on the page, he enters the happy realm of users.

Then, good web design, is what helps to develop and perfect the relationship between the website and its users, be it for 2 crucial minutes or over the next 10 years.

Web designers often refer to “user experience” (UX) to encompass what betters the relation between websites and their users. But one should be very careful not to settle on a narrow comprehension of user experience for information, culture of the users, international or local actuality, reading habits, group dynamics, and many other elements impact this relationship.

Users give website a meaning.

Conclusion

Web design is, by nature, somewhere between art and science. It reminds me of Antiquity, when artists had to follow many rules and use specific techniques to produce the intended result. The main difference is that web design has ways to evaluate its success.

Never forget that web design has both goals and targets. As such, it should always be user-centered without ever losing its purpose.

In short web design is merely making successful websites! In order to do that, you will need some basic web design knowledge. That’s what I am going to teach you in this “How to make a website” series.

Be sure to follow my step-by-step lessons and you’ll soon be a web designer with solid fundamental skills!

What now?

If you enjoyed this article, please share on stumble upon and grab our RSS feed. Many thanks, and see you soon for the next article of this “How to make a website” series!