Cutting edge and savvy graphics and interactive interface can create high impact and attractive website for your visitors. Web designs must be user friendly and distinctive and professional to some extent. Not only can an attractive website enhance the turnover of your business website, but it can also gain potential ads if you succeed in directing traffic to your website. Therefore, the importance of inspiring graphics cannot be denied.
However, while designing it must be noted that where graphics hold importance, the significance of content and layout must not be overlooked. Your website must be well balanced and stable. Before we investigate the software for web designing, we shall illustrate the principles of a well balanced website.
Principles of a well balanced website
Below we have pin-pointed some criterion that a well-balanced web-site must fulfill:
1) Layout, color scheme, and theme must be in harmony with the organization who owns the website.
2) Space must be effectively used, giving relevant information and prompting visitors to investigate and open pages further.
3) The interface must be user friendly. The website must be user-focused and must pay sufficient attention to embed controls to facilitate the user.
4) The website need not laud itself extensively, rather the web design must speak for its design perfection.
5) The design must be organized. The website must be divided into relevant subsections. For example, if it’s a models, artists or any website designing corporation, people will be most interested in the portfolio section. Hence this section must be carefully designed. Similarly for a web-hosting site one will be interested in the ‘Service’ section.
Graphics, as discussed, hold a very important role in web-designing. Here we have overviewed the five most popular graphic and animation software that one can use to enhance the website.
Adobe Photoshop: When you browse over the internet you will find literally countless website graphics built with Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop, though previously was intended for photo-retouching, is now extensively used for creating web-graphics. With the upcoming versions of Photoshop the features used to create graphics are enhanced making it a premier web-graphic suit. Today, Photoshop is unbeaten in development of web-graphics.
Adobe Flash: Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) is one of the most well-liked software for animations or Motion graphics. The merger of Adobe and Macromedia was announced on April 2005 when Adobe acquired Flash and other software. Adding animation and motion-graphics can be a very quick and easy way to captivate the user. Flash animations can add intrigue to your message. However one thing very important to note is that information embedded in flash files are invisible to search-engines. We discuss using Flash or Motion graphics in another post.
Microsoft Silverlight: Microsoft Silverlight is another tool that is in contention with contemporary Flash. This is also software for motion-graphics by Microsoft. It permits programming animations in .NET frame and allows programmers to built Rich Internet Applications. A very detailed account of Silverlight and its potential has been posted here.
Adobe Illustrator: Adobe Illustrator is vector graphic generator software. It is also being used for print and multimedia extensively on industrial levels. Today we have Adobe Illustrator CS 5 available. Vector art is graphics art for new generation web-designing; therefore gaining expertise with Illustrator can be very beneficial for individuals who seek their career in graphics designing and web-designing.
Adobe Fireworks: Fireworks is vector graphic software that is aided with special web tools. There are number of such tools that help optimization of graphics if you intend to publish them on the web. Fireworks is a versatile graphic software that resembles Adobe Flash in appearance. With Fireworks you can create mockups, edit the graphics for screen resolution, and optimize and export the graphics to HTML or CSS in a very straightforward way. The distinguishing feature of Fireworks is that working with Fireworks you can maintain a good balance between file-size and quality. Furthermore, it provides web tools and optimization facilities. Optimization reduces the time required for a web browser to load an image on a web page.
Whenever selecting software for your graphical requirements, you must select the program that has maximum online support in the form of tutorials and online FAQs. Popular software like Photoshop have usually most assets ready out of the box. If not, you should find a tutorial to match your requirements.
Other software include 3D Studio Max. 3DS Max is software used by professionals to model animations. It is developed by AutoDesk. It is mostly used by videogame developers and also by few web developers; there is a bunch of graphic software like CorelDraw and Paint Shop etc. But I must state that Photoshop, Illustrator & Flash have a vast range of online demos, and tutorials. Moreover, if you are willing to spend money you can also find cheap and good quality graphics for your website if you select Flash as your development tool.
