The first thing to do before getting to work on a web site, be it the
humblest in the world personal page, your business outlet, or even a paid
job for someone else, is to surf as much as you can. Even with a
great talent you risk producing a flop if you don't have a good notion
of what the Web is currently up to.
Probably the primary object of your examination will be the sites of
your competitors, the ones that your site will be compared to in the first
place. You're going to find (if not found already) that the quality
of design varies incredibly. Just take any industry sector and go
down through a fairly complete list of companies. A few sites really
shine; quite a number are a torture to designer's eye; the majority of
the rest are best described as "average."
If you aim at something above the don't-have-anything-to-say level, then
there's another type of sites that are a must to visit and analyze: the
manors of established designers. Those haute couture strongholds.
Design for designers. Sites with an attitude.
If you are really interested in web design, the experience of pilgrimage
to these sites may open your eyes on many things. It is immensely
instructive to compare "practical" sites where design is one of the means
to communicate something with "artistic" presentations where the thing
to communicate is design itself.
Added quotation marks around both "practical" and "artistic" to show
that these words not to imply that the first are "dull" or the latter
"useless." In fact, some essentially "practical" sites show more
artistic taste than some "artistic" ones. Nevertheless, the contrast
stemming from the different objectives is often striking.
The design aspects chosen for this study are layout and typography where,
the design-oriented sites exhibit the best of their creativity .
However, there's a lot to speak about that's not covered with the chosen
approach.
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