5 Fresh Web Design Tips

If you want to take your web design skills and strategies to a new level, you should strive to permanently learn more, and refresh your knowledge of things you work with on a daily basis.

If you are looking for standard web design advice, I suggest you research that topic before giving these 5 fresh web design tips a try.

1. Design for all Possibilities

When designing, you should take into account that other people will work using your web design. They will have different approaches, and those approaches may not be similar to what you predicted when designing.

The content that will be posted on the website is going to be diverse, so you need to design for the extreme versions of a writing style. A title isn’t going to always be at around 30 characters, like you designed for, so you should always design with a sense of flexibility.

If you think that only a certain number of characters would work in order for your design to look impeccable, then you should discuss this with your client and his content writing representative.

Allow your design to fit the majority of possibilities, and you will avoid having to go back on a project to fix these types of issues.

2. Focus on the Profitable Outcome, Rather than the Technique

As web designers, we sometimes easily forget that those who hire us are usually not up to date with the latest code or techniques. They want you to convince them that your work will have a positive effect on their business.

You can go ahead and learn everything new that there is to learn, but when you’re dealing with the people that want your services, focus on what these techniques can do for their business, and not on the techniques themselves.

Don’t highlight only your technical skills, because some clients won’t be able to make the connection between your use of CSS3 and responsive code, and the benefits that this brings to their business. You have to make these benefits loud and clear for them.

3. Use Writing to Improve your Design Skills

Writing is the most accessible form of communication. Working on this aspect can have several positive effects on your professional and personal life.

Through writing you can add a solid foundation to your communication skills and you can learn a lot about yourself, and your work. After putting your ideas and thoughts down onto paper, it will be easier to find a good way of expressing them in a coherent manner.

You can even avoid the creative block that we all run into once in a while. Writing your ideas down with a random flow will help you organize them later and even remember them better. It’s easier to organize written thoughts, rather than trying to introduce them directly into your work.

4. Make Criticism Your Friend

This may be the hardest web design tip to apply. We’ve all gotten unsolicited advice from others regarding our design. It’s hard to not take criticism personally when the whole design is the result of your work, and the use of your skills.

Try to take a step back and consider two facts: you’re way too involved in the design (after working for hours on it) to be able to see potential improvements that it needs; you often find a number of designs that you think you could improve with simple solutions.

Our web design knowledge and the fact that we do this kind of work on a daily basis means that we can’t use the web like any other normal person. You can see flaws and come up with improvement ideas for each website you visit. And there’s nothing wrong with that!

You can make criticism your friend by understanding that people are just trying to help. They will have a clear look at your design, and it will be easier for them to notice slight imperfections. Use the criticism to your advantage. And if you think their ideas don’t work for your design, just explain your professional point of view with your own reasoning on that matter.

5. Look for Answers in Other Business Areas

If you want your work to stand out, you’ll have to approach techniques that make you stand out. Learning what everybody else is learning will turn you into an average web designer. You have to go above and beyond the limits of your own industry.

The best approach you can take is to research answers in places that are not specifically meant for you. As a web designer you are an artist. Art comes along with its own “professional shortcomings”, like the creative block. You can learn how other artists deal with this issue, by studying writers or actors.

Read books on topics that are likely to overlap your main work interests. Adding new sources of information, along with what all you and your co-workers know, will help you take the lead. Explore areas like: architecture, writing, interior design, animation, and so on. If you succeed in opening up your view on a wide variety of issues, you can look at things from more than one angle. You can be the one that people will always want to have on their team.

Choose The Hard Way!

It may not be a popular piece of advice, but taking the hard way is the thing that will most likely separate you from others. Avoid doing what everyone else is doing, and create your own path. Web design isn’t easy if you want to be great at it. If you’re going to work on improving yourself, make sure you end up being the best!