Author: Nicole
Date: August 21, 2008 at 2:15 pm

When creating a website, there are a couple ways to go about it. There are pros and cons to both; it’s really just a matter of figuring out what’s going to work best for the project you’re working on and the resources available to you.

For our public website, I dove in headfirst, with a design in mind, and started coding. I didn’t have a mockup to reference, I hadn’t drawn anything out, I just let the design evolve as I coded it. The result was a first draft that looks drastically different than our final public version. Why? Well, when you design a website in this way, it leaves lots of room for tweaking and editing. This can be a good or a bad thing. For us, it meant literally HUNDREDS of edits as we obsessed over every fine detail until it looked exactly the way we had envisioned it. In the final moments before the website’s launch, we were STILL tweaking the color scheme.

As we work on our current project, we’ve taken a different approach. With the help and hard work of our graphic artist, we have mockups, created in photoshop, of the layout of each page. We know exactly how it’s going to look, and all we have to do is write the code to complement it. Sure, there will still be some editing to make sure everything’s perfect, but it the end, the finished project will look very similar to (if not exactly alike) our mockups.

So which approach is best? The answer isn’t set in stone, as there are many factors to consider.

Do you have an experienced graphic artist to work with? You don’t want the design of the site to be hindered by a mockup that is sub-par because of a lack of graphics experience. When we first started working on our site, we didn’t have a graphic artist, and thus creating a mockup to work off of was impractical.

Do you need to pitch the idea to a client before you start working? Creating a static mockup can save a lot of time over making a live website to show your client, especially if you don’t know whether they’ll buy the idea or not. A lot of times a client will want to know what they’re getting before they invest in your services, and mockups will keep you from putting a lot of unnecessary work into something you might not get paid for. Similarly, having a mockup to work from will keep you from deviating from the idea you originally pitched to the client, so you’re sure they’ll be happy with the finished project you present to them.

How much time do you have? If you don’t have a strict deadline and your client is flexible, sometimes your design can actually be hindered by following a mockup. By letting the design evolve as you write the code, sometimes your finished project turns out even better than your original plan (as was the case with our website!) The downside of this is that by editing and tweaking and redoing things, you’re using up a lot of time. Also, if your client has a defined expectation in mind, they may not like what you come up with, even if YOU think it’s better.

The most important thing is to realize that every project, and every web designer, is different. These are just some pointers to keep in mind.

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Categories: Our Web Site, web design