Designing Your Site - Step 8

January 11, 2009 | By admin |

This is step eight in our Starting a New Website Checklist - check out that post if you happened upon this one and want to a handy link to all of the steps in order.

I’m living proof that graphic design is something you can teach yourself. It’s just a matter of having good taste, a little inspiration and the ability to experiment with graphic design programs. Personally, I skipped college (after hardly graduating high school) and taught myself graphic design. Pretty soon I was working for Top-10 advertising agencies on Fortune 500 brands. No one can tell you you’re not an artist. Of course, you might be color blind and have zero taste too. Be honest with yourself - but if people are always complimenting you on your keen taste, designing your own site might just be for you. Future posts will go into greater detail about the nitty gritty of design. Here I’ll share some resources for getting started:

Graphic Design Software
Adobe CS4 is the industry standard for web design. It comes with, among other programs, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, and Flash. There are also free open source versions of these programs if you can’t afford Adobe’s price tag, but I highly recommend using the professional programs as they’ve been around forever and have more of a support system built around them. The open source programs work well but can be rather clunky to use.

Once your software is up and running you’ll also need some good typefaces. Sticking with the standard fonts that comes with your mac or PC is something that screams amateur.

Here are some sites where you can get some fonts:

Free fonts:
1001 Free Fonts
Urban Fonts
Abstract Fonts
Dafont

Paid Fonts:
(Paid fonts can be expensive but are worth it for their quality!)
Fonts.com

Free Images:

You’ll also need some cheap images. You can find free images to use on Flickr if you use the advanced search mode and look for images that are free for commercial use. It’s usually cool to link back to the user on Flickr so they get proper credit.

Paid Images:
iStockphoto is one of the most affordable ways to get professional quality images for your website. Most images are available for as little as $1 from professional and semi-pro photographers. Other sites like Dreamstime offer similar deals.

Royalty Free Images

Getty Images also has a vast collection of premium images that you can use exclusively, but for a steep price.

Design Resources:
If you decide not to design it yourself but instead hire a professional, here are some sites to get started:

Freelancers - These sites will have people bidding on your job and you can view their portfolios, etc. and make a decision:
Elance.com
Guru.com

Contests - This site allows you to post a bounty and designers will submit ideas and you choose a winner. Note: You will probably not get great results from this because really good designers would never use such a service.
99designs.com

Other - IncSpring is a unique service that lets you buy both the domain name and a custom logo all as one package.

Online Portfolios - Portfolios of professional designers:
Creative Shake
Coroflot
Creative Hotlist

Finally, you can always post in the gigs section of Craigslist.

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