Web design master class

Overview

This course is for people who find themselves with web design responsibilities but who have had no formal design training.

The course will highlight the essential building blocks of good design, what works and what doesn’t on screen and how to make the best use of type, colour and space.

You will also cover usability issues and highlight how to solve common web design problems. This course is designed to help you develop new skills and improve your confidence when making design decisions.

Required skills and experience.

Some experience of using web sites.
The ability to use at least one mainstream web browser.
Some understanding of basic web page building.

Duration

2 Days.

Standard course price

£450 pp excluding VAT

For more information on pricing please go to my rates page.

Day one

What is design?

Examples of good and bad design
Questions to ask before you design anything
Defining your audience
Maintaining a consistent brand identity
Good navigation

The essential building blocks of web design

Relevance
Contrast
Proportion
Consistency
Restraint and detail

Short cuts to good design

Maintaining a swipe file
Good information architecture

Laying out a web page

HTML and web architecture
Using web applications such as
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Organisational tools
Using white space
Rules, borders, boxes and drop shadows
Maintaining online and offline consistency

Day two

The power of type

Constraints of type on the web
Text legibility
Text hyperlinks
Special type effects
Less is more

Working with colour

Choosing colours
Colour psychology
Developing a colour theme
Using Hexadecimal colour
Understanding RGB
Web safe colours

Effective use of images

Using images for maximum impact
Optimising images
Using images as navigation aides
Creating texture and gradient fills with images

Solving common design problems

Minimising text
How fonts work on the web
Browser and plug-in compatibility
Cross platform issues