Features of a brand include what colors, fonts, sizes, pictures, cardstock, or even the amount of space that is used when advertising. The most important aspect of their advertising campaign is most usually their logo. Things that you need to think about before developing their website is: Do they have a logo? Will their logo look good on the web? Am I using their logo the same way that it is being used in their other advertising campaigns?

If you’re building this website for yourself or for a new business, most likely you do not have a logo to work with and you’ll have to create one. Since you’ve already chosen a color scheme and a layout for the website you are about to develop, you should begin thinking of logo ideas–if one doesn’t exist yet of course. A logo, although usually seems extravagant, is actually a very simple process. It’s generally a simple text version of the company’s name (i.e. Amazing Design Secrets) in a bold and clear font that sometimes has some type of emblem or symbol next to it. For the sake of building their website, my advice is to keep it simple. There are marketing companies that charge thousands and thousands of dollars for a simple logo which you can throw together in five minutes (using techniques I will show you how to do later on in the book). If you are building this website for an established business that already has a logo, be sure to incorporate aspects of the logo into your design. As I mentioned, branding is very important when developing any advertising entity, so it is very important to follow these trends strictly.

One exercise that I found very helpful when developing a logo for my clients is, with the same paper method we used earlier, to draw out exactly what you’re imagining in your head. It’s okay if the idea that you came up with is simple because you can always design around the logo no matter how simple the idea is or how ugly it is.

Here is an insider secret that designers don’t want the world to know when their building websites and advertising campaigns, they don’t always build them themselves. Although we’ll never admit that we do this, there are several services on the internet that generate royalty free logos for very cheap prices.

Design Secret

Logo Creator Studio – Logo Creator Studio has some fantastic logos very low prices. If you’re in a hurry to build logo so you can get started on developing a website, I would definitely recommend this shortcut.

Whether you decided to develop or follow an existing brand, doing so is the key to your client’s success, which means its key to your success as a professional web designer. Whether you’re learning to become a web designer as a trade, to start a business, or to just have a hobby, consistency will bring you far more benefits in the long run and will make you more money in the long run.

Finding Colors

Color is the most amazing gift that we have as human beings. It allows us to feel the words we are reading and the actions we see. It’s important to use colors that are legible, relevant, and appropriate for the project you are about to start. There are people who take entire classes totally devoted to the subject, but I am going to teach you the basics of color theory as it relates to web design.

The colors we see in life are based on a color harmony. I could sit here and draw out a color wheel like you probably learned in grade school, but I’d rather teach you how to find these colors based off of your feelings. Lets say that you’re about to build a website for a landscaping company who sculpts gardens, lawns, and creates beautiful outdoor art for their clients. The best way to find colors for your client is to take a look at their work or portfolio. It’s a wonderful way of examining their business and getting inspired by their work at the same time. As your holding that beautiful 8 x 10 picture of their masterpiece in your hand close your eyes and start to derive colors from the picture you just saw, what did you see? I saw green, brown, bright pinks and purples, and that is what I’m going to base my designs upon.

You would be surprised on how relevant your first instincts are in this business. They’re essential to the success of any art you create, because you have to imagine the objects in your head first before you can process the information. Let’s try another experiment with color, and this one is much more on the creative side, rather than the business side.

Imagine, for a moment, you’re favorite flower in the world. I’m imagining a white orchid with small pink spots scattered across in a rugged pattern. Now take that beautiful flower and focus on everything around it, the rest of the garden, the dirt, the grass, the trees, but still focus on that beautiful flower. Start naming the beautiful colors you see (but don’t write them down yet). Now, imagine that there is a woman sitting on a bench in that garden and she’s crying. Start to analyze why she’s crying, perhaps her significant other broke up with her, perhaps she’s lost a loved one, perhaps she’s stressed at work and needs a reprieve in the garden. Now, write down the new colors you see. I guarantee that you’re no longer seeing colors of pinks and greens, but are instead introducing bolder and darker colors to compliment that flower. That, my friend, is what complimentary colors are. It’s taking aspects of an object and making them fit for your situation. I can design an entire website devoted to the situation. Perhaps is “Girl on Bench Recovery Center” or maybe “Getting Therapy from the Outdoors, Inc.”, regardless what you want to call this website, you’ll dealing with thoughts, people, objects, situations, and most of all–feelings. If you choose the wrong color to correspond to this; you can change the entire meaning of the situation. So, you are the artist and scientist and you get to choose which colors go together. Take it as a responsibility to the future of this website that the colors you choose are the best and that they always make a difference whatever service or product you are promoting and trying to sell.

Do yourself and your client a favor, develop multiple color schemes to go by. With the skills I teach you in this book, you’ll be able to easily change entire color schemes out, even after the website is completed and published to the web. There is no such thing as a bad idea, only not so good ones.

Design Secret:

Palette Generator – Palette generator is a free service, where you can upload a favorite photo and create a color palette based off of the colors that are included in that photo. If you are struggling with getting the idea in your head put to good use, this is a great tool to help you accomplish your color goals. http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/colors.php

Finding a Layout

Finding a good layout is the second step to building a powerful and usable online presence. Notice while you’re surfing the web looking at websites that at the very core of most web designs is a cookie cutter approach to its layout. You can do absolutely anything with one row for a company’s logo, another row (with individual columns) for the website’s navigation menu, and a third row with two columns to drop website content and pictures in. However, unless you’d like all of your websites to look exactly the same, it’s a good idea to draw your website’s lay out on paper before you get started. Here are a couple of ideas for website layout to get you started.

What do you notice about these layouts? If you’re thinking that they’re all a bunch of squares, you’ve aced the exam of website layouts. These layouts represent 90% of all websites on the internet today. Of course there are infinite 12 possibilities when it comes to putting your content together, and these are only a few examples, but the concept of putting your information onto a grid is a format that the human brain can easily understand. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which we will talk about later in this course, is derived from the concept of using squares for layout design—and that very concept has existed in art for thousands of years. Draw your website out on paper, begin to experiment on how you would like your website to be laid out and what colors you would like to use on your design. Come up with several ideas and concepts and choose the one that works best for you. Associate a color palette, which you chose in the last section, with layout you just created. Imagine these colors with your layout and put together an actual website in your imagination. Think in your mind all of the details you see, but don’t think too hard because the content brainstorming is about to begin.