I’ve been building websites since I was in college – so way back in 1999. I first learned HTML 4 and designed and built my alma mater’s Communications department website. It was a very simple website with two or three pages with image maps. Remember those? I think they are still in use actually in some places but not frequently.
Later I designed and built my own website (I’ve done this multiple times throughout the years), and became the web programmer at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Center for Distance Education where I built websites using HTML, PHP, and ColdFusion (another outdated technology).
I’ve built numerous websites since then for clients (as a consultant) or as part of a full time job. My design philosophy has evolved accordingly.
What is my Design Philosophy?
In a word it’s minimalist. And what I mean by that is I subscribe to the idea that a website should have just what is needed and no more. Aesthetics do play a part and are part of the design, so that should be included, but no superfluous design that is distracting.
To me every website should have a specific page devoted to a specific topic. A home page the only real exception and often has different purposes. In general though the home page is an introduction to the website with quick links.
The general three-page outline for any small website would be:
- Home
- About
- Contact
Any other content would have it’s own pages.
Design itself should be limited to a pre-defined palette of colors that work well together, with no other colors used (except in the case of photographs and other images). Fonts should likewise be limited to at least a heading font and a body font. Often I like to choose a serif heading font and a non-serif body font.
I like to ensure my web pages work well on all browsers, screen sizes, and devices. This is extremely important in an era of mobile computing and a surprising number of websites are still not friendly in either mobile or desktop format.
I’m a big believer in using external CSS code that allows you to easily change styles on multiple pages at a time and JavaScript that is modular and not integrated into the HTML code.