Decent web design is a lot harder than it looks

John — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:42:15 +0000

Today’s task was a bit of web design. I’d sketched an idea out on paper and I wanted to do a mock up in photoshop. That’s where the problems started. I’m not that great at photoshop and it also quickly became apparent that the design looks rubbish (at least with my present skills of replicating what’s in my head. A lot of people seem to think that creating a website is easy and that one person can do all of it. This was a misconception I first experienced when doing a Shell Step work placement 2 summers ago with a company. It seemed that websites were quite popular things for people on their placements to be doing and unfortunately that’s what I ended up doing. A similar miss conception is that computer scientists will be good at it too. We’re not. Don’t get me wrong, we can understand how they work but it’s not exactly part of the skills set.

I’m not even after anything complicated. It’s basically a search engine homepage e.g. google, altavista (remember them?) or ask.com. Maybe I’m over stretching myself and should pay someone else to do it. I’m acutely aware of how important the appearance of a site is, especially when it’s the only shop front. I’d still like to have a go at it (and not blatantly copy someone else’s!).

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Decent web design is a lot harder than it looks