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With all that theory now planted inside your brain, we begin our first step towards the actual construction of the site. You must delve deep inside your soul now and ask yourself: Who am I designing this site for? Following the rule form follows function becomes a critical objective now. Different design schemes must be adopted depending on who you want to come to your site. Are you designing a corporate site that will offer services to customers? You'd need to deliver viable services over the Internet possibly using CGI, and the site would need to be very modem-friendly. Maybe it's an internal site that your employees will use to access information like when their timesheets are due or what's for lunch down in the cafeteria. You wouldn't need to worry about modem's if the entire office has an Ethernet network, so you could splurge a little as long as the content was delivered and the site was still highly functional. Maybe you're looking for a job and want to show off your web-savvy design skills. Or perhaps you're creating a site for you and your friends. If the site's going to be your resume, a professional and polished look is required, with an emphasis on mostly on clarity. But if it's something just you and your friends are going to be looking at, go crazy and hog as much bandwidth as you can get away with. Ultimately, you must realize that you have no control over your site. The user has absolute control: from the size of her monitor, the fonts she has installed and the browser she uses. What you see isn't always the same thing someone on the other side of the planet or even next door to you sees. Design your site to accommodate them.
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This site was created by Adam Fuller especially for students of the UNC School of Journalism's JOMC 050 Class and anyone else who may be interested. For more information, please contact daikat@email.unc.edu |