Site Design: Design Needs

STEP TWO: MAKE A LIST OF BASIC DESIGN NEEDS

As you begin to think more specifically about design, you will need to make decisions about a few things:

• The basic palette and color scheme for the site.
• The basic fonts choices (I recommend no more than two fonts).
• The basic layout of the main page (we'll get to inner pages later).
• The basic navigation on the main page (again, inner nav will be later).
• Any basic graphics you think you might need.

These decisions will be informed, of course, by the overall mood or theme you want for the site, so in some ways that's STEP ONE-POINT-FIVE. But the theme/mood is totally organic with the decisions above; that is, you can make these decision first, which will decide the theme, or you can decide the theme, which will in turn help to make these decisions.

For now, just keep two lists handy. The first is your rough notes on content areas you'll need and the second is this list of basic design needs. Once you have those in hand (just about literally—I tend to keep a notebook I use to take notes and sketch out sites) you can start looking for inspiration.