subject: Web Design Studio: The Basis Of A Creative Enterprise [print this page] Unlike a photographers studio, a web design studio is not a physical location or space. It does not have walls and lighting equipment with strategically placed computers. It is a design software a program written to help web designers create imagery and put together pages for websites, emails, and other assorted online marketing stuff. There is a specific software called Web Studio (it comes in versions) but the term Web Design Studio is more generic in the sense that it refers to a genre of software meant to assist graphic designers and coders in performing their work.
Designing websites takes skill and knowledge. Web design studio software is generally developed to help take the guesswork out of creating designs. Whether it is coding through HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or playing with image elements to give the website the perfect look and feel, most of these software are designed with in-built tools that make life easy for the designer and coder. Some of the biggest name brands in this market are Adobe with its Creative Suite, Microsoft Expression Studio, and QuarkXPress.
Some fundamental concepts of design have not changed when it comes to creating web pages. While most web design software offers tools to manipulate, place, and modify the image or design, the thought behind them still comes from designers. Website design is not an automated process; it is a creative process that requires human understanding of design and a sense of how a person interacts with information online. Listed below are some of the fundamentals of web design that really have not changed over time.
One of the biggest elements of web design is balance. With a web design studio, elements are put together to create a design. These elements can be light (text) or heavy (images, databases etc). Great web design is mostly about keeping the balance placing the light objects on screen with the heavy and achieving an overall harmony.
There are three kinds of balance that one needs to keep in mind while designing the website Symmetrical balance is about matching the elements together. The left half of the screen and the right half should look like a cohesive pattern without being replicated exactly. Asymmetrical balance is trickier. By using the right combinations of colours, shapes, and textures in the layout the result can be very striking. Discordant website designs are usually reserved for unusual content and movement.
Other elements that are usually included in the design aspect of a web design studio software are contrast (between images and fonts, shapes and textures, sizes, and colours), emphasis (focussing or guiding eyeballs on a certain aspect of the website), rhythm (repeating elements to achieve cohesion and consistency in the look and feel of the website), and unity (grouping together similar design elements and spacing the different ones in standalone or highlighted spots).
