Getting Started with Web Design: A Beginner's Guide
Last Updated :
28 Mar, 2024
Becoming a Web Designer is a journey and like all journeys, this journey also has its highs and lows, benefits, and some not-so-good things. Just like any other field, in web design, you would begin at level one where you are a beginner and then you move into the next level where you become a professional, and then finally you reach the level where you are the master of the core web design concepts and design is more like an intuition to you.
Getting Started with Web DesignIn this article, we will discuss how to get started with the web design journey and how to face the hurdles that come your way in this journey. But first, let's take a look at what Web Design is.
What is Web Design?
Web design is the process of creating websites and web pages that combine aesthetics and functionality to provide a user-friendly experience. It involves a wide range of elements such as layout, color scheme, typography, and imagery, all orchestrated to convey a specific message or facilitate certain actions.
As an integral part of the digital landscape, web design combines technical skills with creative vision to produce websites that meet or exceed user expectations.
How to Learn Web Design
In order to learn Web Design efficiently, one can follow the below given steps to get an understanding of Web Design.
1. Understanding the basics
The first thing you should start with is to get your basics right, these basics will be the base that you will build your design career upon. Basics of web design include Layout, Navigation, Typography, Images, and Visual Elements. Make sure to have a decent knowledge of these topics, other than this you should also understand visual hierarchy, content writing, grid-based layout, and interface designing.
2. Understanding UI/UX Design
Once you are done with the basics of design, we can move to understanding what UI/UX design actually is, UI and UX are two interdependent terms where UI design or User Interface design refers to the process of creating the visual interfaces for a software application. And UX design or User Experience design refers to the the process of creating the experiences or the interactions that a user has with a product.
The underlying principle of UI design is to design the interface between the actually working of the application or website and the user, meanwhile the underlying principle of UX design is to keep the needs of the user prior and improve the interaction of the user and the product keeping this in mind.
UI/UX design is about designing the entire application or website keeping the user at the center of the design and making sure that our design solves the problems of the user. Make sure to have a clear understanding of UI/UX design.
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3. Understanding Design Principles
Now the next step in the process of getting started with web design would be to learn about the various design principles that envolved in web design, some of the most important ones are mentioned as follows:
- Balance: Balance simply means visual harmony. Good balance is like trying to create a Visual Harmony on your website.
- Alignment: Alignment is the way in which elements are placed on the website. The most common usage of alignment is with text alignment, making the text written left, center, right or justify align.
- Proximity: Proximity of elements means how close the elements are to other elements.
- Repetition: Repetition is basically creating a pattern in user's mind looking at the user interface.
- Contrast: Contrast is a design principle where we try and differentiate one or more elements/visuals from others by differentiating them by help of colors, fonts, typography, repetition, alignment, or anything else.
- Accessibility: Accessibility means designing for everybody, keeping in mind the people who might have some special needs and taking care of those needs in the product experience and interface.
To learn more: Web Design Principles
4. Color Theory
The next web design principle we will learn is Color theory, It is the study of using colors in order to convey an emotion, create a visual effect, or change human perception is known as Color Theory.
Within Web Design, Color Theory will be crucial when you will design your projects because using colors irresponsibly may lead to miscommunicating our message or communicating the wrong message. Color theory helps us to start our color palettes. It's an important foundation to understand for creating beautiful color palettes and foundational for a professional-looking design.
To learn more: Color Theory in Web Design
5. Typography
Typography simply is a technique in user interface design to create readable, appealing, attractive, and easy-to-eye text for users to read. Typography plays an integral role in any website's design. Other than the visual elements, text is the most important form to communicate with the users, sometimes, text is even more important than the visuals itself. Therefore, we as user interface designers must focus on this aspect of UI design. Good typography is soothing to the eyes and creates a long-lasting impression on the minds of the user.
To learn more: Typography in Web Design
Choosing the right tools for Web Design is crucial, the tools you use will define how flexible you are with your designing skills so make sure to choose them wisely, few of the most popular web designing tools are:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Figma
- Adobe Illustrator
- Canva
- Sketch
- Wix
- Adobe Indesign
- Adobe After Effects
- Affinity Designer
7. Responsive Design
Responsive design is a method of designing where you design and develop your website or app which would adjust itself accordingly to various screen sizes. You as designer must learn how to implement responsive design since it is no more a best practice but essential for the success for the website or application since now most of the visitors to websites come from smaller screen devices.
To learn more: Responsive Web Design
8. Practice & Build a Portfolio
Now that you have known web design till an intermediate level. Build some projects from scratch, the better way of doing this would be to work for some startups for free. Building projects will help you understand the entire process of web design and well as have something to showcase in your resume.
Everything that you learn, keep on posting it on your socials, specially LinkedIn and Twitter since there is a community of designers active in LinkedIn and Twitter. Start building your resume and applying for companies and startups, you can also register yourself in freelancing websites like Upwork. From here onwards, keep on learning and implementing whatever you learn in your projects and you will surely have a great career ahead of you.
Click here to learn more about Portfolio Design.
9. Learn Basic Coding
Coding refers to write a set of programs in programming languages that would bring your design into a real software product. It is not expected from you as a designer to code your websites and applications but having basic knowledge of coding languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript really helps in understanding how the design you created will eventually be implemented.
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While not strictly necessary, formal education through online courses, bootcamps, or even degree programs can provide structured learning and more in-depth knowledge.
Conclusion
The key idea for getting started with Web Design can be explained under three steps -
- Step 1 is to understand how the software part works
- Step 2 is going to be the design skills which is knowing what you actually want to build and design using the software
- Step 3 three is to practice.
With web design, you can have a great impact not in just your user's experience but also in your career. web design is a field that is in high demand and this demand will only keep on increasing as more and more business are coming online. Make sure to note the points, like the article for future reference and follow the points discussed in the article to get started in the field of web design.
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