Just to avoid confusion, I thought I'd have a rant about the difference between base page design and base page creation.
You'll see both on your web build timetable.
The base page design comes first, of course. This is when our creative director creates a 'sketch' of what your website will look like.
When I say 'sketch', this is computer-generated, of course, and the 'sketches' will be shown to you for your approval.
The reason that the image at the top of this rant is of a car factory is because for some reason, it was a car analogy that came to mind. Think of a car designer's sketch of his new car design; we've all seen them at some time or another.
So the car designer creates a lovely sketch of what his new car will look like. Then comes the tricky part; the factory has to then make that drawing into a working machine.
Are you with the analogy so far? The designer creates a sketch, then it has to be made into something that works - like a website, to take a handy example.
In fact, let's just think about a website as a machine for a moment. (Sometimes, I imagine that clients think that a website is a series of glorified Word documents!)
A website, and I apologise for stating the obvious, has to work; even a very simple, basic website. When a viewer clicks a link that says PRODUCTS on this simple basic website they expect, quite rightly, to be taken to a page that shows products. When they click on an email link, they expect an email to open up. When they use a form, they expect the results to be emailed and to be taken to a confirmation page. If a link graphic changes from blue to green when they click on the PRODUCTS page, they expect the same thing to happen with every link.
They expect, without realising it, that the copy will be easy to read, that the page will be quick to load and that it will load correctly whatever browser/platform combination they are using.
Then there are little things, such as:
That they can move from form field to form field using the tab key
That when they bookmark a page, the title will be accurate in their bookmark list
That they can navigate the site easily
That the information is well presented and accurate
That there aren't any funky characters caused by bad coding
If they are colorblind, they still expect to be able to use your site
If they have physical handicaps, they expect to be able to use your site
If they aren't using images, they expect to be able to use your site
They expect, most important, to be able to find you in search engines. A site doesn't only have to work for your viewers, it has to work for search engines too.
Now, to make the site work, there's a lot of coding to be done, obviously. But let's look again at that "sketch" again. Just as the sketch of the car has to be broken down into millions of components to make up a car, so a basic webpage has to be broken into millions (OK, thousands) of components to make the webpage work. Yes, just one page is made up of thousands of images, cells, codes etc. This is base page creation - it is a mixure of coding, graphics and much more to ensure that your site works.
Um ... it's all pretty tricky, too!
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