Trade Secrets - Tools to Get Your Designs Started and Singing
I don’t consider myself much of a graphic designer, which I know is a weird admission for someone who is trying to design websites for a living. But in this day and age we all have to learn to take ownership of our brands and how we present ourselves to the world. The good news is there are a number of great resources out there to give your designs and ideas the lift they need to stand out among the crowd. Here is a breakdown of a few of them.
Color
Picking a great color palette I feel is a wonderful way to jumpstart your process of building your website. However, if you are like me and don’t have that magical eye for color like someone who has made their career out of interior design, or someone who simply just knows how to put together a killer outfit day in and day out, then you likely need some help in this department. Try starting here:
Adobe Color Wheel - hit refresh until you find a color you like, then play around with the radio buttons on the left to figure out some matching options. Take note of the hex codes (e.g. #224DF2 or #ffffff) for the colors you want to keep, you will need those later. Also if you are looking for a monochromatic look you will need something either much lighter or much darker to contrast your text on the page.
Cloudflare - for a more visual approach to how some of these colors will look on various parts of a web page check out this site. If you found a color or colors you liked on the adobe site you can type them in here, and it will also suggest some complimentary options for other aspects of your site (such as background colors, text colors, window colors, etc.). I must admit I find the auto-generating options mesmerizing to just sit and watch awhile.
Font pairings
A website builder like Squarespace usually has a decent amount of built-in fonts that are trendy, web-safe, and will look great on your web page. However, sometimes you need something a bit more personalized, a bit more…you. That font you saw and loved that is used by one of your favorite brands might be a pricy addition to your site when you purchase it from a foundry. But the good news is google fonts offers a whole bunch of great options that you can add to your site for free.
I personally love to use this site to get inspiration: Ultimate google font pairings.
Keep in mind adding in custom fonts takes a small amount of css copy and pasting to make work, however there are hosts of articles out there to help guide you through the process, or just shoot me an email and I can give you a quick rundown anytime!
Logo and Element Design
You have your colors, you have your fonts, you are on your way to designing your very own personal brand (congratulations, you are now a marketer). Now you just need to get yourself a logo, and we aren’t talking a Nike swoop or a Twitter bird. Really all you want is a nice way to display your name with some sort of visual hook so you can create some consistency across various mediums. A lot of designers jump into the adobe suite of software (illustrator, inDesign, photoshop) to fine-tune their concepts, but chances are you aren’t dishing out $50 a month to pay for those. Then let me introduce you to your next best friend - Canva.
This site is basically adobe for dummies and has a bunch of pre-designed elements that you can adapt for your needs. Want to design a decent looking poster for an upcoming recital? Use Canva. Want to get ideas on how to layout your site? Use Canva. Need a simple logo designed? Use (you get it by now). And even better most of the features are free, however the pro deal isn’t bad at $12/month (at least compared to Adobe’s prices).
Built-in Template and Tools
Now once again Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, and even WordPress all have built-in template tools that will help you realize a site that will likely function well and will look clean out of the box. But if you spend enough time looking at websites you start to realize pretty quickly which ones are thrown together with baked-in templates and which ones have those extra personalized touches. The good news is adding in most of the above won’t take any custom coding and will help your site stand out from the 1.86 billion websites currently in existence.
Have other great resources you have found you want to share? Post them in the comments below!
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