Website for a graphic designer
I built this website for a graphic designer friend and colleague, Serena Manda, at Four and Twenty Design.
She is a personal brand designer and visibility consultant. She is brilliant at what she does and has a lot of experience in her field.
Having a close working relationship is beneficial for us both.
Serena prepared the design, layout, fonts, and images for her website and she did a great job of keeping her design requirements simple.
Building a website for a graphic designer
I know designers prefer to have some control of their web design. We demand a design that’s pixel perfect. With websites, there are complications!
Creating a website from a visual that a graphic designer has provided is difficult if the designer doesn’t know how to build a website.
The complications of website design from a graphic design layout
Now, I don't mean to sound negative about the graphic design-web design relationship because I certainly am not. We just need to think about some issues.
Generally, websites are constructed in divs, also known as layers. They are very different from Photoshop's layers, where objects can be moved around by pixel to fit precisely.
The layers that make up a website fit into boxes like pieces of a puzzle. They build a page from the outside in, from top to bottom.
A div wrapper can encase the layers, creating a boxed or full-width effect. Layers inside the wrapper almost sit on top of one another as your eye moves down the page.
There are many tricks to get these layers to sit in the correct positions, but every trick adds code, which increases the page's download time.
WordPress websites for graphic designers
There is a high demand for WordPress websites, a CMS that enables a graphic designer to update it. Completely reasonable.
A Content Management System does add to the complications.
WordPress themes tend to have a set structure and need to be re-coded quite heavily if there are special requirements from the graphic designer.
These 'hacks' add code on top of code, once again increasing the website load time.
