Thoughts on Web Design

I don't plan on becoming too much of a professional in the field of design but I hope to get a general idea of what looks good and how generally everything works. My goals are to learn the basics so that if I create web pages or blogs for students and parents in my classroom it will be clear what message I am trying to get across. I will also keep in mind the different connection speeds and experience with technology that both my students and their parents have.

I am interested in all aspects and in general just how everything works together so smoothly. The speed and ease of the internet are mind blowing to me. I find it especially interesting that each site has a different address that can be retrieved at the drop of a hat and that someone is behind the scenes of every site and took the time to create each set of text and picture element.

I am a very patient and organized person and also have the interest to create web pages which are all very important traits of a web designer. Web design is a slow process and everything has to go in a certain order so for everything to look right, the designer has to pay close attention and accept that everything is probably not going to go properly the first time around.

I will definitely need to brush up on my design skills in general. I still struggle with the look of a page including text styles, color schemes, and placement of objects. I will also need to learn more about inserting other types of media and what all of the different phrases and letters of web design mean.

I already have a scanner, a pretty up to date computer and some general graphics software. I'm not sure that I will go out and buy everything right away because with all of the free software that is out there, I can create a pretty decent site. If I do decide to go further I will need to get some sort of an HTML editor, extra memory and possibly some multimedia tools if I want to put in sound or videos. I think another great tool to have would be some type of web page authoring because that would make the process much easier. If I had a program with some templates this would help immensely because I wouldn't have to create everything from scratch.

I think getting into web design can be an overwhelming and expensive hobby or job but if you just take your time and realize that you don't have to be an expert right away and can learn a lot of it as you go, things will go much more smoothly. After all, web design should be something fun so having the desire to start is a step in the right direction.