Web Designer Photoshop Skills
This newly turned Friday has brought a little inspiration to me. With the holidays and associated mayhem (making dinners, traveling, etc…) I hadn’t even done as much as opened Photoshop.
First off, I need to get some things out the way. Photoshop CS on the Mac… sucks. It’s what I have, so I live with it. Lets just say for me to get CS3 working I’d have to reformat. Catch my drift?
So, I finally get around to messing around with some layouts I have sitting around. While gathering dust always seems to be their purpose, I felt like trying to make some use out of them. I ended up with a blank canvas, albeit some nice text in the middle. I was thinking, “this could use something fancy.”
… Something Fancy
Oh, wait. Something fancy… not in my repertoire. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve come to realize the true extent to my Adobe® Photoshop® Imaging Software skills. I may use the program extensively, but if you take a look at what I really do, it really explains my bite size bag of tricks.
This actually doesn’t present any real short term problems for me. In fact the only thing really bothering me is my sticking “L” key and that my Mighty Mouse won’t scroll down. Why? Because all I do is draw boxes. Seriously, look at any site I’ve ever designed. No fancy elements, no swooshes or effects. Just boxes with colours.
Maybe you do this too. In fact, 95% of all web design is just drawing boxes. It helps that you know where to put them, the size of them, the whole colour scheme and typography, as well as considerations for actual development, but hey- it’s just boxes.
Grid Inspired
I like when things line up. I never work to a true grid per se, but you can see the grid “influence” in my work. Assuming you’re not in an RSS reader, take a look at where you’re reading now. It’s basically two boxes, in a box. A little box on top and some more to the right. That sums up this design, but does it look bad? I don’t think I’d be doing this if it did.
All This Means…
This late night realization might seem random to you, but look at it this way:
Simplify.
All your design woes can be solved with going back to wireframes and just plopping some boxes on a white canvas. The whole pencil to paper thing combined with wireframes and outlines is a part of many great designer’s processes for a reason. If you’re stuck on a complicated issue, just come back to coloured boxes. In the end that;s what everything you see on the web is.
You show me any website and I’ll show the coloured boxes.
Goodbye ‘07
I’ll be leaving Toronto tomorrow for Montreal to celebrate the New Year with family and some nice Greek food (I’m not Greek, but you can’t go wrong with the food) and that will make this my last entry of 2007. 250 posts for year on the button. Not bad.
I’m going to have to make my resolution to get organized, focussed and prioritize. I managed to get an easy semester in terms of work load, but that only means that come February it’s going to increase ten fold. Sort of a “live up to your academic potential” thing, eh?
Leave a comment
Henry
December 28th, 2007 at 7:24 AM
Hmm suppose it is ha ha. Like apple.com all boxes, this site all boxes, my site all boxes… Get the trend?
Deron Sizemore
December 28th, 2007 at 9:12 AM
I was thinking about this myself a while back. I’m pretty good with Photoshop, but I really don’t do anything fancy with it for my sites. I draw boxes and then turn the boxes into code, that’s about it. I don’t have the knowledge (just haven’t cared to learn) to draw all the fancy swirls and designs such that you see on some sites around. I’m sure it’s not overly difficult to do though. It’s probably just a matter of knowing the steps to produce a certain effect, not really having any super duper Photoshop skills.
I’ve been learning a little about grid design too. I think like you, that most of my designs are based on a grid like layout, but it’s not a true grid in the sense of the meaning. I’ll have to do some more research on grids because I don’t understand everything about them just yet.
dave
December 29th, 2007 at 2:51 PM
Great post! Will make sure to share it with the rest of my Florida web design….thanks
Dallas Office Space
December 31st, 2007 at 6:31 PM
Get organized……I’m with you on that one. That’s number one on my list!
Jalaj
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:43 AM
Wishing you and your family a very happy New Year
Freebies
January 6th, 2008 at 4:08 PM
So how was the Geek food?
Connor Wilson
January 6th, 2008 at 4:14 PM
Heh, the Greek food was excellent. I think it was a full seven courses. From my memory, there was a smoked salmon plate served with a Greek bread and red pepper humus as the first course, a stuffed eggplant for the second, and along the way there was a tradition Greek desert, the obligatory lamb chops, a seafood dish with scallops, shrimp and stuffed calamari. Overall it was great.
On the negative end of things, we spent a total of 15 hours in airports on New Year’s Day, 12 in Montreal after delays, cancellations and general shenanigans, and 3 back in Toronto waiting for baggage. That’s a whole different story. It gets me mad just to think about it
D Web Design
February 12th, 2008 at 12:40 AM
Photoshop is a good tool for doing design. But we shall not forget that even the best tool in the hand of someone that does not know how to use it is worthless.
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