Do not ever include animated gifs in any aspect of your website. They are cheesy, have huge file compression issues and produce the poorest quality animation on the web today. Flash introductions/splash pages on your website should also be avoided. Sure, it might seem cool the first time, but it quickly because nothing but annoying when visiting the site repeatedly. Further more, 100% Flash websites should not exist for any business trying to rank on search engines like Google. They can still be found today, but anyone that cared about SEO and keyword density has moved on long ago.

Lastly, ditch the floating menus and the custom mouse cursors.

Because, seriously you guys.

Come on.

Before setting your goals, define your niche and stick to it. Be honest with your capabilities and expectations for your business. When creating your goals, start with the bigger picture and set long term goals. Create as many measurable goals as you can to track your progress. Be sure to leave some room for adjustments along the way because more often than not you will have to stray from your original plan.

Errors do not equate to failure.

In your pursuit, don’t forget to take time for yourself and to learn from those around you. Read tips from other people in your business and remain humble. Soak up as much information as you can in variety of different ways. Learn from their mistakes as well as your own.

Some of these useful Apps include but are not limited to Color Expert, iMy, iBlueSky, WordPress, and FTP On The Go.

Let us know what other designer Apps you find useful!

Content is the most important part of the website so you must make sure it is relevant and useful to your target audience, make sure it is as universally understandable as it can possibly be and that the content is appropriate cross culturally. Work with a professional translator to ensure your search engine optimization campaign can be successful with proper foreign language keywords.

Color is another important factor to consider when designing sites cross culturally. Color can affect the way your website it perceived because different colors mean different things to different cultures.

Cross cultural web design is about being very aware of the possible pitfalls and making your site as accessible to a multitude of other cultures. Make your site as accessible as possible to adapt to the increased internationalism that the Internet provides.

The following is a prediction by some people in the design industry for future web development. The prediction is that there will be less demand for PSD to CSS/XHTML conversions. Basically, this means the current design process of first designing in Photoshop, slicing, and then converting it all into HTML code might be going out the door. Rather, with new design tools and web standards like HTML5 coming out – it may be possible to build entire sites with incredible functionality, without ever opening up Photoshop.

Something to ponder.

A great design has good balance and proportion of the design elements. It also has contrasting elements, either in size or color, within it. There is a clear focus that establishes the point of interest for the viewer and their attention, but directional forces are also used to direct viewers to where their eyes should be looking. Repetition and rhythm can also be used as directional forces and provide a continuity. Variety is important, but there must be some sort of unity among that variety to give it an appearance of oneness.

While trends continue to change, these basic elements of design are often forgotten. These principles should be considered and followed no matter what kind of trendy design work you are embarking on.

A search engine friendly site makes it easy for different search engines to find the content, determine what the site is about and allows the site to rank as high as possible based on content.  Designers should have a basic understanding of on-site SEO and what can affect their rankings. They should also avoid making any promises to clients that say their design will positively affect the site’s search engine ranking. There is only so much a designer can control so they shouldn’t promise more than what is in their power.

A designer can do a few things to aid SEO though. A designer can discuss SEO with their client in order to determine good keywords, can discuss and create optimized page titles, create clean code with primary content high in the code, and use internal links to help visitors and the search engines find the most important content.

A single background color can be very effective when creating a web site. Browsers default to white, but it is easy to specify a single color that goes with the theme of your site. Repeating patterns and textures are also another approach to the site background. These repeating patterns and textures come in a variety of styles ranging from simple patterns to complex ones. Though one should be careful not to overdo it too much.

Both large and small graphic images can be used in backgrounds as well. With careful image compression, large and small images can be an effective tool in web site design. Larger background images should fade out to a solid color to create the desired seamless transition, for instances of vertically long pages.

Some large background sites rely on a fluid layout to stretch out across the browser viewport and other use large images with a static size to create large backgrounds. But, you don’t want to stretch an image without distorting the aspect ratio. There are solutions to this problem that allow you to produce large image backgrounds.

The easiest way to stretch any background image is to use a background image in CSS. Use a background image with the same or more pixels than the sample file so the image won’t get pixilated. Faster Internet speed and increased resolution in monitors lets us push the limits and create backgrounds that used to be impossible.

The design of the print used is very important. The typography used must be legible. Print designers tend to prefer serif fonts, but they have been hard to read on computer screens in the past. Sans-serif fonts are generally considered easier to read on computer screens, but because more viewers are browsing at a higher resolution, serif fonts are reappearing because designers feel the edges make visibility easier.

Again, because of increased screen resolutions, more designers are using multi-column layouts similar to print. Having several columns allows more content to appear in the same space. Other ideas from print are surfacing in web design as well.  Big lead images (like photographs) can be used to draw visitors into the site like a photograph on a print page. Print designs have also used diagrams and infographics to display information, which is now surfacing among web designs.