As a Graphic designer, you cannot restrict your creativity to the best practice advice catered to website layout design. Still, at the same time, you need to consider the factors encountered by a developer, including- design compatibility over different screens and the time limits.
Developers often encounter a great share of frustration while bringing a graphic design to life especially when making it compatible with various mobile platforms. However, there are website layout design techniques with which a graphic designer can help the developer develop a website faster.
So we at Uplers have screened our profound web development experience to throw light upon some essential web design tips to make development-friendly designs:
Mark Your Grid and Know Your Boundaries
Before starting graphic design, you need to define your global boundaries and establish the grid structure you will follow for the entire design. Popular front-end frameworks like Bootstrap, CSS Grid, Flexbox, and the 960 Grid offer a 12-column grid system that allows developers to create perfectly measured designs.
Reason:In the first case, when no grid rule is followed, it is difficult for developers to define content block sizes for a responsive, adaptable graphic design, and the process is time-consuming.
They have to evaluate and position each design element individually without knowing its exact positioning.
In the 2nd case, where the graphic designer has followed the 12-column grid system of Bootstrap, the developer saves up to 30% of his efforts and time.
Grid Systems That Developers Love
Before your start with the graphic design process, you must establish the grid system using which you can design the whole process. Well-known front-end libraries such as Bootstrap, CSS Grid, Flexbox, and 960 Grid provide a 12-column grid system, which can create accurately measured designs that programmers love.
CSS Grid and Flexbox dominate due to their strong responsiveness and simple layout alignment management. They are natively supported by browsers, hence making it possible for developers to replicate the design perfectly, and they are included in any modern web project.
Well-established grid systems also allow for standardizing the space, minimizing issues with alignment, and providing consistency at breakpoints. This allows developers to reuse the classes and styles easily.
New Design Tools for Seamless Handoff to Developers
Modern collaboration tools help in uninterrupted communication between designers and developers.
Design tools support real-time collaboration and effortless handoff from design to code.
They enable consistency and faster implementation as they support version control, shared libraries, and component-based design systems.
For instance:
Figma allows multiple users to work on a single file simultaneously.
Webflow takes it a step further and converts design into production-ready code. This is best for responsive web pages and micro-interactions.
Handoff plugins like Zeplin and Avocode go one step further by handing over clean design specs, assets, and CSS code snippets directly from the designs.
These plugins act as collaborators between visual concept and front-end implementation; thus, avoiding misunderstandings, feedback loops, and version mismatches.
AI-Assisted Design Tools
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a co-designer. AI-powered applications have the potential to speed up tedious design processes, such as automatically creating layouts, stripping backgrounds, and using content-aware fills.
Adobe Sensei, as part of the Creative Cloud family, employs machine learning to suggest font combinations. It also helps in tagging images and intelligently enhancing images.
Smart suggestions by Figma AI can align objects automatically, resize content containers, and highlight layout inconsistencies. This increases accuracy and productivity.
Canva's AI features also enable designers to test smart mockups, design auto-aligned objects, and create brand-matched color schemes in minutes.
These features streamline the design-to-code process by creating cleaner, better-organized files.
Irregular Curves Are A Strict ‘No’
Graphic Designers love to break the monotony of regular shapes with innovative shapes and graphic design elements that are likely to polarize. However, they must avoid the use of irregular curve elements (like the ones shown in the 1st case), unless necessary.
Reason:A curve is defined by a mathematical equation between two mouse positions, and therefore, an irregular curve is likely to come up as a challenge on the development side.
An irregular curve (as shown in the first case) is not easily supported in CSS and HTML.
To use this type of website layout design, a developer needs to include an image file in the code, which limits design flexibility.
Irregular curves can take up to 50% more time to develop a certain section, as compared to regular curves. You should generally go with regular shapes as shown in the 2nd case.
Avoid Getting Into The Complexity of Multiple Layers
Graphic Designers like to explore their creativity and, thus, sometimes they compromise standard practices. It may be by making variations in the content block size, breaking the alignment, or by overlaying effects. These practices often result in increased complexity at the developer end and should be avoided.
Reason:When a translucent effect layer overlays the primary layer (as shown in the 1st case), the flexibility of the graphic design over different screen sizes is compromised up to a significant extent.
On one end, where the blocks in the primary layer adjust automatically according to changing screen sizes, on the other, the translucent layer needs to be positioned manually through coding. Therefore, it is preferred to keep things in flow as in the 2nd case.
Similar Sections Should Be of The Same Size
Alignments and measurements are to be strictly followed! One of the most common mistakes graphic designers make is failing to meet the measurement accuracy required by modern designs that prioritize flexibility and scalability. When designing similar design sections for different web pages, the section sizes and measurements should be consistent.
Reason:To create a website layout design that complies with modern design standards, prioritizing flexibility and scalability, an HTML developer needs to pay close attention to consistency and measurement accuracy.
While creating similar design sections for multiple web pages of the same website, you must follow high design accuracy and hire a professional graphic designer to do the job.
A developer can define a similar design section just once in a master class and can call it smartly on various web pages. Thus saving time and maintaining accuracy.
Consistent Website and Mobile Design Is A Must!
As internet usage on mobile platforms increases, responsive design is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Therefore, a graphic designer needs to be highly particular about the design elements and the alignment of images used in their design. The design elements used in the web design should be similar to those used in its mobile version.
Reason:Following the standard practice of creating the desktop design first and then moving on to the mobile version, many web designers fail to consider the visual similarity between the two.
In this case, when the desktop design is handed over to an HTML developer, he is unable to position the design elements accurately for the mobile screens. Thus, resulting in a disconnected design over different screen sizes.
Make Design Trends Mobile-First and Dark-Mode Friendly
Mobile design is no longer an option. With more than 62.69% of the world's online traffic on mobile devices, a mobile-first approach ensures that your designs are responsive on smartphones.
Start with the smaller screens and then move on to the desktop ones.
User behavior demands dark mode support. Designers now must consider how their contrast, color scheme, and image overlays will be perceived in both light and dark environments.
Dark mode-supporting designs are perfect for OLED displays, making users feel more comfortable.
System-level deployment and awareness of light and dark themes within the design file can elevate the UX.
Use AI Tools Where Needed
To further maximize design efficiency, use tools like Figma AI and Adobe Firefly throughout your design process. This is recommended especially where there is a need for layout uniformity, responsive design, and developer handovers.
For example, using AI-powered recommendations to change similar areas or propose optimal grid alignment can help mitigate the need for manual corrections.
AI-based offerings can even find and correct inconsistencies within design files or create autonomous documentation for coders. This makes the handoff process faster, intelligent, and scalable.
The above-mentioned website layout design tips will surely help full-time graphic or web designers for hire implement a development-friendly designing approach and make a better world for developers.