I love to design, I really do. The thought of starting with almost nothing and growing it into an interesting and successful website is something that I simply just love. But bringing your best design to life obviously requires practice.
Working at a web company you could imagine I meet a few designers, the great thing is we each seem to have different tastes in what style of website hits the spot. Just like everyone has their own opinions on the look of the website, everyone also has their own preferred way of building their design. I believe it very important to work in the way you feel most comfortable and efficient.
I have found that overtime my processes have changed and improved, my skill level seemed to show major improvement when I challenged my initial methods of building HTML/CSS websites. I would actively try to build websites diffently each time I built another one. For a while now I have found myself to be most efficient if I do not even create a stylesheet until I have written all my HTML. This is a common method, but one I had never previously used as it never worked for me, I would prefer to work in sections. E.g build the head => style, build the menu => style etc
There are two major reasons why I now build “most” of my websites in this method:
1. I can create all my HTML without even opening up a browser. On one screen have Photoshop, the other, my mark up. This saves a massive amount of “ALT-TAB” time.
2. By creating all my HTML first, when I finally do review it I can see how it looks in it’s raw format. It helps to see if the flow of the current page makes logical sense. This is better for accessibility purposes and can help with SEO.
As mentioned, everyone has their own way to do things. The hard part is challenging these processes, stepping outside what you currently do just to try something different. It might not work for everyone, but it has been a substantial help in my personal development.