A case for Photoshop
April 16th, 2010
I’ve been seeing a lot of articles being published these days on whether or not to use a graphics program, like Photoshop or Fireworks, to design mockup of a website. The new trend seems to be going towards designing in browser using mostly markup and skipping Photoshop all together. There have been lots of great articles written by some really good designers who subscribe to this technique (This one is especially good).
Some good points
At first the technique sounded like it could be a good idea. And for some projects I think it would be. A content-heavy site that would need to have a stiff structure to organize the content could be designed with mostly markup, as the graphic elements would be minimal. It would certainly be easier for the client to grasp what the site would look like in the browser, and it would also cut out a step in the process. These are all great points.
I still use Photoshop.
Most of the sites that I design are for small businesses. These clients needs a site that gives voice to their message through the design. Using Photoshop to create my mockups allows me, in my opinion, to be a bit more creative and push the boundaries. I get to let my artistic instincts guide me. Making revisions to the PSD is much simpler that messing with the code. Getting things lined up and approved before the coding part makes the whole thing go much more smoothly. Also, code is boxy. And when you start with code, I would imagine that it would be hard to get away from that square look. This article is a good counter point to the in-browser argument.
Like I said, I could see designing in-browser with mark-up as beneficial for some projects, but not all. I think that it would behoove (yes, behoove) any designer to adopt both techniques and apply them accordingly.
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This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Best Practices, Graphic Design, Process, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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