Web Fonts

You’d think that print designers who regularly use the web would notice that fonts like Arial Rounded or Bank Gothic can’t be used for large portions of body html text. They’ll sometimes complain when their designs came back not looking exactly like the PSD, and I have to explain to them that using images in place of text kills SEO and makes the site near impossible to update.

Screen Size and Pixel Perfection

There is nothing worse than taking a look at a PSD and realizing the sizing is all off. The width of the page is 2400px and the font sizes are all half-point sizes as though the PSD itself has been a high res Illustrator file that has just been scaled down. My heart sinks when I see edges of photos anti-aliased and what should be 1 pixel lines are 2 or 3, anti-aliased. Some designers don’t understand that vector shapes in Photoshop will have antialiased edges if you’re zoomed in to more than 100% while creating them. It drives me nuts.

Grid Layouts? What are they?

Often times a web design from a print designer will have wacky spacing and unbalanced columns. I suppose this has to do with their lack of understanding of reusable CSS. What looks good to them might not be practical for web, because while print typography is static, content on websites is dynamic. In web design, you have to consider the length of the content that will be posted. What if a leftnav link is long and wraps to two lines? How will your rounded border coupled with gradient background work then, huh?

Graphics Heavy

Okay, okay, I admit, I’m somewhat guilty of this myself. I’m often pwnd by the developers here at blubolt for having background images that are too large, but on the whole I try to keep my web designs CSS focused rather than the 1990s graphics-overkill movement. This speeds up load time and the time it takes to code the design as well.

Recycling

Occasionally I’ll receive a PSD that has a submit button looking one way on one part of the site, and entirely different on another. This is usually where I step in and consolidate the styles.

In conclusion, most of the issues discussed have to do with the importance of usability in web fonts, screen size consideration, grid layouts, graphics sizes, and continuity. When designing for web, you can’t make things frustrating for your end user or they’ll x out your site and find something simpler.