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Hello everyone and welcome to Chapter 1! My name is Dr. Theodor Richardson and I will
be guiding you through some vital steps in creating a multimedia Web site. In this
video, you will learn how to create an initial design for a Web page.
The first thing to keep in mind for your design is the real estate of a Web page. The top
left corner has the highest visibility, followed by the top of the page and the left side
of the site. This is where you should concentrate your branding, which is how an
audience identifies your page or your site.
Color is another important choice. For this, you should have two colors that work well
together as your primary palette. A third accent color should be chosen to highlight
information. The accent color should stand out against the other two colors. In general,
you can assume a white background without including it in your palette. There are a
variety of choices for color, but you can be relatively safe choosing two analogous colors as
the primary choices and a complementary color for the accent.
The next element is font choice. You should choose fonts appropriate to your content and
tone. You will learn more about this as you go, but you can see several examples of
fonts here. The two primary categories of fonts are serif and sans-serif. A serif is a
decoration added to the letters for style; sans- serif fonts do not have this decoration. You
should as a rule have no more than two fonts on a page or it creates confusion. You can use
different sizes for these fonts as needed.
You can use a program like PowerPoint to quickly mock-up a layout for your site. This can
be done with shapes and text boxes to approximate what the site should be when it is
completed. This can be a rough draft, but it will give you a basis for refining your design
later. Notice the logo and banner placement in the primary and secondary real estate.
In PowerPoint for Windows, all of the shape options and text boxes can be added from the
Insert Ribbon. The Format Ribbon can be used to alter the appearance of the objects once
they are added. You should not spend too much time on this initial design since it is
likely to change.
If you like this video and want to learn more, you can buy my book Multimedia Web Design and
Development available from Mercury Learning and Information. Also available at
Amazon.com.