With an eye for inspiration and innovation web designers are often looking for what’s next in the industry. Unfortunately for many of today’s website designer they enter into this industry without a fundamental understanding of the basic ground work that is needed to become an established professional. There are many schools of thought involving the right way to go about become a top web designer, here is a simple an outline of the principals I found useful when starting out in the business.

These four fundamentals should serve as a basic blue print for any web design professional starting in the industry.

1. Contrast- as artist aims to achieve an impressive first impression so too does a web designer, however with web design a first impression is all you might get

Here is an example of what can happen to a site when contrast in space and color Is not considered, http://www.serene-naturist.com/, that was an example of what the web has considered as one of the worst website designs on the web today. You can see the importance of the relationship amongst a contrast in colors and font sizes. Lose your audience on the first impression and consider yourself at an immediate disadvantage.

2. Alignment- think of your website as a grid, therefore you can create equal spacing of all objects and get a better picture of the relationship between various elements. Positioning can be included in this aspect as well, where an element is on the page direct affects its usefulness and effectiveness to the user. To use the previous example again, the information is all over the place and discombobulated, a user would not know where to start to actually find what they are looking for.

3. Repetition- this does not mean repeat information rather it stands for uniformity in the style of the website. Try not to fill a site with various elements just because you recently figured out how to use them, sometimes less is more. That goes along with the overall simplicity of the site itself, a user friendly site will have repeat users and an over complicated site will provide frustration and willingness not to return.

4. Proximity- having different elements on your site is ok if done in a manner where the different elements can flow together. Whether you refer to it as spacing or positioning, proximity is how the different elements on your page work with one another. Proximity calls for related items to be grouped visually creating less clutter and a more organized website.

As I stated earlier this provides a mere small sample of what should be considered, however it is a good starting point for anyone who seeks advice at the beginning of their career. To further read about what top website designers are working on and how they operate visit, www.skygatemedia.com, for more examples and more information.