Web Design Tips

Clip Art

You're creative! That's why you chose this profession. You might browse through clip art to get ideas, rather than use someone else's work. Once you have a pile of your own spot designs, you can market them to a company who will sell your images as a package. Or - if you have the time and want to put forth the effort, you can burn a CD with your images and market them yourself.

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Serif

The serif typefaces are great ones for body copy. The serif has edges that catch the eye, letting people move over the page with more ease. This paragraph is in a sans-serif typeface. The serif typeface would look like this:

Madonna is as old as I am; the only difference between Madonna and myself is that she's blonde, rich, and skinny.

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Courier Tags

There are few faces that are "cross-browser" friendly. Some of the serif faces include Courier, Courier New and mono. In order to make sure your viewer is even seeing close to what you want them to see, use several faces in your tags. Two examples (you would put the < > brackets on both ends):

font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"
font face="Courier, Courier New"

You can also just use "mono".

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Serif Tags

There are few faces that are "cross-browser" friendly. Some of the serif faces include Georgia, Times New Roman and Times. In order to make sure your viewer is even seeing close to what you want them to see, use several faces in your tags. Two examples (you would put the < > brackets on both ends):

font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif"
font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"

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Sans-serif Tags

There are few faces that are "cross-browser" friendly. Some of the sans-serif faces include Arial, Verdana and Helvetica. In order to make sure your viewer is even seeing close to what you want them to see, use several faces in your tags. Two examples (you would put the < > brackets on both ends):

font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"
font face="Verdana, Arial, sans-serif"

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Spot Art

That's what clip art is - it provides spot art for publications. Clip art works best in web design, unless you can print and modify it for print production. Often clip art will have the "jaggies" and it will be unsuitable for print. Make sure the fine print on the clip art site approves of modifications to their work, otherwise you may be breaking a copyright law.

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Courier

Another common typeface for cross-browser compatibility is Courier. Courier resembles typewriter copy. Don't overuse this type, as it can become hard to read. An example of Courier:

George Bush hasn't emailed me since he
was elected President. I wonder why?

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Too Much Movement?

Animation as an element of graphic design is a controversial topic. If you design a site, or if you have a client who insists on animation in site design, just remember that many banner ads also carry animation. If the site is prepared to accept banner advertising, the elements of animation in the site and in the banner ad may be very distracting to the viewer.

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More Resources

Web design is only one part of the world of graphic design, which covers package design, illustration, book design and many other areas. What complicates the field is the fine line between using computers and software and developing actual web sites. For more about web site design, go to The website design guru or the webmaster guru. You will also find more about web design scattered throughout this GraphicDesign-tips sites.

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Sans-Serif

The sans-serif face is a good face to use for short blurbs or in headlines or subheads in web design. This type you're seeing now is a sans-serif.

You can use the "head" tags to create headings. Within the brackets < >, you would use - in order of size - the headings H1 (largest) to H6 (smallest). Be sure to close the tags with /H1 or /H6. For an example of both:

A PAGE ABOUT MY DOG LITTLE BITTY DOG POOKIE (this is H6)
ANOTHER PAGE ABOUT MY LARGE CAT SPOOKY (this is H1)

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