As I’ve said in previous posts, the first challenge for design is to think about purpose and use, and who you want to visit. (Which needn’t be anything heavy: the main purpose of a site might be to have visitors rolling off their adjustable chairs.)
At some point, however, you have to think about the home page. For what it’s worth, this is the way I do things.
I sketch. Not with a computer, even with Fireworks or Illustrator or Dreamweaver or Photoshop or Flash. (I might use them all later, since I have them all. But not now.) I use an artist’s sketch pad, and a nicely sharpened pencil.
As I am drawing, I am thinking not only about the look of the thing, but what I want to get across to people.
The first thing a home page must do is let the visitor know where she or he is. If this is a company site, it must say what the company is and does. If it’s a personal site, it must say enough about the person to distinguish them from other people of the same name.
I take this quite literally—as you can see on my own personal site. For a much more entertaining example, you can look at the home page of my friend Jeremy Fox. (Jerry refuses to make concessions to the quirks of Microsoft browsers, so his page renders oddly in Internet Explorer. It looks fine in Firefox and Safari.)
All this also needs to be clear visually. As do all the possible uses of a site to a visitor. The links, especially the main menu, must convey a distinct message.
So, as I’m drawing, this is what I’m thinking about. Eye and mind send challenging messages to each other.
The ultimate challenge, of course, is to make the page speak out to the visitor before she or he has taken in a single word or a single distinct graphic. The shapes and colours and arrangements must breathe the spirit of the site.
(I’m not claiming I do this very often. I did say it was the ultimate challenge…)
