Your design philosophies?

[Mekryd]

I'm curious. When you design your websites, what do you keep in mind? Website optimization? A minimalist ideal? As flashy as it can get? Or do you think about it at all?

For my own site, I've tried to keep to two things:
- Minimalism: Flash and javascript should be put to a minimum. Flash obscures web search spidering, and can easily get in the way of users as well. Javascript can be suspicious, and bent towards the path of evil.
- Few clicks: You should be able to get to anything in the site in as few clicks as possible, without cramming everything into one page (doing so would conflict with minimalism).


I'm not entirely sure how tightly to these ideals I've followed, but that's beside the point. What about you? What do you think of when building your site?

[port5900]

Seems like you want to really do good design. First thing you should do is figure out what it is you have to convey to the visitors of the web site your building. This is called targeting. Next would it be better for them to view the site as Static or Flash. People have been against Flash for a few reasons(cant get in to that right now) After that, all throughout your design process you should be thinking of ways to keep the site as light and fast as it can be. This practice will take you along time and alot of web sites till you become good at it.

So to answer your question you should keep optimization in mind. As for minimalist or flashy, thats up to the type of site your making.

[Frakturedmod]

I try and avoid flashy in your face stuff.

I prefer reading a site which is easy to read, so that's how I design it.

[midnighteyes]

Personally I just go for pretty. But that is because I'm not aiming my iste at the visitors, I don't even mind if I don't get a single visitor. I just enjoy making the graphics and coding the pages. I'm weird I know!

[hopper]

simplicity -keep it simple
consistency -make all pages consistant
functionality -make it work