5 Tools for Website Design Planning
When it comes to creating the look of a website, you can’t simply just start creating graphics or even just start coding, there needs to be some sort of pre-thought out idea of what you what your eventual website to look like. This can be done with a simple hand-drawn image of basic element placement, but more often than not if you’re either designing for a client or even for yourself, a lot more detail is wanted and they’ll want to see your capability in design.
If you’re either struggling to get started with your design and often find that some nice software does the trick or you just need to upgrade from the programme you’re currently using, then you’re in the right place. We’ve compiled a list of 5 Tools fo Website Design Planning.
Omnigraffle 2
One of the oldest and greatest ways of planning anything is by creating a big old mind-map, allowing you to see all your ideas on one page. It also allows you to see where each idea leads to and what topics each idea is related to. OmniGraffle 2 offers you this function but also some basic wireframing tools along with page layout designing and so many more features.
OmniGraffle 2 would be a great choice for anybody looking to great a graph of ideas sectioned into either different pages on your site or, if you’re doing a single scroll landing page, different sections of the page. Or if you fancy, you can create a great wireframe which you can then use to give yourself an idea of what you want your final website layout to look like.
Jumpchart
You often need to control your team when it comes to designing your website and there’s no better service for that than JumpChart which is the number one service for website planning with a team. With a set of great features to make this a great service for communicating about projects, working on projects and more.
JumpChart advertises itself for great website planning thanks to allowing you to get your communication out of an inbox and right beside your project, making it a far easier visual communication device. Allowing you receive notifications via email, RSS and other forms by simply adding users in via their email that allows super accessible communication between a group.
Pinterest seems like a very obvious choice for most as it offers up arguably one of the best services on the web for findng inspiration. For those of you who don’t know Pinterest is a large database of user-uploaded imagery that can be shared from websites, from phones, from personal cameras and so much more. The general idea is that you create different boards which segment different parts of your life or work and then put images and links into those boards for others to use/look at/be inspired by.
When it comes to Website Design Planning, there’s arguably no better place to find some great inspiration on everything from logo design, to typography choices to the final layout of the website and so much more. You can then Pin these into a personal board which you can even keep private if it’s either a secret job or not appropriate to view for the public. You could even go as far as to use Pinterest as a private folder for your imagery design to then present to your client.
Evernote
Evernote is constantly spoken about when it comes to planning as it offers some great features that allow you to plan with ease. At it’s heart, Evernote allows you to take notes on things. This ranges from shopping lists, meeting notes, topics, ideas and so much more. However, with the ability to add in imagery and even scan in physical images, you can really turn Evernote into your one-stop place for website design planning.
If you were to use Evernote, we’d recommend trying to use as many of it’s great features as possible: taking simple notes on it, organising yourself with checklists and reminders, taking pictures of inspirational work and inputting it into a note and then organising all this work into one Notebook or Stack to separate it from either your other pieces of work or your own personal Evernote area.
Moqups
What if you’re simply looking to create a basic look at what your final website is going to look at for your clients? Well there’s multiple tools and ways you can do this on the web with hundreds of pieces of software and programmes you can download. However, we quite like Moqups as it offers an online offering that allows you to create your wireframe or mockup right within your browser window and then export it into multiple different formats for easy sharing with clients.
Moqups offers up hundreds of different element groups allowing you to create all sorts of different mockups from Websites to desktop programmes to iOS apps to Android apps and more. This gives great diversity and also a wide selection of different elements to choose from when trying to get the perfect look for your website. Moqups also offers up a really easy-to-learn interface that doesn’t put a strain on the brain to learn and is really intuitive to use.