Creating Web Comps
The first and most crucial task in website development is the "web comp." It is a sketch of (at least) the home page of a proposed web site, usually submitted for approval or review. It is the backbone of all web development proposals, and as such, it can come to be the biggest headache in the process.
In the Bubble days of the late nineties, when any halfhearted attempt could land lucrative contracts, web comps were often hasitly cobbled together in Adobe Photoshop and more often than not were emailed to the prospect as a PDF. Since then, market pressures forced designers to consider proposal presentation over best practices, and this method was adopted de facto. Established agencies, graphic software developers—even graphic design educators—encouraged former print-only designers to rely on this workflow. "It is easy!" They claimed. "You don't need to know any HTML code to design amazing websites." And designers, fearing the new medium (or perhaps fearing the loss of a prospect!) followed suit unquestioningly.
But this "slice & dice" method of website design had several inherent flaws that neither the client nor the designer would see regularly. The ghost in the machine haunted coders and project managers mostly: how to turn a pretty image from a do-anything application like Photoshop into something presentable in the limited layout paramaters of the web broswer?
Furthermore, a sliced-up photoshop image as a web page has several other, more obvious and more serious drawbacks:
- Text—even text that could be easily rendered in a web browser—would be converted into bloated images that were not accessible or searchable.
- Layouts consisted of blocks of images that fit together like a jigsaw, often taking an extremely long time to load. And the web page usually made no sense until everything loaded.
- Revisions are an especial nightmare. In my personal experience, many was the time when an irate former employee ran off with the original comp and I was saddled with fixing whatever it was that caused the former to leave.
So let me emphasise to other designers and potential clients: You are doing yourself and your project a great disservice by accepting Photoshop comps for web pages! That said, let's explore the "slice & dice" workflow. Then I will describe how MadMac Creations will provide a proper website comp.
©2004 MadMac Creations
All recommendations are to be used at the reader's discretion, and is subject to change without notice. While a best effort is made to test software and techniques provided, the reader is advised to test thoroughly prior to implementation. MadMac Creations takes no responsibility for any losses accrued, unless Tony MacFarlane has been contracted.
