Web design in the professional activity of a graphic designer

Dadianova Irina PhD in Sociology Associate Professor, Department of Information Technology and Computer Design, St. Petersburg State University of Culture 191028, Russia, g. Sankt Peterburg, ul. Mokhovaya, 14, kv. 32 newspaper2004@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Modern society is characterized by the introduction of information and communication technologies in all spheres of activity. The emergence and development of the Internet has radically changed the ways people interact and carry out professional activities. Initially developed as a means of exchanging military and scientific information, the Internet has gradually turned into a universal means of communication involved in the fields of economics, politics, science, education, leisure, etc. The result of these processes is the constantly growing needs of the labor market for representatives of new professions (web designers, web developers) who are able to create, maintain, and promote various Internet resources.

It is obvious that at the moment any project (from the creation of a new product packaging to the development of a website) includes design as a mandatory component. In the scientific literature, design is defined as "a type of artistic activity associated with the development of a person's subject environment, visual communication and information systems, the organization of human life based on functional principles" ^{[11, p.6]}.

Based on the specifics of his professional activity, the designer has to use a wide range of tools in the design process – functional analysis, compositional shaping, style formation, and technical design. At the present stage of social development, the design tools used are entirely determined by the level of understanding by the practitioner of the structure of the subject world, the structure of the sphere of communications and information technology. Thus, the foundation of the professional activity of a modern designer is the creative component, practical skills, knowledge of the fields of culture and art, possession of modern information technologies.

The subject of this research is web design in the professional activity of graphic designers, a comprehensive analysis of this branch of design, its features, problems and specifics. The purpose of the study is to highlight the features of web design as a separate field of activity of a graphic designer. The main objectives of the study include, firstly, the definition of the concept of “web design”; secondly, the identification of the key tasks of the web designer, the necessary artistic and technical skills; thirdly, the analysis of the features of teaching the discipline “Web Design” in higher education.

In the course of the study, both general logical research methods (analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction, generalization) and methods of systematization of scientific knowledge – classification and typologization were used.

The practical application of the research results is implemented by the author within the framework of teaching university disciplines "Web Design", "Internet technologies", "Software tools for creating web applications" for students of the "Graphic Design" field of study.

As for the degree of study of the problem, in the Russian scientific literature a wide range of authors, including G.N. Lola, V.A. Lukov, A.A. Ostanin, I.A. Rosenson, V.V. Chizhikov, formulate the concept of design and its place in the space of modern culture, which makes it possible to carry out an initial analysis of the essence of web design as one of the varieties of design. G.P. Bludnov and D.V. Borodaev made a significant contribution to the formulation of the holistic concept of web design. There is also a certain interest in the developments of practicing web designers, such as D. Kirsanov, A. Lebedev, Y. Syrykh.

Among foreign authors, D.D. Garrett, K. Golombinsky, K. Kloninger, S. Krug, P. McNeil, D.S. McFarland, P. Morville, J. Nielsen, R. Hagen can be distinguished as having made the greatest contribution to the development of the topic of web design. However, as a rule, these works are more focused on the technical side of the issue.

At the moment, web design is recognized as one of the most intensively developing areas of digital design. “Web design” is understood as a type of graphic design, the main purpose of which is the development and design of websites (structural units of the Internet). The main goal of web design is to meet the practical needs of Internet users for information of various kinds and to ensure a decent level of visual design of the site. This interpretation makes it possible to separate web design from web programming, highlight the specific features of a web designer's activity and define web design as a special separate type of graphic design.

 The main tasks of a web designer are the development and visualization of the site structure, the development of the concept of visual design of the site, presentation of content in a convenient and accessible form, detailed study of interface elements (logo and project name, menu items, icons, hyperlinks, footer or footer area). ^{[16, p.52]}. The peculiarity of the professional activity of a web designer is that for web design he needs to possess both basic artistic skills in composition, color science, infographics, style formation, design design, and demonstrate a serious level of proficiency in modern information technologies - graphic packages Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Corel Draw, as well as a wide a range of web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, etc.). Only the possession of both components of web design - artistic and technical – allows you to design network information resources at a decent level.

In today's conditions, there is an increased interest in web design in the field of higher education. The role of web design in the professional training of designers is given special importance, since web design has interdisciplinary connections with various disciplines of graphic design, both practical and theoretical. At the same time, web design requires the study of a large amount of technical information and various modern information technologies, which forms the main problem when mastering web design by graphic designers.

One of the Russian researchers who attempted to justify the need to include the discipline "Web Design" in the curriculum of students of the direction "Design" was G.P.Bludnov ^[1].In his work, Bludnov notes that it is graphic designers who are the most promising specialists applying for the role of web designers, since they are trained in the basics of composition, computer design, the basics of infographics and typography - disciplines that form the basis for mastering web design. The author also proposed his own method of teaching students based on the use of specialized software.

In connection with the development of the information society, new requirements are being imposed on the higher education system in general and on the design education system in particular: ensuring an increase in the level of proficiency in modern information technologies, including web technologies. Web design is gradually becoming an integral component of the professional training of a graphic designer. For this reason, there is a need to develop and improve methods of teaching students web design, due to constant technological changes in this area to ensure the professional demand of graduates in the labor market.

Certain difficulties that exist in the process of teaching students this discipline in universities are based on opposing views on the field of professional web design. On the one hand, there is an opinion that a website is entirely an object of graphic design. On the other hand, web design and graphic design are considered as different types of professional activity ^[24].

There is a point of view stating that graphic and web design are interchangeable fields of activity ^[2]. Indeed, both directions are based on common disciplines, such as composition, coloristics, typography, design engineering. Also, in addition to knowledge of artistic disciplines, both graphic design and web design require possession of a wide range of specialized software, for example, graphic editors. However, despite these similar characteristics, there are a number of fundamentally important differences both in the technical aspect and in the creative one.

It should be noted that a web designer is a specialist in the field of computer technology, whose main goal is to develop the structure and interface of a website, to think over the navigation system, to develop interface elements, to think over ways to integrate the corporate identity of the company into the appearance of the site. In addition to working on the website interface, the web designer should think about ways to optimize the website in order to reduce the loading time of web pages, as well as to ensure an acceptable level of usability of the site (usability).

In accordance with this point of view, a web designer is engaged only in the development of graphical interface elements, and the issues of web page layout, animation effects programming, website functionality development are delegated to technical specialists.

According to the second position, a web designer uses in his work not only the skills of a graphic designer, but also technical knowledge of the HTML hypertext markup language, cascading CSS style sheets, JavaScript web programming language, various animation effects libraries (jQuery), site content management systems. In this case, the process of creating a website is considered as consisting of graphic design, the formation of a convenient structure and its technical development. According to the author, this campaign is more in line with current trends in the development of the labor market and allows future specialists to be more competitive in their professional activities.

As for the visual design of the website, there are quite high requirements for it. Thus, T.Y. Kitaevskaya defines the visual style of a website as a system of elements designed to provide a holistic perception of the site and its individual web pages ^{[7, p.569]}. In web design, there are also requirements for stylistic uniformity, logical and aesthetic combination of shapes, fonts and colors. Also important in web design is the search for a compositional solution and the competent placement of text blocks, navigation elements, images.

The key stages of website development include the stage of goal setting, information collection and analysis, the development of a website design idea, layout layout using web programming languages, the stage of testing and debugging the site, its promotion on the Internet and social networks ^{[15, p. 137]}.

The very first stage is to determine the purpose of the Internet project. This stage is extremely important, because the success of all further work will depend on the correctness of its implementation.

This is followed by the stage of collecting and analyzing information to determine the optimal way to achieve the goals. This stage also includes an analysis of the potential audience, an analysis of competitors, an analysis of the dynamics of the development of the sphere, an analysis and identification of the company's competitive advantages.

After collecting and analyzing the information, the stage of developing a design idea based on the preliminary analysis data and the customer's wishes begins. This is followed by the design stage of the website design, including the development of the site structure, the development of the navigation system, and the final design of the interface.

Based on the developed design, layout layout is carried out using HTML and CSS web programming languages. After that, the web pages are integrated with the site management system (CMS) and the site administration capabilities are configured by the customer's own forces.

The next stage of website development is testing and debugging of the website, coordination with the customer of the latest details and improvements. Further, the company's employees are trained in the principles of working in the site management system, as well as further consultations during the operation of the website.

The final stage of work on the site is its promotion in search engines to increase awareness of the target audience about the goods and services offered by the company through the website, popularization of the advertised resource, establishing the flow of the target audience.

The process of designing websites requires a serious study of analogues, knowledge of the mechanisms of building modular grids, visual trends in web design, the basics of developing user interaction scenarios with the website interface. At the sketching stage, the designer develops a modular grid taking into account the requirements of an adaptive interface design (an interface that can adapt to the screen sizes of various devices – a computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone). Next, the designer needs to develop a visual concept for the design of the website - to develop a design style, create a composition for the placement of interface elements, a color and graphic solution. At the stage of visual design of the website interface, the designer combines all the elements into a single whole, places them in a certain order, selects a color palette, fonts, a leading design style, checks the compliance of the layout with certain norms and requirements for the graphical interfaces of web pages.

In the modern information society, the need for new forms of information presentation and learning methods based on information visualization is becoming more and more urgent ^{[9, p.11]}. In this regard, such an area of communicative design as infographics has been widely developed. Infographic methods of information presentation are based on the requirement of a clear and structured presentation of complex information to the audience. Images, diagrams and graphs, tables, maps, flowcharts, lists can act as infographic tools. A significant task that infographics solves is the presentation of data, facts and knowledge with the involvement of visual communication tools. Also, infographics are used to solve the following additional tasks: visual explanation of difficult-to-perceive material, organization of information presented in large volumes, placing accents inside a graphic message.

In addition to traditional static graphics, the use of animated graphics in the structure of a website has become increasingly common in recent years. Animation refers to changes in various characteristics of objects within a limited time interval in response to an event or user action. The characteristics that are subject to change may include the location of an object on a web page, its scale, shape, color, transparency, and so on.

Technologies for creating animation for websites, today, are quite diverse. The most widely used are CSS (cascading style sheets) of the third generation and the JavaScript web programming language.

Cascading style sheets allow you to create a variety of animated transitions between different states of object properties. The main advantage of animations created using cascading style sheets technology is high performance due to the lack of need to connect external visual effects libraries ^[16].

However, animations that are implemented simultaneously on one web page and follow a complex scenario cannot be developed based on CSS. In this case, it is necessary to involve the JavaScript web programming language, which contains separate functionality for developing animation effects. Also, often when developing web animations, various visual effects libraries are involved, for example, jQuery ^[20].

The next popular technology for creating web animations is graphics created in SVG format, scalable vector graphics. Graphic elements created using SVG can be animated using JavaScript and CSS, as well as using the SMIL programming language embedded in the SVG format ^{[21, p.221]}.

The main advantages of using animated graphics when creating websites are the dynamism and mobility of web interface elements, the placement of visual accents, the ability to interact with the user, and the great involvement of the latter.

In recent decades, Internet culture has become extremely influential in society, largely determining the value system of a modern person. Thus, web design, as a visual component of the Internet, affects users, their perception of the world and visual thinking, their tastes and aesthetic development. The modern design projects being created, including website projects, aim to positively influence the level of a person's visual culture, to be attractive and easy-to-use means of obtaining new knowledge and realizing their needs. For a graphic designer, the cultural component of his professional activity is extremely important, he has to be competent and responsible when performing design projects, be well-versed in constantly changing and emerging design trends, be savvy in terms of modern information technologies.