Get Real Copy
‘Lorem Ipsum’ is an enemy of good design. You may or may not have control of over this as a designer, but if you do, try to ensure that all the copy is written before you start designing. This is the one thing that can make a design come together quickly, and have more of a chance to be successful. Not having real copy and designing with lorem ipsum is useless. What a website says is more important than how it looks, so how can you be successful designing something without knowing what it says?
Mock up all copy elements
Make sure when you’re designing a page, that you design all of the elements. Header, subhead, lists, quotes, etc. This is something can be done when you’re coding, if you are also coding the site, but designing a shell of a website without defining how the copy will actually look can lead to an ineffective presentation of the text.
Be Pixel Perfect
Always make sure to zoom in and align all your elements to the pixel. This will ensure that all boxes, lines, masks, or any other type of element will have a crisp and clear edge.
In this example, when zoomed out, you can see that the box on the left is much sharper than the one on the right. Zoomed in, you can easily see the difference. It seems subtle, but it very important to keep everything ‘on the pixel’. If you don’t pay attention to this, your whole design could turn into a blurry mess.
