How do I design a site?

[sm9ai]

This may sound like a stupid question but how do you design a site.

Mine all come out rubbish, the colours are all wrong, images are bad and generally they just look naff.

I know how to code no problem, but my design lets me down.

I don't really know where to start.

I basically want to do a site for advertising poker deals. I have the ideas for it, in the header banner a set of cards, some poker chips and the page title, but whenever I put them together it just looks really bad.

How would you go about doing it?

(Hope that all makes sense!)

[Vanquish]

That's a difficult question to answer, are you having trouble designing the layout for your header of designing the actual page?


What i usually do is make rough sketches on paper, drawing the layout, outlining where the logo will go, where the navigation will go (it is hard to just sit down and design something off the top of your head). Once I have my basic sketch i will use photoshop to design the page, generally, my colour scheme comes from the companies logo (although not always), make different layers so you can play around with different colours. Since your design is for a gaming site, look at pics of Las Vegas..what do you see? a dark night, with bright lights (here's a thought, you might want to make your logo like the Flamingo hotel sign).

Once your happy with what you have, slice out the bits (images) you need for your site. Just remember, designing takes time....go back and keep playing around with it till your happy.

hope this helps