Look to your content when
deciding between a custom design and a template.
Custom Designs: A custom design website is built from
scratch, incorporating unique content (text and images) into a
distinctive web presentation. With a custom web design, you start
with the content and develop a page layout that will best show it off.
Sometimes you have the same geometry throughout all the web pages,
sometimes you customize each page's layout. We've made some
adjustments with our on website from page to page. Another example of
where we've done that, different layouts for different pages, is the
Redloch Kennel website.
Template Designs: With a template, you start
with the geometry and try to make the content fit the available
space. This is often like trying to make a big round ball fit into a
small square hole. If it's a really flexible ball and you can let
out enough hot air, sometimes you can make it work.
The
advantages to using a template is that templates offer very artistic
and very "business slick" websites without the expense of
custom graphic design. The graphic artist part of the design work
has already been done; you and anybody else who pays the licensing
fee can use that design's art work, as long as you comply with the
terms of the license (which may prohibit modification).
A major drawback
to templates is that you're not the only website using that design.
Ever notices that there are a lot of the same smiling,
"energetic, enthusiastic to be in a cubicle with a phone
headdress in an office buildings" people pictures in business
websites? Yep. They're all templates.
Templates are
generally copyrighted designs; often the licensing agreement
prohibits modification. If you
find a template that fits your business image and if your content
fits the space allowed in the template, then templates offer good
value. But modification isn't an easy thing to do, even if permitted
in the use license.
You run the risk of the design falling apart and giving you some
really strange layout effects if you try to modify the graphic
design elements of the template in any way.
Why can't
you "adjust it," you ask?
Sometimes
you can; sometimes you can't. Here's why. If your grandmother made
quilts (as our Tennessee grandmothers did), you are familiar with
the concept of "piece work." A pattern is laid on cloth;
pieces are cut out -- one piece from Grandma's old dress, another
piece from Grandpa's old shirt, another from that scrap of cloth
left over from the Easter dress she made you, another from an old
pillowcase. The pieces are sewn together to make a quilt block. The
blocks are sewn together to make a quilt. Together they form a piece
of decorative folk art (the beautiful quilt block you see here is
called "Boutonniere," courtesy of Dawn's Quilting Clip Art.)
If all the pieces of cloth are neatly cut and sewn, you have a
beautiful quilt that will be treasured by your grandchildren. If you
cut one piece too large or too small in any direction, the resulting
block will be distorted. If a distorted block is joined with other
blocks, the overall quilt design is distorted. Grandchildren don't
want those quilts.
The same
principal applies with web templates. If you want to use a bigger
piece of words than the content space allows, you'll distort the
block it occupies. If you substitute your image for one in the
template, you risk distorting the overall artistic effect of the
design. Modification takes work (time you're paying for), and it's
not always successful. It's often quicker for a web designer (and
cheaper for you) to start from scratch and design a unique website.
Bottom line
on templates: If you find a template that matches your business
style, and if its built-in logo will work for your logo, and if your
content will fit the template, then a template can be an economical
choice. But, like choosing a spouse, you must either love the whole
package or leave it alone, because you'll have a heck of a time
changing any of it.
Email info@oakridgewebdesigns.com
if you have questions.
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Web page layout
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