/Graphics/ Design a website masthead
10/09/2008 | Filed under Develop > Graphics
Craig Grannell explains how to create a striking website masthead using Illustrator – and avoid the worst conventions of Web 2.0
Most web designers favour Photoshop as their design tool of choice, with Fireworks the most common alternative, followed by a slew of cheap consumer tools. Perhaps due to its popularity within the publishing and illustration industry, Illustrator rarely gets a look-in, but in fact it’s an extremely useful piece of software for working on websites with an illustrative bent.
When I was commissioned to create a website for artist Edith Garcia (who can be found online at www.nenadot.com) for her Contemporary Monsters series, it became obvious that Photoshop wasn’t going to cut it. Edith’s work was based around simple monsters, full of character, and that style lent itself to the use of vectors. The final design is shown above (see www.contemporarymonsters.com for the site itself), and in this tutorial I’ll show how the masthead was created.
From this, you’ll pick up a few tricks about using more than just Photoshop when creating web page designs, including how to rapidly work up some vector shapes, plus tips for creating a cartoon-like masthead design centred around silhouettes and simple objects.
About the author:
Name: Craig Grannell
Site: www.snubcommunications.com
Areas of expertise: nformation architecture, graphics, interface and front-end design
Clients: Various magazines
Biscuit: Oatmeal & raisin cookies
Click here to download the support files
Click here to download tutorial PDF
