Do use a consistent look and feel with your company graphics
Your business graphics should stand out as a whole. Use the same look and feel for all your stationery including the graphics for your web design. This way your visitors have a sense of recognition when they visit various pages or find a pamphlets and letterheads with your logos printed on them.
Do use recurring visual graphics
Repeat visual elements like graphics logos in your graphic design. Logos are remembered and this will help with branding of your business.
Dark backgrounds and your logos
Dark backgrounds tend to make text less readable. So avoid dark colors or dark background graphics. If you do need them, use a nonserif font for the text (like Arial, Universe, Helvetica) and be sure to not to use a small fontsize.
Don't cram your logos
A page or business card with text pushed aside against the border of a table - or an image - looks awful. Don't cram any part of your logos, graphics or text. Make sure your graphic design is done in a way that it leaves enough space for your business logos to look professional.
Web design and graphics
Tables are very flexible. They're able to get almost anything more or less visible on a screen. But by putting large elements in a table cell you might force the cells to become too large. Thus making horizontal scrolling necessary. So limit the number and size of pictures, long words (e.g. longlinks), predefined text etc.
Don't overuse frames and graphics
Use only a limited number of frames. Always check if the screen doesn't get cluttered, as this would cause visitors to ignore the clutter and that important sales message might not be read.
Do vertical align the content, graphics, logos and any other element of graphic design
The human mind functions well with structure. As much as professionally designed graphics and content matters in your marketing, that much an understandable structure would matter in your web pages. Be sure to align the content vertically. Think the graphic layout of your web site through and have your graphic designer recheck the layout together with you.
Do use compressed graphics on your website
Improve the performance of your site by reducing the size of your JPEG graphics. JPEG can be saved with different compression-percentages. A high compression results in a smaller file size but also in a less perfect image. Test several compressions for each image you want to use. For different images the acceptable compressions will differ.
Do reserve space for images and graphics
Generally text arrives more quickly than an image. By reserving space for an image the browser is able to render the text. A visitor can start reading right away. Reserving space is done by defining the attributes vsize and hsize in the tag <IMG>.
Do provide thumbnails for large graphics
In some cases you do need large pictures that take a while to load.i.e. if you're running a website on modern art. In such a case do provide small copies of the original graphics (thumbnails) that link to the original larger graphics.
Do reuse graphics
Once images are loaded they are stored in cache of your visitors browser. If you use the same logos or graphics in several web pages the graphics will be loaded from your visitors local PC the next time the graphic needs to be displayed. It is necessary to have the image in the same location. Also be sure to use exactly the same filename. Even if a browser can handle differences in uppercase and lowercase, your visitors browser cache can not.
Don't reference graphics from other sites
If you use graphics from another site (i.e. a graphics archive ) do copy them to your own site. For a web server to find graphics on another server, is a time consuming process and would introduce overhead and an extended loading time.
Do provide size information for graphics
If you use large images, videos etc., give an indication of the size before the actual transfer begins. Make your visitors aware how long the download time would take.
Don't use large graphics to display text
Avoid creating graphics of large pieces of text. It gives you more possibilities when it comes to fonts and display but it costs valuable bandwidth. Also bear in mind that search engines will not see content if it is captured in a graphic. If you do need text graphics be sure to reduce the number of colors.
GRAPHICS AND COLOR
Do use transparency in graphics. The presentation of graphics often improves by giving the logos or graphics a transparent background color. This will provide better integration visually with the background of your web page.
Do use interlacing
Talk to your graphic designer and get him Interlace larger graphics. The visitor will get a fast loading text base web page, while the graphics are still loading. For very small graphics - like bullets - interlacing makes no sense but in all other cases it does.
Don't use too many graphics and logos
Too many graphics slows down your site. Don't chase your visitors away; limit the number of graphics.
Do make your graphics reproducible
If you are a DIY graphic designer, and you create your own graphics make them reproducible. You might need another one of the same kind, so be sure to write down all the effects and the parameters you've used to create the graphics.
Do break up graphics
If you use large graphics you can break them up in several parts. Graphic designers work with very sophisticated graphic design software and most of them have the ability to break up your logos and graphics in smaller but functional HTML parts. You can combine the smaller parts in the webpage to form the master graphic. Doing so the graphics can be downloaded parallel, thus reducing download time.
Do combine background graphics and background-colors
Even if you do use a background-image, still provide a background-color. The background-color should approximately be the main color of the logos or graphics. If text has a color that contrasts with the background-graphics, it will still be readable before the background-graphic is loaded.
Do use a browser safe palette
Use a browser safe palette for your colors. This will prevent colors from dithering on older monitors of your visitors. Don't use too many colors when designing your graphics. You have access to 16 million colors which could be employed with the design of your graphics and logos. Be selective - don't try to use them all. Too many colors might distract your visitor form what you're trying to say.
Do not override only one standard color
If you override a standard color, in any particular graphic or logo, be sure to override them all. Your visitor has her own color settings. If you change i.e. only the Font color to dark blue, text might become unreadable on a dark background. So be sure also to change the background color.
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