A large part of what I do is illustrated, and as such finding efficient and practical ways to lay these illustrations out within web design is an important factor. Something that works in an image may not necessarily be usable within a website’s design. A process I’ve found very useful is to roughly sketch out your illustrated idea, and cut out the elements. After all these are likely to be cut up and placed into divs in a very similar way, especially if you intend on animating or making part of the illustration interactive. This way you can play, see what works better, change the composition until you can stand back and decide you have something you can potentially turn into a usable website design. I’ve found this technique particularly useful with illustrated sites, but many designers I’ve spoken to still swear by the pen and paper method of coming up with ideas.

This was an initial layout for the main Toasted Digital website. While some elements were changed during the later stages of design, it still remains fairly true to the structure live today, while being quite different to the original sketches of the site.