planning

First, Set up a layout grid template. lots of people use photoshop and in Illustrator to do this. I do...

However, I recommend that you do a sketch on paper first. Do all of your basic layout and desing in rough on paper. Once you have a basic grid and layout and all the navigation planned you can take this to a more concrete layout planning using Illustrator and Photoshop.

I use Illustrator and set up a page that is exactly 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall. Then I am able to use the layout tools in Illustrator to exactly position elements exactly where i wish to put them. I leave out the images in Illutrator. I then saved the Illustraor docs and open in Photoshop. When I open in photoshop, I set the imprt values to exactly 800 pixels wide. then the image come in and leaves a transparent area where I can then drop and image in a separate layer and resize to what i need. You can see a coupe examples of layout done in Photoshop byt going to my site:

planning issues for you websites: More	if you remember that we discussed the issues related to being able to bid a project for designand production. In this the critical issue is related to how to determine how much you should charge for the time you spend designing, building and implementing a site. But to bid properly you nned to know how much work actully needs to be done fotrhe site and then to be able to esotimate the amount of time that it will take to complete the work.
First, Set up a layout grid template. lots of people use photoshop and in Illustrator to do this. I do... However, I recommend that you do a sketch on paper first. Do all of your basic layout and desing in rough on paper. Once you have a basic grid and layout and all the navigation planned you can take this to a more concrete layout planning using Illustrator and Photoshop. I use Illustrator and set up a page that is exactly 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall. Then I am able to use the layout tools in Illustrator to exactly position elements exactly where i wish to put them. I leave out the images in Illutrator. I then saved the Illustraor docs and open in Photoshop. When I open in photoshop, I set the imprt values to exactly 800 pixels wide. then the image come in and leaves a transparent area where I can then drop and image in a separate layer and resize to what i need. You can see a coupe examples of layout done in Photoshop byt going to my site:
pensyl.com/kodak/web/headline.html	pensyl.com/kodak/web/earth.html
pensyl.com/kodak/web/crime.html	pensyl.com/kodak/web/entertain.html
These are actually dummy pages. I createdthese to use on screen during a video shoot for Kodak. They pages were supposed to look like real web sites but did not have to function. The thirdand fourth of these are Flash Sites that actually do do someting. In many cases i will do layout in Photoshop and compress the file as a JPEG to the smallest i can an upload for the client to view. THese way they caan get agood sense of thelayout, color, and sturcture prior to the actual construction In the image below, i show you the actual space you have to work with, if you design for a 800x600 screen. Then taking into account the areas that are used for the interface, you lose 90 pixels at top for the menu and buttons and 7 on the left for the window, and 22 on the right for the scroll bar and 22 pixels for the scroll bar on bottom. This leaves an area of 771 pixels wide by 448 pixels tall. So design your stuff to fit in this area!
You can do a layout on paper and in Illustrator and then in Photoshop you can determine EXACTLY how big the area you have for an image is. then you can make you images EXACTLY the size you need. If you use a design grid or template as inthe image below then your design work will be much easier and the design will be easier to implement.