New banner is up on my site

I completed uploading my new banner just a while ago. Designing it has been a challenge especially in such a short time frame. In this post I would like to share my experience designing my site’s top banner. I am an application developer and not a designer but I do enjoy doing some design work. All I can say is not only must you have an eye for design and colours, most importantly I think you need lots of patience because there is a lot of fiddling involved using Photoshop.

So here’s what I learned from designing my banner:

1. Design is not as easy as it looks.
2. It is time consuming. You can spend hours designing.
3. It takes time and effort to look for good images and not all are free or can be used freely.
4. It is vital to choose the right colours for your banner to match your WordPress theme.
5. It is important to understand image formats, e.g. jpg, gif, png and which to use.
6. Learning to use all the tools in Photoshop requires more patience than I thought I had.

Here are some resource that I stumbled upon while learning to design my banner for WordPress

1. Designing Headers.
2. Gallery of free headers for WordPress that you can use. Limited but worth taking a look.
3. Quick reference colour chart.
4. Article on what makes a great blog header.

What are the options available when it come to designing your website?

1. You can do it the easy and expensive way by hiring a professional designer.
2. The cheaper way is to buy customizable set of pre-made graphics online.
3. Be like me and do it the free and hard way – designing it yourself and learn to improve your design skill as you go along.