Web design from scratch - HELP!

[AGD]

Hi there, I said to someone I'd make a website for them with a basic initial design ready by the end of this friday (19th) but I am having 'designers block'. I am getting paid a little bit of money for this and it's for a friend of a friend so I don't want to let them down.

My question is really to do with how you approach the design process? The company has no branding but assuming you have the logo and target audience set in your mind where do you go from there? My thought process has been - upmarket so maybe some serif headers and simple with white background, clean layout, small colour palette. Now these things might all be correct (or not) but what would you guys do first:

get basic block layout sorted
choose typography
choose colour scheme

And when you have these things in place, how do you make the transition from a simple layout obeying good design principles but which is rather basic and barren to a final 'professional' look? Are there any rules which help with this?

I think I know the basics to with accessibility, web standards, complete separation on content and styling etc but I have difficulty arriving at a professional looking product. Any tips from you pros? I know some people can knock off a prototype (for a basic website) which looks quite professional in a day and reckon they must follow some kind of standard method!

Sorry for the long post and thanks a lot!

 

[AGD]

Thanks for the advice reflux. Nice to know how other people work. I've got a basic design in place and was looking for some c & c. Went for a very minimal look (heavily inspired by a few of my favourite sites). Does it look too bare? Still not sure if it looks professional enough....

 

[AGD]

I do think I need to breakup the background a bit. A gradient might work... Not sure where to put it though. Was thinking of separating the header a bit more but again don't know the best way to do this, maybe have a horizontal bar in a different colour which incorporates the logo. Any more advice would be much appreciated!

 

[AGD]

I was going to put some images in the main content area (just need to find/buy some good ones). You're correct, the footer isn't centred so I'll change that.

I sort of agree with you on the dark green but I'm useless with colours...

 

[AGD]

Ok so I centred the footer and added some images with borders as so:

I sent it to the owner of the company and his reply is leaving me in a bit of a pickle. I've never had to make a logo/brand identity before and didn't really factor that in to my costs. He originally said he'd pay me £400 for the website. We didn't really talk about what he'd get for that and basically my inexperience is telling. He wants multiple options to consider with regard to logos and possibly site designs but I'm thinking that it'll already take me 2 weeks in total (so £5 an hour) and so adding more work would be unreasonable for the price. Obviously we should have discussed this originally but as I said, I'm new to this and made a mistake.

He's sending me links to very upmarket websites which will have cost thousands (not including logo +brand identity) as what to aim for. Is he being unreasonable? I feel that the design I've produced +brand identity is already worth more than what he's paying...

On the other hand I could really do with this money which is why I said yes initially!

Edit: Already included in the £400 is using joomla cms and teaching him how to use it.

 

[AGD]

Thanks for all the advice guys - it really is much appreciated.

I decided to send him an email detailing what extra costs would be in the event of him wanting alternative designs/logos. By the way, I didn't want to give the impression that he was being deliberately unreasonable - he literally knows nothing about website costs and design work in general so wouldn't have known how much this costs really.

Once again, thanks a lot.