Big Header or not?

When you arrive on a website, the first thing you notice is definitely the header. I personally think that a creative header can make a great first impression on a visitor. Most of the bloggers out there wouldn’t agree with this and say that a site should be made in a way so that the content is the first thing a visitor notice, but being a huge fan of big creative headers, I just can’t resist talking about sites that have beautiful headers and gets thousands of visitors every single day.

The thing you should realize about creative headers is that they either impress a visitor right away or drive him away the second he arrives on a site. It’s really important to keep the image of your whole website on your mind when you design a creative header, a lot of people start designing a big header without having a clue how they’d use it on the entire site to make it work and struggle afterward to blend it with the whole website.

Here’s a list of things that you should keep in your mind when you design a big header:

1. Don’t try to make just the header stand out. What you want is to to make your whole site stand out. A header just can’t make a site successful, believe it. People are not coming to your site to to scream WOW over and over again, once or twice they might, but not more than that. What I’m trying to say is that when you’re designing a header, think about how you’d blend your content part in it, not below it.

2. Set a theme. If you’re planning on making a dark header, try to come up with a dark theme for the whole website.

3. Mind the height, it really annoys visitors if they have to scroll down to get to the content part.

4. Don’t make a header too wide and the body too tiny. If you’re planning on using a too wide header, try to come up with a too wide body.

5. Loading time is important, use the slicing method to split up the header in pieces so that the loading time is bearable.

Sites with the most beautiful headers!

1.enRoute Student Film Festival

2. Merchand de Trucs

3. Luova

4. Corvus Design Studio

5. Daniel J. Quinn