I was discussing with a few of my close friends today, about how each person prefers to begin a design. So far, I've found there are two major types of web development strategy, of which most people have done both and choose one that they prefer.
The first I will dub "Design Before Code" where the design is already sketched out, coloured and live in a program like Photoshop, Gimp or others. All you need to do is build the code and slice up the image and fill in the holes. I've found this seems to be the choice of most developers, as you really seem to know exactly what you're going to build before you actually start the coding process. I imagine this has some advantages, as code structure can be dimly planned within the developers head before he even starts typing, and you know exactly what you want it to look like.
The second of the two I will name "Blind Design", which consists of the code first, and then adding in graphic elements such as colour, headers, menus as you go. To tell you truthfully, I have always employed this sort of development "plan", if you could call it that. Sometimes I do a sketch or two with a couple of colour choices, but I never actually open Photoshop until I need to. When I try to think of some advantages in comparison to the "Design Before Code", the only one I can think of is that you know your code is going to validate perfectly because you do it first, so perhaps the code is more important then the appearance to you. Obviously, the first choice is the better one.
And the new design I'm working on will be the first one to employ this design tactic. A surprise? It seems to be for almost all of my contacts, as they always through I designed my websites in a more planned out form. If you, as a web developer, was going to make a new website for yourself, which tactic would you use, or is there another that I am oblivious to? Or maybe I'm being too general? Lets discuss this one.