Question - Any Advice Welcome! - Regarding a banner design.

I'm in the formative stages of building a website. I'm looking to make a 728 x 90 leaderboard banner to go across the top. I want the banner to have a "decorative" border around the edges. Firstly I can't decide whether to only put them across the two 90pixel 'widths', in opposing corners or all the way around. The second, more pressing issue, is how to do this? Make my own border? Or sample one from the web? what program would you recommend for doing this in? recommendations other than photoshop would greatly be appreciated!

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If you ask me, I would suggest you to add borders only at the sides and not all round it. And that too depends on the border you are using for the type of banner. Having a border round the banner looks more or less like an ad banner. Also instead of using the side borders just for the banner, you can use it for the content sides too, so it looks more smoother and uniform. If you could post the banner, then it would be better for us to have a look and suggest you.

You can of course make your own border, and if you are creative enough you can come up with some nice designs. You can first sketch them on a paper and then put on computer using programs like Inkscape and GIMP. Both are freeware. There are very nice tutorials on web. And you can search youtube for video tutorials if you feel learinng visually is quicker.

And if you need any help, do ask, I would be happy to help you.

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As for the border of your banner the best border to have is 1px in with and usually it is a 1px black border and yes you would want to go around it and not the sides itself.

As for decoration, it all depends what the banner is about, but usually the best way to make a banner is simplicity itself. Although making a simple banner is a challenge in itself because of using hte right colors and right topography. Check this website out for banner design tips and check out these tutorials on how to design banners in various ways.

As for actual software I would recommend Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, PSP or Gimp. Of course, Gimp is the only free software out of this group and so you would have to decide to put down the cash or go the free route. I know there are Gimp tutorials coming out by the truckloads now but I am an Adobe person and so I would say its worth to get one of three programs.

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