So this is a question for designers out there. When it comes to designing a page how do YOU start?

The first step I almost always take is a pen and paper sketch. I try and work out the basic structure and then a little work on placement of content. On a ONEsite network website I start getting basic modules in place. If I am doing another type of site I try and figure out exactly what type of content needs to go in what location. At that point I get into Photoshop and start doing a little preliminary work. I typically create my base width first (such as 960 pixels wide) - place guides on the page and then use the Expand Canvas feature in Photoshop to expand the page to see more of what will ultimately be my page. I do this so I can visualize a little bit of everything - including a background. As I am actually building my page I start at the top and work my way down or if it's going to be strongly structured in columns i'll work my way down each column. Going back and forth between columns, content, and everything else is pretty common. If an element such as a module on a page needs to look pretty consistent i'll make a master template then just replicate the basic shell and add the text or other graphical elements/colors later. Even if I know every element on a page needs to look X way i'll still rough out a fully realized comp just so I can be sure of the visual flow of the page. One of the biggest problems I try to avoid is lack of realistic content. In my job I deal with content which is not uniform and dynamic by nature this content doesn't always prove to be the best in terms of consistency. So I have to look for ways to organize and lay it out which allows for a vast variety of content (such as blog posts of varying lengths or photos being placed in a blog) to still look congruent. As I design I throw actual content onto my page to hopefully allow some of the potential problems to emerge and be solved before any coding even takes place.

Very rarely am I ever right the first time. It's usually only after several comps that I get to a point of being able to have something useable for a page. At this point then I start breaking it up and creating my stylesheets.