I find that the best way to present design comps to a client is directly in the browser, via a ‘faked’ webpage. The flat PNG or JPG of the design sits in the center, with a background pattern behind, to simulate the final site. The most obvious reason for this is that it shows your work “in context” — with browser chrome surrounding it, the fold and the scroll as they’d look with an actual, real site. More importantly, it shows how your design interacts with the width of the browser and how the colors and tones either extend to the full width, or the page sits against the background.

While this may seem common sense, I still see designs and comps passed via email or as links within Basecamp. Sure, this might work for super quick changes or to an experienced client, but it’s no substitute for showing your work as it will eventually be. After all, it’s very cheap to cut a flat PNG/JPG of any given comp, scrape a tall, repeating background GIF and drop it into a quick and dirty html template. I’ve done it on recent projects. Jesse at 31Three also does an excellent job at presentation (very nice index file too).

It’s a little detail, but it counts.