The Most Useful Design Tips of the Year
The Internet is changing with the development of Web 2.0, and the changing marketplace reflects a need for increased usability, easier functionality and design that is visually appealing but that still lends to an easy to maneuver, content-rich website. The following is a list of ten top website design tips that made a difference in 2007.
1. Know the audience: The design of your website should cater specifically to your target market both in the visual sense, and in usability. It is critical that the design of your website reflect the values that your potential customers will hold.
2. Personalize: Even if your website is designed by the greatest professionals in the business, if you do not allow your customers to get to know you, or to believe in you, you will have difficulty selling your ideas.
3. No uncertain terms: Clearly identify what the purpose is for your website, and ensure that every facet of your website focuses on this goal. Are you conveying a message, selling a product or offering a service? Make this obvious from the beginning, and keep your focus until the end.
4. Keep it quick: You have between ten and thirty seconds to capture the attention of your customer, so keep graphics small in order to minimize the time it takes to load your website. Compress images when possible, so that your loading times stay low.
5. Design is important, content is more so: Good content is what sells your ideas and products. Is your copy delivering the message you intended for it to? Grammar and spelling ARE important; so proofread everything you write before it goes live.
6. Map your Site: You can make your website’s navigation much more easy and intuitive simply by creating a site map, or a directory web page. If your customer cannot navigate your website quickly or easily enough to find what they came for, they will go elsewhere for solutions.
7. Strive for consistency: Your website should be consistent in the design, the look and the feeling. Colors, themes and ideas should stay constant throughout every page on the website to make the best impression on your visitors.
8. Keep track of links: You should make sure that your site is fully functional at all times, which means checking out your website links on a fairly regular basis. If you have dead links on your site, there is no telling how much of a negative impact will transfer to your search engine page ranking, or the opinion your visitors have of your website.
9. Make a simple start: When you begin your site, take everything one page at a time, and optimize each page for the best results before moving on to the next. This means that you should make sure that every page is perfect before leaving it for the next one.
10. Optimize: The top search engines are responsible for helping more than 85-percent of all web users to find exactly what they are looking for. If you want to be one of the websites that is considered when users look for similar products or information, you must make sure that your pages are designed to maximize your search engine placement.
I hope you enjoyed our Top Ten Design Tips list - If have any comments or would like to add to the list - we strongly encourage you to do so…
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The Best Website to Download Free Fonts!
I really wanted to share this cool font site with our readers - I have come to rely on it for designing new sites and adding some added flair to older sites. UrbanFonts is the name of the site and is the one place I recommend for free fonts as well as paid for fonts.
The site is easy to navigate, search and browse. The fonts are organized by useful categories which will save you the time and headache of scrolling through long lists. Not to mention it will help you stay focused on choosing the right font style for your project. Unlike other free font sites, these guys seem to do a really nice job separating the “wheat from the chaff” and include what I consider some of the best fonts on the web. If you don’t like what you see in the free downloadable fonts area, UrbanFonts also offers a neat selection of affordable high-quality fonts. The other nice feature of the site is that there is a good selection of well written articles about fonts - helpful even for the more experienced designer. If the articles are not enough for you check out the UrbanFonts Blog and Forum.
Just Discovered another Free Resource over at Crestock.com - Check Out Their Post “25 Best Free Fonts”
Want to share your favorite design site, blog or tool with DesignersMind readers?
Creative, Inspiring, Thoughtful and Cool
You have to check out these two online websites that perhaps you have never heard of… I stumbled these sites while surfing online for a possible holiday gifts for my friends and family.
This co-founders of this earth friendly “sustainable design for living” website was co-founded by Paul Donald and Tracy Brien. Paul spent 12 years in graphic design and magazine publishing - he helped create Spy, Wired, The Industry Standard and Sunset (check them out when you get a chance). Tracy has “extensive knowledge of environmental issues and sustainable, small-scale community development” - she has worked for such organizations as Greenpeace, the International Rivers Network, and International Development Exchange.
In this case mixing design and environmentalism results in a web design that not only inspires us but also offers cool, thoughtful and wholly appealing product on every level. I highly recommend reading their What is Branch? section - think paradigm shift for shopping.
Blub.com is the other site which I think is the “bee’s-knee’s” and brings personalization and creativity to a new level. The website is a genius idea that is capturing every bit of of the perosnalization trend - similar to the US Postal service or www.stamps.com perosnalization service which allows you to customize stamps with your own pictures. Blurb.com is the ulitmate in capturing the current personalization trend: It gives the everyday person the ability to make a linen bound, proefessional-qaulity book for next to nothing.
“Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the joy of books – reading them, making them, sharing them, and selling them.”
Creating your own book is simple - download their free software, import your pics and images, design your ideal layout and creat a masterpiece. The end product is a professionally designed (by you) book that has the same quality as anything you would pull off the shelves of Borders, Barns & Noble or other bookstores.
Ok, so this post was a little off the beaten path - but it is shopping season and also the web design and creativity of both sites is very inspiring.
Photoshop Tutorial
I found this tutorial on YouTube (what do you think of the quality and content?)
- we are considering adding more (of our own) video tutorials to the Designers Mind site - If we do, what topics would you like us to cover?
Let me know your thoughts…
Some people seem to have been born knowing creative design principles. Others, maybe you included, have to struggle to develop even the tiniest creative skills they do have. One thing is for certain, you can learn to be more creative. And you can discover the creative design ideas that other artists use for inspiration, even if you were not born with a single creative bone in your body.
There are several principles of design you must consider when you begin to learn the creative design process. These principles give an over riding basis on how your design elements will interact with one another, in your artwork and your designs. Each one influences the others in an endless tug-of-war within your mind and on your creative canvas. Your challenge is to learn to create harmony out of all these principles in your artwork, and to give your designs that unique blend that can only come from within you.
The creative design principles are…
Balance
Rhythm
Dominance
Unity
Now, let us look at each principle as it relates to your creativity and your designs.
Balance is the arrangement of different design elements, on any given piece of artwork, so that there is an equal distribution of visual weight to the whole piece. Art that doesn’t have balance can leave the viewer uneasy, almost as if there is something wrong with the piece.
Rhythm has to do with repeating elements and patterns in your designs. It also involves variations on those patterns to provide freshness, and to keep your art from becoming boring. Repetition can help to unify a piece, or bring different parts of your artwork together. It can also provide the basic textures for your design work.
Dominance refers to emphasizing certain parts of your design so that they get noticed first. Every piece of artwork needs a focal point which determines where your eyesight goes first, when you look at it. If you do not have a focal point your viewer quickly loses interest. Having too many points of interest will also leave the viewer with no place to focus. There are many ways to emphasize parts of your design, but the most important point is to select your focus based on your main message and, secondly, in consideration of whom your audience will be.
Unity is the final aspect in design, which gives a feeling that all the elements belong together. Unifying a piece can involve using various elements, including matching colors, shapes, textures, groupings, weights, typographies, or sizes. Unity, in your art, is the overall feeling that brings your piece together, and gives it wholeness or variety, whichever you are trying to convey to the viewer.
When you consider each of these design principles, while creating your artwork, they will have an impact on everything you create and do in your piece. No matter where your creativity takes you, if you will try to incorporate balance, rhythm, dominance, and unity into your artwork, you will be building on the solid basics of creative design.
Two websites that I think are worthy of checking out this week…
Open Source Web Design - URL: www.oswd.org
This is great site to get inspired, browse and download free web design templates.Perhaps, more importantly, it allows you to share your designs with others. Currently, they boast 2080 web designs to browse and download at no cost. I often browse around the site when I need to get inspired and feeling creatively challenged - good source for design ideas. Francis Skettino founded the site in September 2000 with a goal “to provide the Open Source community with quality web designs to help get people’s projects on the web in a way that is both organized and good looking.” You will find all types of sites from personal blogs, to content management systems to full fledged businesses.
The site is definitely worth a look go check them out at www.oswd.org
Design By Humans - URL: www.designbyhumans.com
I found this site posted on Open Source Web Designs site - I thought it was worth a mention and a good example of the ideas that can be found at the Open Source Web Design site. I think Design By Humans is a neat concept - “a community centered around t-shirt designs” - with a twist. Created to provide “a place for people to submit, discover and buy amazing custom t-shirt designs created by artists from around the world.” The cool part of the concept is that the site is based around an “ongoing t-shirt design contest”. Headquartered in Irvine California the site was officially launched in July 2007. This is another site that should provide some inspiration when you find yourself at a loss for creativity.
Worthy of a look see at: www.designbyhumans.com
Do you use an Annual Website Maintenance Checklist for your clients and your own sites?
Each year we spend a fair amount of time preferably prior to the end of December and review both our client sites as well as our own.
Over the years we have evolved the checklist from ten items to many more…
The checklist is designed to help website us and other website marketing managers review potentially costly issues and reduce any errors that might have cropped up over the year.
Maintaining a website properly can be difficult and time consuming and easy to put off until you “have more time”. We suggest that you make it a priority - it is that important to you and your clients websites. Even the smallest of errors have the capacity to undermine the credibility and effectiveness of your websites.
Here is our End of the Year Web Site Checklist:
Perhaps we missed something? Send us your thoughts and feedback…