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Three Creative Sources of Inspiration for Web Designers

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:40:59 +0000

While many web designers depend on digital galleries or graphic catalogs for interactive ideas, you don’t need to go online for divine design inspiration. There’s a world of creativity right before your eyes, all you need to do is look, listen and learn. Throughout my career at a Boca Raton web design firm, I’ve found that my greatest sources of inspiration weren’t in the digital, but in the day-to-day wonders that I always saw as a must, yet never realized could be a muse.

Architecture

The ideal blend of form and function, architecture fulfills our need for protection and practicality along with our desire for attractiveness and comfort. Websites should be designed to serve the same purposes. They should house the necessary information yet display it in an appealing and accessible manner. A layout is really no different than a floorplan in that it must be designed for usability, styled for uniqueness and optimized for efficiency. By incorporating these key components into the overall design, your site will be built to last.

Film

Designers would be wise to borrow from the big screen when designing for the computer screen. Like web design, film’s greatest appeal is its ability to inform, inspire and influence through an endless array of visual elements. Scenes in a movie are no different than transitions between applications or features in a website. It’s these transitions that engage viewers and give real dimension to the characters. As important as visual effects are sound effects. Sound is a neglected tool in the designer’s arsenal, yet works to make your sites more memorable and effective. Last but not least is the power of title effects. These words and images on the screen make a strong emotional impact and convey the meaning of your message beyond words.

Machines

While machines may seem like cold, inanimate objects, they actually represent the ultimate form of usability. Machines have evolved with the times and with the trends to meet our needs and enhance our lives, which corresponds with the underlying goals of web design. Look at the machines around you and notice how their controls are displayed for maximum efficiency and effectiveness, putting the most important features right at your fingertips. Use this concept to inspire your layouts and make your websites more user-friendly and interactive.

As you can see, inspiration is everywhere, from art to culture to technology. Whether you’re a solo artist or work at a creative media agency, look around and let life be your greatest source of inspiration.

Bad Website Designs

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:50:14 +0000

Designing and producing a website is a creative endeavor, and it takes a lot of skill to produce a website that is appealing, easy to use and informative, however as you scan through the Internet there are quite clearly some people out there that have absolutely none of the necessary designing or color matching skills necessary to create a website that does not offend to the eyes and cause severe headaches – here are few examples of bad website designs .

Blinding color schemes, annoying flashing lights, data overload and dizzying geometric patterns that can only have been masterminded by a crazy person litter the websites of the daft and inept, and if the graphics alone weren’t bad enough some of them also have scary robotic voice overs that actually send creepy shivers down your spine.

In this day and age where web hosting services offer a vast number of attractive pre-designed templates to suit any kind of personal or business need, there is simply no excuse for websites that are so poorly designed that even experienced website users cannot work out how to navigate around them, or designs so awful and disturbing that you just want to click away from the site as soon as possible so that you stop feeling nauseous.

Just get your sunglasses out and have a look at this one http://www.paperrad.org/ to see what I mean, personally I can’t stay long enough here to work out what this website is actually for, but the flashing psychedelic dog heads are certainly very memorable (especially as they have been burnt onto your retinas).

If you can bear to stay long enough on a bad website, and if you can find anything that resembles a ‘Contact Us’ section send an SOS to the administrative team alerting them to the fact their website seriously sucks, and point them in the direction of a web design manual. You would be doing them a favour in the long run.:)

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Basic Webpage Layout and Design

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:02:21 +0000

Fundamentally a website is designed to carry information, whether this be about product, services or subject of interest, and so it should be functional, easy to read and appealing. Design and layout should then focus on getting the information across quickly and efficiently, as any website that looks overcrowded and hectic will put viewers off.

Flashing and scrolling text, animation and auto loading sounds all seem like a good idea at the time, but they can be very irritating to experienced website users, who just want to know what your website is about, and whether it has anything of interest to them. Keep it simple and leave out the gimmicky animations and sounds – industry testing has shown that visitors are more likely to click straight out of websites using these methods immediately, without bothering to read any of the content.

Pop Ups – pop ups carry a significant security risk, and for that reason most people have them blocked or turned off in their browsers. Avoid using them, as you will just annoy any visitors and distract them from what they came to your website for in the first place.

Advertising – this is a good way to make some cash from your website, but try and keep it to a reasonable level, and balance it with the content. Websites should be looking at a ratio of around 80% content, 20% advertising, and this should allow you to create and interesting, and profitable website. For example East of the Web (www.eastoftheweb.com) has some subtle, effective advertising, and by keeping it restricted to the top section of the website it is visible, without being intrusive:

Image Backgrounds – the point is to keep your website simple and easy to read, and image backgrounds are no good for this, creating a confusing, amateurish look, which overwhelms the text and may also cause slow loading times. If you are going to have a background, use a plain colour, leaving any design logos or images in the to the headers and borders. Successful professional websites do this so why not you!

Journalism.co.uk example:

In short – professional web design improves any website and brings better ROI

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