Posts Tagged ‘Web Design’
Dec
Cornerstone Architecture
Over the summer, I spent some time interning at Honey Design, a marketing and design firm in London, Ontario. While I was only there for a short amount of time, I was able to gain some of the real world experience that can’t be taught in a classroom. The ladies at Honey were so wonderful and taught me so many things. During my time there, I was fortunate enough to be able to work on several projects both print and web. Although I was not able to see any of the projects to the finish (because limited amount of time), it was very interesting to see the progress and work flow at different stages.
One of the projects I worked on was a website for Cornerstone Architecture. This architecture firm is unique in the way it approaches the brainstorming process. One of their methods is to sit down with the clients in a brainstorming session. During this session, rectangular pieces of paper are physically arranged on a blueprint to see what works best (as opposed to simply sketching on paper). This allows for a number of different configurations to be easily created. When one of the configurations looks good, they photograph it for reference and continue on looking at more.
I created a preliminary site mockup using this brainstorming method as inspiration. The final design is slightly different, but the essence is still there. It is meant to bring across the fluidity and movement of their brainstorming process as well as the appearance of a simple blueprint.
My old art director at Honey emailed me recently to tell me that the site was selected to be featured on Canada’s Web50. While the site isn’t actually mine, and the design has changed since the original concept, I’m so excited to see it featured! I was so blessed to be given the opportunity to work at Honey and I learned so much. Thanks!
Aug
Book Review: Sexy Web Design
This month I chose to read Sexy Web Design by Elliot Jay Stocks. Growing up, I “learned” about web design very slowly, through online tutorials, mimicking techniques, and trying to recreate certain effects. If only this book had been around back then.
Stock’s book outlines the complete step by step process of creating web site. What I particularly enjoyed was that he begins at the very beginning – how to do the research before beginning a website. While most would begin at simply looking at the design of a site, Stock begins with looking at what kind of information the designer should be looking for from the client. He even gives an example of how to write an email to the client.
Speaking of examples, the entire book is one big example. In order to explain web design to the reader, Elliot goes through the entire process of building a website using a hypothetical client and project. I find that learning by example is one of the best ways to learn, so this was an excellent read.
Jul
Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think
Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think was a great starter book on web usability. The tagline “A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” is a most suitable one. I would recommend this book for anyone who has anything to do with web design: designers, developers, marketing managers, even company CEOs.
Krug goes through the reasons why web usability is important, specific ways to improve a site’s usability, examples of live sites and how they can be improved, ways to perform user tests, and more.