Creating a couple of mockups for a site has some real benefits, and it doesn’t just effect the appearance. It can also enhance the code and navigation of a site. Creating two versions for a site may sound like an extra expense, a simple pain in the butt, seem pointless, but it helps a site out a lot. Continue reading »
Content is crap, and bells and whistles are everything.
Thinking more and more about how people use the web, and how reading (more than a couple of sentences) has simply become a thing of the past. I wonder how valuable content really is unless it’s simply screaming look at me!
Take this half a million dollar hunk of clay for example. It’s a monument at the Cesar Chavez Park in the city of San Jose, CA. Continue reading »
Feb 262010
Quick! What is the hexadecimal color of my logo? Don’t know? Would you need to look in my CSS maybe? Would you try loading my logo into Photoshop and see? Too slow. Those of you with ColorZilla know.
The easiest way to do it, if you use Firefox, is to install the add-on ColorZilla. Continue reading »
Feb 252010
Are you suffering from Giant Image Syndrome? The common symptoms are: squished content, wrapped content, horizontal scrolling, super long lines of text, and basic site destruction.
Right now I am working for a Fortune 100 company that has a ton of intranet sites. The IT department was nice enough to create a default template so that anyone can build a site. They even allow them to use their own creativity, by not specifying a style guide. Oops. Continue reading »
With graphic design resources becoming increasingly available online, the allure to use them can be overwhelming. Talented designers from all over the world are consistently distributing new (and often free) graphic design tools – including, but not limited to, Photoshop brushes i.e., Splatter Brushes and grunge fonts with many of these often listed in various graphic design “trends” articles.
Yet there is a trap one can succumb to of following a trend and applying these resources to designs, without taking the time to perform proper analysis. As designers, we should always know what our intentions are – ask yourself what is the desired effect that you are looking to create? Your answer to this could very well illustrate to you that the fantastic (yes, they’re often brilliant) free brushes or fonts you just found are not right for that particular project.
Jan 302009
Looking to make a logo for your site or company? May I suggest not doing it yourself, and hiring a professional? That is probably a good idea, but if you are simply building a logo for a website that you are having fun with, or have no budget for, then we must do what we must do. Here are a few logo basics to get you on your way.
Description Quality
You must easily be able to describe your logo without having a picture of it. Looking at this link building logo from Graffias Network, you can see it’s pretty easy to describe. It’s simply their name with a few lines (dots indicating lines) of a network. This is a great example because the image compliments the word network. If you look at BWI’s it’s simply a square with the BWI on top. Why the square? Well you will have to read to understand. There is a reason though.
Limit Colors
Don’t go nuts with the colors. Three is a very good number, and if you do a little searching on net for the keyword “Magic of 3″ you will see all sorts of reasoning. Limiting the colors to just three will help you comply with the first rule making it easy to describe, it will make it easier to blend a site theme with it, and it will certainly make it easier when it comes time to putting your logo in print.
Simple in Design
Having a simple design is a key for branding, and compliments the first two rules. By keeping it simple it makes your logo easy to remember. It makes it easier to describe, and it makes it easier to control the number of colors. Using the Graffias site as an example again, they could have just as easily put a picture of a computer or a server on that logo. Would it say the same thing? It might, but do you really need to see a picture of a server to understand what a network is? It may even give the wrong message. It may be perceived as that they fix or build networks. Yikes, you don’t want that.
Building logos doesn’t have to be hard, but before you take on the task yourself make sure to look at some of the big boys, like the Fortune 100 companies. They are banking on their logo, and many of them rely on branding type advertising where their logo is everything.
Graffias Network
On a side note, since I used Graffias Network as a logo example, I thought I would give them a quick mention on what they do. They are a web marketing company, so yes, they put a lot of thought into their logo. They also have a cool directory list for you directory submitters out there.
Jul 122008
It’s your website, you pick the colors. Who am I to say pink is a bad theme color for a website, especially if that site was a flower site. Building websites does require a artistic touch, and one rule of the artists is “If it is your work, you can do whatever you want.”
Don’t Make Them Blind Though!
Free to do whatever you want is great, but don’t blind your visitors doing it though. Using colors like pink, yellow, green, and black all on the same page is not good. First, it will hurt your visitors eyes, and second it has no unity. Using the site Portugal Web as an example, you can see a wonderful example of how to use colors.
Three Good Rules
There are three good rules you should know when picking colors based on one theme color. The first is, the rule of three. Try to stick to just three main colors based on your theme. There are all sorts of studies on the number 3, and what it basically boils down to is that things start getting complex after 3. So, to keep your site simple, try to just use three. Don’t worry about having black text. Black isn’t a color anyhow.
The second rule is to choose colors on the color wheel that are on either side of your main theme color. This is what the Portugal Web site has done. They have picked a shade of green, a lighter shade of green, and one darker shade of green. They have basically applied the first two rules, and successfully created an eye pleasing site.
The third rule is for if you don’t like the second rule. If you don’t want to use all like colors, then you should use opposites on the color wheel. In the case of the Portugal site, they could have used Green with the contrast of Red. It may not sound like a good mix, but it will have the least strain on the eyes.
Consistency
Many of my posts are about site consistency because I believe it should be one of the most primary rules in web design. Consistency in color schemes should not be excluded, and in fact should have a higher priority than many aspects. Visitors quickly look for visual clues without even reading, and the use of color is one of the greatest methods.
Jun 272008
Sometimes a site is cool just because it is. Check out this webconferencing comparisons site. A pretty simple blog in regards to site design. So why do I like it? Cool color changes.
Webinar Faq is a blog about web conferencing. I’m not really into web conferencing though, that is more of my wife’s cup of tea. The cool feature they have on the site though, is located on the top right, and it allows you to easily adjust the sites theme colors with a simple click of the mouse. Don’t like blue? Switch to green or some other color. It’s a great little trick putting your CSS file to good use. The color changes the background, font colors, horizontal lines, and everything.
I see this feature often for font size, and you would think being a usability guy I would like that. I actually don’t. Just more crud for the user to figure out, and your browser should have the capability to change that feature already. In this case, a simple box with the color you want makes it an “easy figure”. Blogs are usually reading intensive, and in the case of color schemes, having something that works well for your eyes is a huge plus.
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