Graphic Design Services - London, UK

Overcomplicated and "busy" design hinders people from understanding the message they are meant to receive. This means that the information intended to reach the target audience is often lost in the clutter of messy web pages full of irrelevent banners, ads, navigation bars and excessive graphical elements.

Simplicity is often overlooked as websites seek to bombard their visitors with as many options as possible in the hope that they will find something to their liking.

In reality - its more likely that the information overload will result in user apathy, and too many options will often lead to frustration and a decision to leave without making any choices at all.

After all, we all have better things to do with our time than try to work out exactly what we are being served.

 "It’s crucial to have simple web designs to allow the user to quickly find the information they need, especially if you are selling a product. If the page is cluttered with useless text, widgets or unrelated products, the site becomes meaningless.

However, it’s become a common practice to do just the opposite. e-commerce sites have taken this “scatter shot” approach of trying to slap the potential buyer with as many options as possible. Instead of making the landing page solely about one product, sites usually clutter the page with unnecessary information, ads and related products. "

Glen Stansberry, taken from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/26/how-simple-web-design-helps-your-business/

"When you want logo design, web design, annual report design, etc. appointing the right design company to carry out the work will be a big decision".

Outline Brief

The purpose of a brief in simple terms is to create an understanding of your requirements. It should outline and clarify the project objectives in an informative manner and thus time and effort must be spent in its formulation.

In short, the brief allows the client to present the weaknesses of the company or the particular requirements of a specific area(s) of concern, for example, the brand image, marketing material and so on, also to state what goals are to be achieved. It may be a good idea to get colleagues or those who may understand the company’s goals to contribute in the formulation of the brief.

Often the client will provide the design company with a brief prior to the commissioning of the project tasks. For lengthier projects, the client may require input from the design company or alternatively the responsibility to produce the entire brief. Either way, an in-depth discussion with the client will identify the project requirements from which the detailed project brief can be written. The detailed brief will provide the direction in which the work will be carried out.

The brief is the key focal point of the project since it will be referred to at all times and formalises the task to be completed. However, the brief should not be considered as a static entity since should there be any necessary amendments to be made to the project objectives, the brief should also change to accommodate this. 

The brief will not only help the designers to understand the problem to be solved, but provide the client with a clearer idea of their requirements and remove preconceived ideas of solutions. It will also clarify the deliverables the design company will supply. This should help avoid any misunderstandings as to what should have been delivered at the end of the project.

Although the above-described brief process is often used for larger projects, some kind of brief or basic project requirements document should be created even if the company uses it for internal purposes. This will always help avoid confusion and miscommunication on the deliverables. 

 Understanding Web Design 

by Jeffrey Zeldman - Full article can be found at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingwebdesign

We get better design when we understand our medium. Yet even at this late cultural hour, many people don’t understand web design. Among them can be found some of our most distinguished business and cultural leaders, including a few who possess a profound grasp of design—except as it relates to the web.

Some who don’t understand web design nevertheless have the job of creating websites or supervising web designers and developers. Others who don’t understand web design are nevertheless professionally charged with evaluating it on behalf of the rest of us. Those who understand the least make the most noise. They are the ones leading charges, slamming doors, and throwing money—at all the wrong people and things.

If we want better sites, better work, and better-informed clients, the need to educate begins with us.

by John Allsopp - Full article can be found at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dao

Same old new medium?

“Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;
Closely held beliefs are not easily released;
So ritual enthralls generation after generation.”
Tao Te Ching; 38 Ritual

If you’ve never watched early television programs, it’s instructive viewing. Television was at that time often referred to as “radio with pictures”, and that’s a pretty accurate description. Much of television followed the format of popular radio at that time. Indeed programs like the Tonight Show, with its variants found on virtually every channel in the world (featuring a band, the talk to the camera host, and seated guests), or the news, with the suited sober news reader, remain as traces of the medium television grew out of. A palimpsest of media past.

 Think too of the first music videos (a few of us might be at least that old). Essentially the band miming themselves playing a song. Riveting.

When a new medium borrows from an existing one, some of what it borrows makes sense, but much of the borrowing is thoughtless, “ritual”, and often constrains the new medium. Over time, the new medium develops its own conventions, throwing off existing conventions that don’t make sense.

If you ever get the chance to watch early television drama you’ll find a strong example of this. Because radio required a voice – over to describe what listeners couldn’t see, early television drama often featured a voice over, describing what viewers could. It’s a simple but striking example of what happens when a new medium develops out of an existing one.

The web is a new medium, although it has emerged from the medium of printing, whose skills, design language and conventions strongly influence it. Yet it is often too shaped by that from which it sprang. “Killer Web Sites” are usually those which tame the wildness of the web, constraining pages as if they were made of paper – Desktop Publishing for the Web. This conservatism is natural, “closely held beliefs are not easily released”, but it is time to move on, to embrace the web as its own medium. It’s time to throw out the rituals of the printed page, and to engage the medium of the web and its own nature.

This is not for a moment to say we should abandon the wisdom of hundreds of years of printing and thousands of years of writing. But we need to understand which of these lessons are appropriate for the web, and which mere rituals.