When you think of the phrase "The customer is always right", your mind may immediately go to an unsatisfied "Karen" screaming demands at an overworked cashier or customer service manager. However, this phrase extends beyond the service industry into other fields. As graphic designers, we often feel the pressure of know-it-all clients, with visions well outside the scope of reality. Don't get this wrong, client feedback is amazing and necessary. However, when push comes to shove, sometimes the client is just flat wrong. What one may call "creative differences" another may see as "I want it my way". It's always a tough balancing act to merge what the client wants and what lives up to design standards. It's not just the service industry, even professions like Graphic Design fall into the mindset of "The client is always right". We all want happy clients (and being paid is a nice bonus too), but getting there can often mean sacrificing good design for a client's demands. Plus, caving to every single client request can sabotage the entire design. We are all capable of playing Simon Says with our clients, but we need to learn when to say no. The client is not always right and that's ok!
The best logos are designed using principles of proportion and symmetry. Illustrated below, you can see how both the Apple logo and the Twitter logo utilize circles of proportionate values as well as symmetry to create a pleasing, balanced aesthetic quality.
Your logo has to maintain its integrity and serve its purpose no matter what the use. A good designer will understand all this and create a logo that works in all situations. He or she will also take into consideration any other branding elements, like textures or patterns, that are part of your brand and create a logo that complements them.
A logo should not only reflect the company for which it stands; it should reflect its target audience, too. If your audience is middle-aged male gun owners who take part in the annual deer hunting season, your logo should be designed to appeal to them, with elements that suggest things like ruggedness, nature/outdoors, camaraderie, strength, etc.
If you design your logo in a vector environment to start, you'll be saving yourself a lot of heartache later. Using vector graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator or a logo maker like Looka will set you up for success in this regard.
Imagine this: You design your logo on your laptop at your home office. Then, you implement your new logo on your website. Someone in your department complains that the logo has "too many warm tones" even though your laptop is clearly showing a logo with cool tones. You print out the logo as a test and find out there's a third variation of the color altogether. Unfortunately, you already ordered paint for the office that's supposed to match this color that you thought was another color.
On the flip side, you do have more control over everything that happens in your app. If you have a designer on the team he or she will be forever grateful for being able to go completely wild with the design without you limiting his/her possibilities by only using native controls.
Use the layout editor to design site, category and space homepages, displaying the most important or highest-traffic content prominently on the page. Access step-by-step instructions to design kickass homepages here.
After completing any landing page on Desktop, the final task is to run through the Tablet and Mobile versions of the design to make any necessary adjustments.
In the case of this example, just a few Background Section and Block element margin & padding settings needed to be changed (found within the Layout & Position tab of the left sidebar) to achieve the following mobile optimized result:
In the following infographic, you will learn that the road to becoming a UI or UX designer is not a piece of cake. It requires a lot of effort, keen interest, and understanding things that are beyond graphic design. Learn what is required to get into this field, and how to specialize in it with the following guide.
When did you ever see an outdated website making it to the first page of Google? It does not happen. Creating a web design strategy is the first step towards redesigning and optimizing your site to climb to the top of search engines rankings.
In order to create a credible web design, it is imperative that you think strategically in order to have a clear direction as to all aspects of the design, which will achieve the common goal of bringing in converting traffic.
Basically, the web design strategy fuses your entire organizations goal through the design process. This is not a site that simply looks good, is accessible and usable. You are working on a site that accomplishes the objectives of the whole company.
There are so many websites that look great, have the latest design assets, but still, do not achieve the set goals. The way that you use the latest design trends into place should be alert and intellectual.
A target design audience may inform you that women between ages 40 to 45 are better at donating money to schools. A design persona will add more details, like these are mothers of children who go to school, and are happy to educate the kinds on how to help.
They are corporate investors or other individual investors who would rather go through a corporate design and not a site that resembles a video game store. The colors should be subtle and have very clear pictures of the properties he has constructed in the past.
In the case of mark, who is starting a school, the web design personas should have a more relaxed browsing habit. They would be attracted to a colorful website that displays the playful learning atmosphere of the school. Bright colors and lots of images will work very well here.
Your customers interact with your employees on a daily basis. You should not forget to ask your employees to give an input as far as web design is concerned. They too are a great asset when it comes to creating an effective, functional, aesthetically pleasing website.
So the web design voice, tone and style comprises how the content and design complement each other and enable your visitors to decide how they feel about your story. This generates emotions, which then push them to buy your products.
Do not just pick random images to make your website look good. Look for images that complement the content. Place them attractively in the coding of the page, and then see a change in the way people react to your web design.
If you are not sure, check out some websites and then be conscious of how you browse the site, and compare this direction with the design of the website. You will find that some direction fit some types of websites and not others, so you must create a strategy about the direction that you want your website to have.
You have to adjust your web design strategy to ensure that the design actually helps the potential customer to evaluate the product. If the design is fitting with the niche, then you will find people buying more.
Whether building a new website, or redesigning one, you need to have a strategy on which elements will be used as they are, and which ones will be changed. Sometimes it might need a full overhaul of the site, and other times just a few changes.
A mood board is a collection of text, images and other media that can be used to generate inspiration in the design phase. Mood boards can be created for web design, illustration design, video production and a lot of other areas where creative designing is important.
One of the main reasons is to get the designer to be more creative; if the designer sees a layout he loves, he can save that on Pinterest; if he sees something in a magazine, he can cut it out and stick it to a physical board.
This collection is then rearranged and used in making a design for a client. Once the design is complete, each mood board is cleaned up and then put into a file. This is so the images (cutout and digital bookmarks) can be used in other future creations. A mood board can b created from new elements that you find.
Another reason for using a mood board is to approach a client. Sometimes clients do not fully understand what a designer is saying when communicating at the start of a project. Using the mood board can be used to discuss about direction, fonts, images, and other important design features.
A mood board sheds light on color, fonts, lighting, composition, style, shapes, images, texture and so much more. It is therefore an important and crucial part of web design and a strategy has to be designed for its collection, use and storage.
In the world of responsive designs, wireframes are being built for mobile phones and then go outwards to the desktop version. The wireframe is very basic and does not even need coloring or anything fancy.
This process helps the designer come up with the design from an informed point of view. When creating a wireframe, the designer needs to know what content will be placed so he can assess how the design will flow.
Wireframes are also made to address client concerns. The client gets to see the full design in wireframe so he or she knows just how the site will look like in the end. This process gets to save time and money from making changes after the website has been designed. When a client signs off on the wireframe, the designer will only need minor changes at the end, or none at all.
Creating a credible web design strategy is just as important as having a content strategy and content marketing strategy. You have seen that the two come together to define your brand and show you are the authority in your particular niche.
The web design strategy is not simply about knowing where each element goes, but also how customers will experience the site and interact with your products or services. Make sure that it is part of your web design process for every client that you get.
Product placement and display should be done in such a manner that the reader is guide (directed) by what you have placed, towards the goal of the website or landing page. If it is leads, then make it clear with your design direction.
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