With well over a quarter of a century of combined experience in the field, our creative department know that there is so much more to design than just making things look nice.
The design of a site is always context specific. While we possess the skills to make shiny and interesting effects, the situation does not always call for them. In fact, going too far with fancy effects is usually to the detriment of a website. We like well designed sites more than the next man, but a well designed site is one that fits its purpose - not one that sparkles at you.
Sure, we could use plenty of fancy effects and call the design process done, but all that is going to result in is a headache for all parties involved. With no consideration for the user’s eyesight and monitor contrast settings, they may not be able to read that styled text off to the right. Developers would either need to render that text as a graphic, or else have the embedded font and effects not render properly in certain browsers. What’s more, this style of the text has no real place in the site surrounding it.
Boomworks creatives always strive to push forward in the world of design, but not through gimmicky tricks and showy graphics. An understandable, well composed and consistent design is a beautiful one. By treating the process of making a site holistically, a design solution can be formed which is intuitive, cohesive, implementable and easy on the eyes.
Talking to peeps from other disciplines is a splendid way to keep one’s head out of the sand.
Always working closely with the other departments, the creatives take on board the best usability practices, the client’s needs, and how to design for the highest levels of accessibility.
This is achieved by accompanying the User Experience team for user testing sessions, plenty of briefing from the project management team, regularly attending design conferences, and discussions with the development team during the visual concept and layout stages of a project. WCAG colour accessibility guidelines are also consulted with all of our projects.
The design process for a site generally consists of:
- Design research
- Competitor analysis
- Content audit/collation
- Brainstorming and visual concepts
- Key Layouts
- Finished artwork
Style documentation can sometimes follow this process, depending on the size and application of the site.
