Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Food for the Creative Web Designer

February 10, 2010

Random

I have read a cou­ple of arti­cles recently that I wanted to pass along.

• Cookie Cut­ter Web sites — This post from Think Vit­a­min is a chal­lenge to cre­ate sites that reflect the per­son­al­ity of the com­pany, prod­uct, or per­son we are design­ing for. The author’s pre­sup­po­si­tion is that more and more Web sites look the same. The chal­lenge is to think beyond the stan­dard “recipe” and not just fol­low the pat­tern of every­one else. What I like about the arti­cle is that she goes on stat­ing the prob­lem and gives some very prac­ti­cal advice on how to think past the cookie cut­ter. She states sev­eral of the con­ven­tions we typ­i­cally fol­low and chal­lenges the reader to con­sider how to do things a bit dif­fer­ently. She includes many great exam­ples of how other design­ers have chal­lenged the con­ven­tions or just stretched them a bit to cre­ate a site that has a unique per­son­al­ity and dis­tin­guishes site from the many oth­ers out there. I came away with a list of things that I want to think about as I approach any new design project in the future.
• Con­tent is King — Colin James Firth chal­lenges design­ers to con­sider the con­tent and the mes­sage of the con­tent when cre­at­ing a new Web site. Colin argues that too many designs weaken the mes­sage of the Web site by not tak­ing the con­tent into account in the visual design. He encour­ages design­ers to think about how to present the mes­sage of the Web site through the visual design. He believes that copy­writ­ers can help us become bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tors. This arti­cle is a great com­pan­ion to the cookie cut­ter arti­cle I have already mentioned.
• CSS3 — There have been sev­eral arti­cles of late about CSS3 and specif­i­cally CSS3 ani­ma­tions. Smash­ing Mag­a­zine high­lighted 50 Bril­liant CSS3 and Javascript Cod­ing Tech­niques. There are some really inspir­ing exam­ples of what some design­ers are achiev­ing with CSS3 ani­ma­tions. Web Designer Wall show­cased 47 Amaz­ing CSS3 Ani­ma­tion Demos.
• Neu­tron Cre­ations Blog — I came across this site last week. I really like the work of Elliot Jay Stocks. I am a Fire­fox user. I liked the design of this blog so I wanted to cap­ture it in Lit­tle Snap­per. When I viewed the site in Webkit built into Lit­tle Snap­per, I noticed a CSS ani­ma­tion that really added to the per­son­al­ity of the site. I encour­age you to open it up in Safari and have a look. Nice job Elliot.
• Web Own­ers Need more than a Web designer — Paul Boag out­lines the need for gen­er­al­ists in the Web design indus­try. He argues that being a Web designer in the 21st cen­tury involves more than build­ing a Web site. They “need to have a good under­stand­ing of busi­ness prac­tices, site ana­lyt­ics, mar­ket­ing, copy­writ­ing, social media and more.” He encour­ages Web design­ers to broaden their knowl­edge in these areas. I would con­sider myself more of gen­er­al­ist so I appre­ci­ated the arti­cle. I have a vari­ety of inter­ests and enjoy being involved in more than just the Web site. I was very encour­aged by one client’s recent com­ments to me. She said she appre­ci­ated me chal­leng­ing her team to think more about the con­tent and the strat­egy of the site we were work­ing on together.
• In Defense of The Jack of All Trades — I appre­ci­ated this post by Mindy Wag­ner back in Octo­ber. She out­lines why being a gen­er­al­ist worked for her. She out­lined sev­eral qual­i­ties that she thinks makes a suc­cess­ful gen­er­al­ist. I found that I shared those qual­i­ties. It gave me more con­fi­dence to embrace who I am. I just recently left a job where I was a jack of many trades. I had to be to get things done because there was no one else there that could or would do it. I enjoyed that role. I hope in my future employ­ment to find a place where I fit well and can con­tribute out of my strengths and broad knowl­edge base.