Democracy Designs — Web design for small businesses
Take inspiration from the best. There’s nothing new in that statement. But for designers, it’s worth reminding ourselves when we get involved with the day to day aspects of dealing with clients.
It’s important to consider how designers like Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, and Paul Rand went about their work.
Here is an interesting flexible grid solution to responsive web design.
Basically:
- It’s a 1000 pixel wide grid that helps when designing in programs like Photoshop.
- In the browser, your pixels become percentages. (example: 490px in your design equals 49% in the browser, 150 px equals 15%, etc.
- His example ads 2% padding for the gutter width.
- The design of the grid is set at 90% of the width of the viewport so it expands as well as contracts.
Just want to add a quick note to this post. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, as they say. One of the problems with websites like 99-designs is the amount of fraud. This blog post from the logo factory about covers it.
99designs.com offers design competitions where you open your project to a community of designers who all try and compete to get the best design for you. As the client, you pledge an amount, say $300.00 and several designers will strive to get you a cool design. [Read more...]
Blogging can be a huge benefit to your business. Here is a list of the top 7 reason’s I’ve found to have a blog on your site:
In addition to having your own blog, you should consider guest-blogging and article writing for other sites. This is an excellent way to create connections to your own site and become known as an expert in your field. When this happens, others will link to you. [Read more...]
Typically, design by committee is the result of a project that lacks strong leadership.
Even if a project has direction in the beginning, the vision gets muddy when multiple people start influencing the design. Before you know it, you wind up with a design that stinks.
There’s a saying abound: “a camel is a horse designed by committee.” There’s nothing wrong with the camel, but when you’re going for a horse, well…
To answer this question, I think we first have to ask, “what is a web designer?” Considering the web and its evolution over the years, the obvious answer, “someone who designs websites,” is not good enough.
When you’re a web designer working for a company, the process of web design is commonly divided into three areas: [Read more...]
Do you feel overwhelmed when creating your web content?
Do you have good ideas but never quite get around to doing anything about them?
It’s natural and everybody procrastinates from time to time. But procrastination slows down the creative process and can even lead to stagnation. Luckily there’s a cure for it!
One way I’ve learned to overcome procrastination when building websites is to do tasks that I enjoy doing. That’s right, I put the less interesting tasks off until I feel inspired to do them. This sounds like procrastination, but the way I see it, as long as I’m working on something, I’m not procrastinating. I find that this approach often allows me to build the momentum I need to get a project completed. [Read more...]
I recently had a chance to work at a convention where my co-workers and I showed off our latest web development projects. One of my duties involved helping people do common tasks on the website. I was amazed at what I learned!
Looking at things from the end users perspective allowed me to see how people actually use the products I’ve designed — shifting my perspective from theory to practice. [Read more...]
