Misinterpreting Minimalism
As of late, I've noticed there are quite a few websites popping up that are designed in a minimalist aesthetic. I believe designing in this style requires more attention to typography and grid systems to be effective. Unfortunately, this is not the case with many examples I've seen. I find there are too many concepts, ideas and products in this world that would benefit from a stronger visual aesthetic. With poorly executed minimalism, designers lose the chance of communicating a visual message. My concern is similar to a post of Owen's a little while back and how some people are overly inspired by visual trends, which leads to the demise of content and creativity.
Designers: Are You Asking Questions About UX?
A few weeks ago I posted a tweet to designers saying, "If you're not asking questions about the UX that gets handed to you, you're not doing your job." Responses varied from general agreement to my favorite sarcastic remark, "If you're not asking questions about the UX handed 2 u, you're not doing your job MY BEST FRIEND" (by UXer @malhinha)," and "If you get handed UX at all, you're luckier than most designers" (by @simonmeek).
The Case for UX
If you don't have wireframes and other UX deliverables to work with, I empathize with you, because I've been in your shoes. It's not fun! It's time-consuming and limits your ability to do your best work. Many designers are often left wearing the UX hat because UX is the new design...anybody can do it, right? I was guilty of thinking this until I started working with great UXers who are incredibly skilled at their craft. We don't treat our UX team as a luxury, but rather as a necessity. The value that they provide to project teams and clients can be measured in time, money, conversion rates, innovation ... The list goes on.
Continue reading "Designers: Are You Asking Questions About UX?"
7 Simple Photoshop Typography Tips You’re Already Doing, Right?
Just because you can do something in Photoshop doesn't mean you should do it, especially if you're designing web sites in Photoshop. This is most definitely true of how you handle typography in Photoshop. It's always frustrating to painstakingly craft your type, just to find out it's impossible or impractical to use it the way you envisioned in the finished product. Here's a list of little things you can do to ensure that the design you create in Photoshop will and can be perfectly translated into a built-out site. They're mostly common sense, but I know I've been guilty of just about all of them at some point, so hopefully this is a helpful refresher.
Continue reading "7 Simple Photoshop Typography Tips You’re Already Doing, Right?"
Mood Boards: Dressing For Different Occasions
For designers at Viget, Mood Boards are consistently among our favorite topics to discuss and deliverables to create. I wanted to shed a little more light on the subject to talk about some variations of the practice and how we look at them at Viget. Essentially, mood boards aren't a one-size-fits-all kind of thing and we have different approaches to them. Ultimately, we always have the same goal in mind – to start broad in efforts to get early feedback that will allow us to narrow our focus as we begin to work on the details of a design. I originally approached this subject back in 2008 looking at two variations of mood boards. Since then, our two variations have morphed into three. Here are some examples that illustrate what we mean.
Continue reading "Mood Boards: Dressing For Different Occasions"
Notes From Our Default ExpressionEngine Build
This post is intended to build off of Doug’s Post: ExpressionEngine on Multiple Machines. So if you haven’t read that, I’ll wait for you.
All caught up? Ok, let’s go.
I’ve been lucky enough to build 3 EE sites in the past few months, so it’s given me time to look at our setup, make changes, and even to build some add-ons. I was hoping to share more about our default build, and maybe there are a few tips and tricks you might find useful.
Continue reading "Notes From Our Default ExpressionEngine Build"
Post-Implementation, Pre-Launch: A Crucial Checkpoint
There's a certain type of project we find ourselves working on every now and then that can turn me into a puddle of stress until (and often after) the site launches.
It goes something like this:
The client has an internal web team and/or budget is tight -- so UX and design get full attention, but build-out is minimal. Our front end devs might build 2-3 pages, a basic elements page, or nothing at all. The client's internal web team is tasked with absorbing a set of PSDs and deconstructing the visual system. They need to create mark-up for the comps we've given them, and they need to extend the design and mark-up considerably to cover a large site. Oh, and they also have to port all of this into some type of CMS templating system. Usually under a hard deadline. Easy-peasey, right?
On top of all that, we often don't get to meet the people that are going to carry out this work. This means there is no opportunity to explain our vision or establish trust in either direction. As Doug points out in his excellent post about planning for hand-off, this can be a scary prospect for both teams.
So how do we do right by our clients and make sure our designs don't degrade?
Continue reading "Post-Implementation, Pre-Launch: A Crucial Checkpoint"
8 Faces: Viget
Why?
Typography is very central to the work we do as designers. There are many tools and techniques. There is much history. And as we all know, the world of web-type these days is developing rapidly on a day by day basis.
Recently at Viget, we decided to conduct our own internal version of 8 Faces to figure out the collective typeface preferences of our design team. There were a few reasons for this:
- Curiosity: we were interested to know which typefaces would rise to the top
- Simplicity: with a font library in the hundreds and thousands, it begs the question, how many are truly irreplaceable?
- Efficiency: this is probably a secondary reason but it has come up before that it may be useful to have a list of solid, tried-and-true typefaces that we could use as a starter set for new hires and interns
2011