A few weeks ago… Er, more than a few weeks ago, I posted a blog post on why designers should use wireframes. I have always used Photoshop to do more formal wireframes for client sites, but wanted to give Balsamiq a try since I first heard about it. They were gracious enough to give me a copy to review. By the way, they are incredibly friendly and fast responding.
Doing a wireframe before each web site design is a crucial step. Actually, it’s more than crucial. Let’s put it this way, I divide my own work into two distinct periods. The “before the wireframing phase” and the “after I discovered the glorious virtues of wireframing” phase. I do one now for every single project, even the most basic ones.
Using illustration in your website is a great way to help build your brand and set it apart in this competitive market. We’ve noticed that there isn’t a lot of use of illustration around the web, which is surprising since advertising, magazines, and other media have been using it extensively for years along with photography.
When you start working on the content for your website and thinking about what you want to put there, it’s easy to start by seeing what other people with similar sites are doing. If you have a small mostly informational site you might think, “Well, I need a home page, an about page, a services/products page, and a contact page and that should do it”. It’s that simple, right? Put the info up and they’ll find their way around? Well, not so much.
I bet that a lot of designers who run their own businesses, like me, don’t actually spend a lot of time designing. Most of my day gets divided up into tasks that are decidedly not very “creative”, like administrative tasks, communication, planning, marketing, small touch ups, coding, etc. etc.
