IntuitiveDesigns

How important are fonts in web design? I would say they are essential and taking care of them will change the result of a web design 100%. When Naomi and I designed the latest version of Intuitive Designs, we decided to put extra care in the fonts we would use and give them the importance they deserve.

Apart from how important it is to work with the text, paragraphs and line height, I think choosing the right font for a web design is as important as picking the wedding dress for a bride. No matter how wonderful your design is, it can be spoiled very easily if you don’t use a font that fits well and helps to express the concept of the web site.

For the latest design of this web site, we knew that we wanted a retro feeling from the 50’s, it is the sort of the style that we decided to go for in the overall design. One of the reasons why we decided tom use this style is because we probably got influenced from looking a lot at old publicity and magazine advertisements from other periods. We’re always amazed about how great designers these people were. Here you can see some of the ads that inspired for our web design in terms of using a nice font. The illustration and design work is excellent in all of them, but the fonts in particular really stand out. Don’t you think they are really charming and irresistible?

These people worked the font as one of the most important elements in design and we truly think they almost did a way of art of it. Because of the importance given to the fonts during the period from 20’s to 60’s, a large quantity of fonts were designed. Most of them were really artistic. At the time, it was a requirement for a designer to be able to create good fonts. Today this skill is pretty much lost in the general profession, but on the other hand we can count with numerous wonderful designers specialized in font design.

So after having tried numerous fonts, we decided to use one from Borges Lettering & Design called “Bounce Script”. We absolutely love the fonts of this designer and this one in particularly fit our tag line like a glove! It made the sentence look beautiful, it brought harmony to the rest of the design, and it added the right uplifting feeling that we were looking for. I have to say that we made a couple of customizations on the font: we changed the exclamation point according with style line of the icons on the site, and we also warped a little the text to make it more vibrant and energetic. It is amazing how much these little details can do in design.

On a different level, I recently designed a customized font of my own from my own handwriting just for my personal use at my own web site KoldoBarroso.com. I am not a professional font designer, but I thought it could be interesting to have my own signature in my web site to make it as much personal as possible. I wrote a blog post in my web site about the process of using my own customized font, but the new design featuring the font is still under development and it won’t be on line until a couple of weeks from now.

The whole process of doing my personal font was really long and it meant quite a lot of work, but I think it’s really worthwhile since my calligraphy will always be the same and now I will be able to use it in my computer for the rest of my life. After all, we think if more artists and designers would put more care in the fonts the Internet would be a more exciting and personal place to be. We can hope!

It’s time for renewal at Intuitive Designs! We have just released our new site redesign, the 6th version we’ve had since we started the firm more than 5 years ago. This year our lives have been changed by important events and the design of our site needed to be in accordance with them.

One of the most important reasons for a big change is that because we are moving this year from Spain to the Seattle area, we wanted to get our business defined better and be prepared for the changes we’ll face. 2007 was a year of recognition for our work from both clients and other professionals and we feel really grateful for that. We are positive that once we are re-located in the U.S. things are going to be on track for Intuitive Designs, so we want to be ready. During the last months we have been doing a strong revision of our business goals and achievements and have redefined the shape of Intuitive Designs.

For the new designs, we decided to just be ourselves and nothing but ourselves. We have ended up with a design that we think doesn’t have a lot to do with most of the web site designs you see around. It has been influenced mostly by things that we love not only in our profession, but in our personal life as well. We have been influenced by vintage advertisements, retro decoration, fashion, music and other sources rather than what a lot of people are doing in web design today. And this is the result.

This new design is meant to be more clean and minimalistic, while focusing on the important stuff. This is something that is integral to the way we work and the way we feel about our profession. We also wanted to transmit the feeling that we are passionate about our work and projects. We are interested in working with people on a more personal level and felt that it was important to share more information about ourselves as individuals and how we work as well.

To build this new web site we have also fully applied our philosophy about web design in extreme detail; harmony, cleanness, functionality, simplicity, proportion, geometry, sincerity and honesty, expression of our feelings… These are some of the main pillars for this and all of the works that we are involved in. We really hope that we achieved it and you can sense it when you look at it.

In the former version of Intuitive Designs, we decided to use an analogy with something that could be compared to web design as a service, something we would love in a personal level. So we used this idea of being cooks, because both of us love to cook in our spare time. The idea was pretty fun and worked very well visually, but it didn’t quite represent the most important message of Intuitive Designs today. A message that would really define the basic spirit of the firm. And the message today is this: “Here your vision becomes reality”.

This is all we want to tell. Our passion is to get an interesting project and work together with the client in order to achieve the best we can according to it’s needs with creativity, illusion, and enthusiasm. That is the reason why we are in this business and we are not really interested in doing this any other way. Helping projects, visions, dreams and illusions become true is the best wish we can have granted. We believe that’s all we know how to do and all that we want to do.

We are currently looking for a few good contract developers to help us out with various tasks.

About Us: We are a small web design and illustration studio that has been in business located in Madrid, Spain since 2003. We are passionate about our work and hope to find other people that share our same philosophies to work with.

We don’t like monkey work and don’t expect to work with code monkeys either. We would like to work with a bright person that helps bring solid solutions to the table that we haven’t thought of. Ideally, we will be a good team together if you are passionate, motivated, a self-starter, a good communicator, friendly, and someone who has an interest in learning new things and growing as a professional.

Skills Needed:

1. LAMP
2. Javascript (enough basic knowledge to program basic effects and ajax with frameworks such as Mootools, jquery, or prototype)
3. Clean xhtml output - no tables where not necessary or divitis please
4. Ability to code custom applications when necessary

Other Considerations:

We also work extensively with several popular CMS’s. Ideally, you would also have experience or be interested in the possibility of working with these CMS’s in this order or importance:

1. ExpressionEngine
2. Wordpress
3. Drupal
4. Textpattern
5. Joomla

We are looking to work remotely online with developers located in the U.S.

If interested, please contact us with the following information:

1. Some examples of projects you have worked on or are working on.
2. A little bit about yourself.
3. Your hourly rate.

Interesting Links from the week:

• The Immutable Laws of Web Design and Development  -  This article is great. On every law I thought, "Oh, so so true!".
• An Interview with Blue Iris, Pantone’s Color of the Year - This one cracked me up. These guys are crazy.
• How To Be Wildly Successful And Get Everyone To Like You - I think the title is catchy enough on it’s own.
• Creating The Perfect Portfolio - Great rundown of what should go in a designer’s portfolio, for people new to the field and those of us that have been here awhile.
• The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos - Pretty interesting to see how logos evolve with the times!

Here are a few interesting links that I enjoyed this week:

• How to build a web start-up - Part 1 -There are so many web apps starting up lately. This is a great article from Ryan Carson at Carsonified for Vitamin, the same people who have developed many apps of their own including DropSend and Amigo.
• Consulting: a Getting Started Guide - by Skellie at Anywired- Great introduction into what it takes to be a consultant.
• Are you ready for this person? - by Kurt Deutscher on the ExpressionEngine blog - Thought provoking article about how to prepare for three types of clients we don’t normally consider.
• Usability and Interface Design Books - by Alexis Brion at Smashing Magazine - Great list of the most reputed books in these subjects.