Intuitive Designs - Custom Web Design & Illustration Services

When a potential client approaches us, they often ask, “How you done any other——web sites?” This——may be Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, Magento, etc. etc.

In honor of our 7th anniversary in business, we would like to introduce Intuitive Designs, version 7.

The last two versions of the site design were very clean, white, and minimalistic. This time, we felt like doing something a little different. So, we went the opposite direction, dark and colorful.

1. You have been sued by more than one person because your blinking gifs sent them into an epileptic seizure.
2. The first reaction that people have when visiting your site is “Arghh, my eyes! They are burning!!”.
3. The traffic counter you so proudly display on your site says, “10 visitors this year”.

Why do we present one initial web design concept? Isn’t that a little arrogant? What about giving the clients the option to choose? Isn’t that what they are paying for?

These are some of the types of questions we’ve been getting lately. Strangely, this issue didn’t come up much before, but now that it has, I figure it’s a good time to take a moment to talk about it.

It’s been an ongoing debate for years. Does design really matter? Specifically, will a nice professional website design make a difference for your business?

I’ve been wanting to write a post about this for so long, I couldn’t remember if I actually did or didn’t and had to search through our archives just to check. Turns out, I did! Back in March 2006. Woo, how time flies! I find it funny and yet kind of sad that this is still such a hot topic. But, now I want to expand more on my earlier thoughts.

Let me just say, “This project was so much fun!!”. Ok, now I have that off my chest, I can continue!

Daniel Bird approached us because he needed branding and a new website for his new business. Memory Keepers, located in Dallas Texas, preserves old photos into digital format. What makes them different, is that they travel right to the customer’s house to scan the photos rather than having clients send in their precious photos by mail.

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.