IntuitiveDesigns

We are flattered! Our Intuitive Designs site has been featured in the 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites ranking by Vandelay Website Design. The ranking post has selected 25 sites that effectively utilize illustration and other types of very artistic design. It’s an honor to see our work displayed amongst many other great works in web design and illustration that we’ve been admiring ourselves for a long time.

We are really glad because that’s exactly one of the things we were looking for when doing the new design for the site: using illustration as one of the main features to communicate our idea. Thank you very much Vandelay!

We are happy to announce that Koldobarroso.com, a web site dedicated to Koldo’s illustration and art work, is now online after several months of meticulous work.

We have been designing and developing web sites together for the last 5 years including more than 50 projects, created and maintained, two big music web sites and Koldo needed to have a web site for his illustration and art work and now it’s done. We believe this is the most complex and elaborate web project we have done so far.

The web web site originally started in November 2007 as a mere blog. Because we knew building the site would take a few months, Koldo decided to start a simple blog because he just had the urge to write. For the temporary version, we used a template that we originally designed a couple of years back. For the last few months, Koldo have been showing the development of the final design that you can see today in order to demonstrate the creative process. He will still be posting more about it in the forthcoming weeks, and he will also be updating the portfolio and blog regularly.

We wanted to add that it was our intention from the very first day to do this web site the most personal we could. The whole design and illustration is full of important and influential things in Koldo’s life and work. Nothing here is circumstantial. The main illustration in the top header, for instance, it’s full of references to his own life and persona. This web site makes him feel like home. We hope we can reach other hearts, make good friends and know all the beautiful and creative people floating around this world like us.

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.

I’ve seen it happen very often. Companies enter the internet market and want another way to get the most of their marketing dollars by getting as much information as they can from site visitors and potential customers. Not only does this provide a good deal of information for future marketing efforts, it also gives you viable measurements to know where your company is going. This seems like a good idea and seems to make sense.

There is a big problem with this though. People feel lazy about surfing on the internet. They want things as quickly as possible and are probably already suffering from information overload. They have other places to go and people to see. The more you make them click and fill in forms, the faster they will leave. Some of the biggest examples of this are making people search too hard to find what they are looking for, making them register with their personal details to buy something, or making them register to leave a comment on your article.

Anything you might want people to find on your site should never be more than 4 clicks away, not including filling out forms and try to adhere to that. It doesn’t matter if site visitors are going through the shopping cart process or trying to contact you. Make it as easy as you can. I’m sure you’ve heard of the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) principle. That applies here.

Since the web is such an open format, make yourself available as well. Let people leave comments on your site if you have a blog and make it easy to find and contact you. Leave a simple form and phone number. Don’t make them register just because you want their info. This will scare your visitors away quicker than you can blink an eye. If you do manage to get some data from them, 9 times out of 10 it’s probably bogus anyway. If you are making people register in order to avoid spam comments, forget about it. The amount of people you push away from your site is not worth deleting a few spam comments a day.

As an example I will use nytimes.com. I know that they have good and informative articles and I love their new redesign. I also know that registering to read some of the archives on their site is "free and easy", but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’ve been visiting their site for years and still haven’t registerd. Every time I get to a page that asks me to register or buy something, I get frustrated and run away. I am just so wasted of sites asking for my personal details every time I turn around. I have so many different passwords and usernames that I don’t even have a way to track them all.

Isn’t there another way to please your company and advertisers? Instead of trying to get everything we can from our clients and visitors just because we can, why don’t we accept and embrace the open nature of the internet? Provide an easy way to search on your site so that people can find what they are looking for fast, keep everything important in an easy place to find, and above all, give them the power to choose what they need and what actions they would like to perform. Our philosophy on the net is about being clear about our intentions and not treating people like sheep. All you need to do is make it as easy as possible. If you are working with a good designer, let them do this for you. Simple, isn’t it?