As you drive down the road on a snowy December day, you find yourself seeing the bright smiling faces of carefully but sloppily made snowmen and the warm colors of soft lights begrudgingly thrown across small porches. The classic imagery associated with the holiday season. Things put together by hand, with love and a sense […]
No question. You need a sitemap. Seriously. If your website has more than a handful of pages, you should have one. Wait—let me rephrase, you NEED ONE. Oh, and don’t get this graphical sitemap confused with the xml sitemap, which is a file of xml code you keep on your website in order to keep […]
A mistake designers can often make (and I’m certainly guilty of this) is walk into a client presentation, present your concepts and just sit back and wait for feedback. Why do we waste such a valuable opportunity? It’s not every day that you get to talk or meet with your client one on one and […]
The answer may be unsatisfying: it depends entirely on your audience. But, chances are you probably don’t. First, let it be addressed; for a majority of websites, there must be a path ‘home’ but, where the debate rages regards exactly what that path should be. In the year 2000, Steve Krug published Don’t Make Me […]
Infographics work because… No time to read full sentences. Here’s the scoop: Journalists have been using infographics to help tell their stories for decades. Nothing supplements a data-rich story better than a frontpage infographic. They break down the numbers. They showcase the juicy morsels. They make your 2-dimensional data sprout legs and Riverdance across the […]
“Design is now firmly on the business agenda. No longer the cherry on the cake for high-end goods and luxury brands, over the past decade it has gained relevance for the way organizations are structured, how they operate and how they think.” –Pietro Micheli The fallacies of yesteryear, where design is nothing but expensive decoration, […]
Most people don’t read—really read—when it comes to the web. That shouldn’t surprise, but what might is just how few. According to one study, only 16% of users will read your content word by word. This means that a lot of vital information about your product or service could be missed. How much information is […]
As we recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s film debut and pondered Bob Dylan’s Super Bowl appearance (loved it, by the way), it’s a great time to reflect on the importance of video in marketing and advertising. For even (wait for it… cue the movie trailer voice) IN A WORLD… where traditional broadcast […]
We gauge the world around us, in part, through our perception of color. And colors affect us immensely—triggering chemical reactions in our brains that evoke emotional responses, feelings and even memories. When color is used poorly on websites it can create unease—even a mild jarring effect—in users. For example, red, can be a wonderful brand […]
About this time every year, color-obsessed designers begin checking the Pantone website for that oh-so-important announcement. What will be next year’s color? Will it be warm or cool? What color will be the trend for 2014? Is it going to be orange, red, blue or something else entirely? Today, we found out. Radiant Orchid will […]