Posts Tagged ‘web design’

While the social media and Web 2.0 buzz has created a number of new job opportunities for web designers and developers I can’t help but wonder at what cost? I have written before about how some client’s just aren’t ready for a sophisticated website, and how we should consult them to reach their goals. What if the client isn’t ready for the commitment of building a community? There are a number of reasons that client’s may not be ready to support a community based site that they do not realize.

Well I find myself at the 5th entry in my series of websites that are amazing yet do not have the web 2.0 aesthetic. I like many other designers have fallen to the addictive properties of commandshift3.com which has allowed me to find such an amazing set of sites and share them here with you.

First off, I just want to preface this article by saying that this is in no way an attack on anyone however I have become outraged with the large number of sites on the web that label themselves as “minimal.” In the majority of the cases, these sites are a half ass attempt to disguise under designed and under developed sites with the term. What we see in these designs is clutter, poor execution, and a lack of defined hierarchy. The goals of any minimal design is to distill the message down to only the most essential items, however that is not an excuse to avoid design all together. I think that this is a simple case of an uneducated group of vocal “designers” who refer to these designs as minimal and thus create a grouping of trends that are passed down by example regardless of how successful they are.

When designing anything that will carry the label of minimal, particular attention must be given to detail. This is because every small mistake will be blatantly obvious. Originally I had planned to give examples of websites that ineffectively execute the minimal look. However, I now feel that it would be more appropriate to share those designs which are successful, in order to educate rather than chastise.

Web design is still new in terms of education, and it can be extremely difficult to figure out what type of program you should follow in order to get the most out of your education. I am constantly running into posts on forums about the subject, and talking to high school students who want to know what type of program to enter. There is no short answer however I do have my experience and advice to share, which I feel could be helpful. Also I have compiled a list of some of the most common misconceptions about becoming a web design which is located at the bottom of this post.

The major feature of most web 2.0 sites is the amount of personalized content that you share with others in order to create relationships or friends. This however has become the number one reason why the online reputation management business has boomed lately. Try typing your name in google contained within quotes and see what pops up, chances are that you might find something you wouldn’t want an employer or client to see. This is happening to pretty much everyone. Even if you stay away from social media sites, what is to stop a blogger like myself from posting an article about how you contributed to this years big strip club bar crawl. An ever increasing amount of job seekers and top professionals are seeking a way to hide or get rid of these unfavorable items.

Even though I have said that a lot of search engine optimization companies sell a load of bullshit to their customers (check out the article to see what I mean), we as web designers can benefit from it. You may be wondering why I would dump on SEO one moment, and then praise it a couple of weeks later? Well, it is because this article actually has little to do with SEO, and more to do with the power of persuasion.

Unfortunately some of the most successful blogs on the internet today suffer from some of the worst design choices ever. I however do not blame the designers or the blog owners themselves, as a lot of these have become very common in blog design. My time spent browsing the blogosphere has allowed me to compile a list of the most annoying choices in blog design today.

Well May 1st is rapidly approaching and that means that the CSS Reboot is about to happen. With only a little over a month and a half to go I have begun planning the next version of Positive Space. As many of you may know, I originally launched this blog in late December and it was my first attempt at a Wordpress blog. I was amazed to see that I immediately began pulling a rather large amount of traffic, so much so that I had to move servers within a month to obtain more bandwidth. Even after the move, I have seen my Alexa rank rise to 261,362 from nothing in less than 3 months.

All this adds up to the fact that I rapidly outgrew my original design in a very short amount of time. Rather than rush to launch another half though out version of the site, I have decided to plan some new features and participate in the upcoming CSS Reboot. In the process of looking back to where this site started and where I am going to be headed I decided to take a look back at the last reboot and see what were in my opinion some of the best redesigns. Some of you may notice I have listed some of these sites before. This was unintentional however I believe them to be the best so they get even more link love from me!

Lately I have been searching for websites that really are different than the millions of other sites on the web. And while not having a web 2.0 aesthetic has been part of my search, I am beginning to wonder if I should now add grunge to that list. Is grunge becoming the new reflected image? are designers reaching back to the grunge style to fill the void left by the backlash against all that is glossy. I think that there has always been a good number of grungy designs on the web (this blog included) but now I think that it is starting to gain popularity because it is the exact opposite, dirty and textured. So what do you the reader think, should I filter out the grungy sites from this series as well?

Ever since the iPhone originally came out industry experts have been buzzing about he future of the mobile web. If you are reading this blog, you are probably very aware of the face that Apple announced the iPhone SDK, and other new features that will be launching this July. With this announcement (read the details on Engadget and the roundup on gizmodo) I finally decided to make the plunge, and not because of the new features. But why would I decide to buy a $400 phone if I wasn’t really that interested in the release of the new features and I hadn’t already made the move?