Constraint leads to bad design, and good design

Books can teach you how to write HTML, online tutorials can help you craft your Photoshop and Fireworks skills, thousands of hours of hard work and engagement will provide you with a better understanding of the ins and outs of the Internet and the ways in which people interact with it.

Your job title is meaningless.

I am a designer. I work mainly on the web. I use Photoshop and Textmate daily. I build websites.

Does that stop me picking up a paint brush, spray can or scissors, or camera and camcorder and going out onto the street to obtain different forms of media that I feel may be useful in moulding my final output, the end creation?

No?

If it serves as a valuable asset in creating the final experience, there is no need to be restricted by my job title or the equipment on my desk alone. But constraints also allow us to expand creatively. By creating barriers, we know how far we can go - the lengths to which we can stretch and bend the rules to create something new, something that works within it’s medium whilst evolving beyond the competition, beyond the confines of the original brief or spec.

Make clients happy, make users happy. Everyone’s happy, everyone wins!

If there are no rules in the first place, how can we break them?

However, never forget the difference between art and advertising. Art is personal expression. Advertising serves the needs and purposes of the client. It is to promote a brand, a product, a service or opinions. Advertising makes money. Web design is a form of advertising, an increasingly essential and multifunctional branch of advertising and branding that absolutely cannot be overlooked or underestimated.

But advertising is dead, isn’t it?

This is the first article in a 3-part series that looks at how we design and build websites from the base up, focusing on the raw data and content that needs to be accessible to everyone before considering design and progressive enhancements. In part 1 I’ll be discussing the content-out approach, why it’s important to order content sensibly with markup and how to do it so. Part 2 and 3 will look at semantic markup, microformats and how to write future-proof XHTML before finally discussing progressive enhancement and how it can be utilised to help ensure an enjoyable, appropriate user experience for all.

Content before design?

When I say ‘content before design’ I’m not saying start playing in TextMate or Dreamweaver before picking up a pencil and paper and building ideas and visuals with Photoshop. There are plenty of different methods people use and recommend to approach project development. Some designers find it easier or faster to use XHTML Prototyping or Agile development, however I would never consider writing a character of HTML before I had a solid design and a confident vision of the final product.

Content before design means that the structure of your markup is written in a way that logically makes sense if reading it without styles or any form of dynamic behaviour.

This may seem an obvious thing to do, but the fact is that most websites built today, regardless of whether they are valid, built with divs and have nice alt attributes on every image, are still structured in accordance to their design. A lot of the time this may not make a huge difference if the website design features elements in a sensible order, but often is the case that in the markup - headers will all over the place, menu lists and blockquotes may be thrown in the weirdest places, because that’s where they appear in the styled layout.

Here’s one of those ‘less talk, more listen’ posts. You don’t get many from me! I want to know a bit about your websites and your approach and attitude towards their purpose. Is your site(s) designed to make money, inform and educate, publicise a product/service/person or is the purpose unclear - perhaps it’s just for fun. For each case, how do you achieve your goals?

Design and Usability

How does your site design contribute to the end goal? With regards to user experience, what do you feel takes priority - enabling visitors to get to where they need to be as quickly as possible, or to provide an enjoyable experience. Or both? And how do you go about achieving this?

How much do you feel design contributes towards the overall user experience? Would you prefer a site that is easy to navigate and view, with well written copy and clear structure but features a minimal or unattractive design? Or would you rather a beautiful looking site with fancy dynamic functionality and gimmicks, but ‘makes you think’ a more? What about a balance of the two. How do you feel you can work to create a website that is fantastically well structured and presented, whilst revealing some tasty eye-candy?

Measuring success

How do you measure your site’s success? What do you determine to be ‘success‘? Site traffic? Perhaps a deeper look at your site’s analytis; what do you feel takes precedence? Length of visit, repeat visits, countires visited from, pure volume of traffic? How do these statistics vary depending on your site’s purpose? Perhaps you feel the best measure of your site’s success is more organic than statistical - the comments you receive, RSS or email subscribers, contact form feedback or a combination of the lot.

What do you feel is more important; your visitors experience or the site stats and revenue made?

I want your opinions

Please take the time out to comment below. This post isn’t about me or Redswish, I want to know what other people think. Get your site URL in there to get some coverage. I’ll be summing up everyone’s responses in an article in a few weeks.

My first real speaking engagement, how exciting!

Next Thursday I’ll be talking about Wordpress Custom Fields (in light of the popularity of this article) at the MDDA offices in Manchester. The evening solely focuses on Wordpress (because it’s so darn cool) and will also feature a talk from Simon Wheatley on the structure of Wordpress plugins.

For more information about the group you can join the MWUG Google Group or give me or Alan Holding a shout on Twitter.

If you wish to come along it’s at the MDDA offices on Portland Street, starting at 6.20-6.30ish. Be there or be square!

There’s no debating the fact that an online presence is essential in today’s market. Indeed there are only a few niche industries that do not rely upon or are affected by the global transition from workplace to web.

When it comes to doing it right, anyone with an ounce of knowledge of the way the Internet works will agree that representing your business or product online is by no means as simple as throwing up a website and claiming your territory in a small corner of the web.

Aside from the many factors that make a ‘great’ website, such as careful usability consideration, good aesthetic design and well-written copy; there are the numerous other external variables including SEO, PR and email marketing etc that help to promote your website, and in turn your brand.

While on my little trip at the moment I met a Scottish couple and, aided by a few German beers, we got to know each other a bit. Amongst the hours of gradually blurrier conversation we talked about what I do for a living and the ability my line of work affords me to actually work anywhere in the world.

By this I mean that I could be in a small Thai village or on a Caribbean island but, providing I have an Internet connection, could still technically do my job. This may sound simple and in some aspects it is, but it can still be a scary step to take when you’re settled in a cushty regular job or of course if your line of work requires you to be within a certain location.

This lifestyle is indeed job-specific, and lends itself very much so to online entrepreneurs and designers, SEOs etc. I’ve never met my previous 3 freelance clients, but to be honest I don’t need to. We’ve spoken over the phone and via email and the work has been completed successfully and if anything at less expense.