Creative Design
I will never be the kind of developer that pushes hundreds of sites a year into pre-made templates. Your site's design should say as much about you and your company as the content it contains.
Designing a New Site
Your Site's Look and Feel
The first step in designing a site for a new client is getting to know them. Before we put the pen to the paper I need to know who you are, what your company does, and most importantly who will be using your site.
With this information I can start to mold a design for you. You are encouraged to have an active role as our ideas and scribbles evolve into your finished design.
Creating a asthetically pleasing website is certianly one of the most critical steps in diferentiating your site from the millions on the web. It helps make your visitors spend more time on your site when they visit and helps them remember your company after they have left.
So why do so many sites that have truly beautiful designs still feel like they are missing something? It is the organic connection between the site and the user. I would argue that this is the most important key of a well designed site.
How a Design Can Interact With and Guide the User
The graphical design of a well built site is a balance of two sometimes oposing factors; aesthetics and useability. By focusing on this connection I am able to design sites that draw the user into the experience. The user's attention is caught with elements that are specifically designed to lead the user in to site sections where they will learn more about why your company is the right choice.
Implementing Your Design
Once we have finalized your design we will create a w3c standards based template for your site. This will be hand programmed with xhtml and css. This ensures that users world wide will view your site as you envisioned it.
Best design practices are a group of different rules that in theory standardize web design, and in turn create a more consistent user experience.
CSS Design
CSS, or cascading style sheets, have been around for years. The trick was the different companies who develop browsers each had their own opinion on what constituted proper CSS.
The W3C stepped in and provided a standard definition of this proper style. Thankfully most current browsers now render CSS properly, and we can develop sites using pure CSS.
This adds a powerfull tool to the design toolbox. I do all of my design work using pure CSS. This creates flexible sites that can be updated site wide by simply changing one setting.
Valid XHTML
All of the sites that I develop are validated using the W3C validator service. This validation ensures that the sites will render properly on the widest range of browsers, and that they will not become obselete as the standards are updated.
