Design Matters: So what do you think?
June 3, 2009 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
To be able to create a good website design, very often, you have to put yourself into the position of that of an end user. You will need to curb your organisation’s requests or your own liking and ask yourself, so what do the users think?
In TILT, this is the way which we function. A good website needs to be usable. Usability and the utility, and not how the website look, determines the success or failure of a website. If you have a good usable website, chances are, the website is good. If the design highlights the usability features, it will make the website great!
Always remember, the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and decides where to go. Our job is to advise the client how best to create a user-centric design.
As mentioned earlier, to create a good website, first be in the shoes of the end-user. First and foremost, user habits are not different from that of a retail customer habits in a store. They will enter the website / shop, they will scan through the stuff (for website, it will be text) and take action on the first thing which catches their interest (for website, it will be link). If it doesn’t meet their expectation, they will leave the shop (for website, it will be clicking on the back button or go to another website).
If you wish to create a website in the future, perhaps the starting point can be business processes. What do you think?
Job Well Done!
November 6, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
We had just received an email from the management of Bottle Tree Pte Ltd on the revamp of Bottle Tree Website. Besides these testimonials from our clients that constantly serve to drive us, it also goes to show that the articles on design matters which we have been writing are testimonial to our knowledge in these areas.
I will like to praise TILT’s good work on our web page construction ! It was a well done job indeed. Thanks !!
Colin Chia
Bottle Tree Pte Ltd
In fact, one of the fundamental reasons why TILT created this blog is for us to share with all netizens the importance of design in all aspects of our lives. We recognise that there is only so much that we can do but we do hope that through these sharing, Singaporeans, can appreciate the power of design and recognise the limitations of design matters.
Practice what you preech. That’s what we believe in. We hope you can do your part too in making this world a better place.
Design Matters: Let your fingers do the walking
November 3, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
Yellow Pages, in our opinion, tried to draw the gap between the 2 media, print design and web design, to be much closer. Though we cannot confirm this, from TILT’s perspective, “Let your fingers do the walking” was the tagline which Yellow Pages developed to bridge the gap.
Some may argue that of course, the tagline itself is very apt as they are encouraging the end users to browse the hardcopy Yellow Pages. We argue that they try to bridge this gap simply because of the fundamental difference between print design and web design and we say that Yellow Pages understands that!
Print design is about letting your eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at key messages and using spatial justaposition of every element on that page / product to enhance and further explain themselves. Just remember, the very last time a brochure / poster caught your attention, was it a case where your eyes had “walked” to the information? Or was it your hands?
Web design functions by letting the hands walk to the information. This can be achieved either through scrolling or clicking. This relationship of information release is part of the interaction with the human body. Do you remember the details of a webpage? More often than not, you will find yourself bookmarking a webpage so that you can “walk” back to that page one day when you need the information.
If you understand this key difference, you will understand why TILT has an alternative view to “Let your fingers do the walking!”
Design Matters: Designing for a web design compared to a print design
November 2, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
After we had shared on our previous experience in the fundamental difference between a website design and a print design, in this issue of design matters, we will be touching on the difference in designing for these 2 very different media.
First and foremost, you will need to understand their differences. We will touch on 2 of the key areas that differs between website design and print design can be compared in some major areas.
Types of Media
As simple as it may sound, TILT decided not to leave any tables unturn and just elaborate a little bit more on the above.
As a print designer, projects which you will handle can be:
While as a web designer, projects which you will handle can be:
The softwares which you use will be fundamentally different as well. As a print designer, you will realised you are constantly opening up Adobe Indesign, Adobe Illustrator, Freehand and of course Adobe Photoshop. As a web designer, the softwares are largely Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop. Some may use text pad, note pad, sharepoint designer or perhaps even microsoft frontpage.
Audience
Typically, when you attend a project design brief, you will find yourself asking your client, “Who is the target audience?”. This is where you will find that the difference begins.
In print design, the marketing message is the king! Faced with a very limited area, it is important for you to capture your audience in the shortest amount of time for the message to stay for the longest period. Of course, physical property such as texture, shape (remember when we mentioned form in our previous post), will assist you in achieving your goal. However, on the web, you need to try to keep your audience within your website for the longest possible time. You find that you constantly tease your audience with snippets of content to get them to navigate them around. Animation, navigation, sound and interactivity all play a part in this area. The key difference? You have unlimited number of pages to play with!
The fact is that anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design. Understanding the limitation and playing to the strength will allow you to come up with better design.
“Know the rules, then break them!”
Sounds familiar?
Design Matters: Web Design vs Print Design
October 30, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
In this next edition of design matters, TILT will be touching briefly on the difference between web design and print design. In fact, we decided to write this post also due to a very recent incident that happened to us.
Very often, there are companies who had requested for a print media design to follow that of a web design or vice versa. Though this can be done to a large extent, companies need to be aware of 1 simple point. For print media design, permanence and stability can be achieved with ease. However, this simply cannot be done on the web.
The Web Design World Is Just Different from the Print Design Media
With CSS, it is possible to get very precise layout. However, no matter how precise the web design layout is, it can never be as precise as print design. This is something that is, unfortunately, a fact which companies need to accept.
The web design can follow the print design by breaking the grid, having specific layout, font and other design elements. But are the tradeoffs worth it? Have you considered the download speed and maintenance issues?
It looks different!
In addition, in the web design world, it is so easy to build a web page and test it on your browser and you get it looking exactly the way you want it to be. However, the moment you test it on a different browser, it looks different. Not to mention about moving it on to another platform. It can look differently again!
At times, we hear from clients that they have staff who view the web site using a specific browser and it does not show up properly. Upon checking, very often, we realise that these users typically belong to 0.5% of the world’s web browser users. Is it worth then to make a perfectly working site look that way just to cater to that 0.5% and then risk ruining it for the remaining 99.5%? Simple mathematics. You decide.
VersionCue!
In print, it is very easy to export under another file name or overwrite the original file. So long as you path the fonts, the end user will definitely see the file as it is. However, for web, it is dependent on cache as well. Especially if you are working on CSS, it caches longer on the servers and it can take a long time to be cleared for you to see the updated version.
In fact, recently, one of our clients insisted that we had not made any of the changes simply because they cannot see the changes. They even went to the extent of copying out the source codes and sending it to us to show us that the source codes are wrong. We explained politely to them that if you are viewing the wrong page on the server, naturally, the source codes which you extract will definitely be wrong. Time is what is needed by you. Give it a bit of time and the right web site will show up soon. The end result was that 4 hours later, the client called us to ask us to make more minor changes and they said that they finally can see the updated changes and reminded us not to take so long to make the new changes. We politely informed them that since our last email correspondence with them, we had not worked on the website and the fact that they can view the website correctly now is simply due to the cache being cleared.
This few key differences between print design and web design is something which TILT seek for all companies to understand. If you can understand the difference and optimise it such that your workflow can be better, we are sure you can have a good relationship with your design company and your web design can then be truly optimise to be like a print design.
Design Matters: Website Design Maintenance
October 28, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
Through our course of work as a design company, we have heard several questions with regards to website design and we thought that through this latest chapter of design matters, we can touch on one of the most common questions which our clients have usually posed to us: Website Design Maintenance.
Typically, in the quotation stage, our clients usually ask us to quote for a maintenance contract for their newley developed website design. From TILT’s perspectives, we had usually advised them that it is better to leave it till the job has been confirmed, when we are almost completed with the website design (i.e. the project is about to finish), only then do we quote for the website design maintenance contract.
The reason behind this is very simple. When it comes to updating the information on your website design, the client generally have 2 options.
In-House Website Design Content Management
This method is usually useful if any of the below is applicable to your company:
Engage A Company
If the above option is not available to your company, it will be useful to consider this option. There are several companies in Singapore who can assist you in this area. Typically, when you are intend to engage a company to do website design maintenance, you can consider asking the company to provide you the various options
When requesting for a website design maintenance period contract, do ensure that the company which is quoting you includes in the following:
Of course, should you require any quotation from TILT, just drop us an email at enquiry@tilt.com.sg and we will be more than happy to provide a non-obigation quotation.
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