I have been pondering on my career recently. I’m working through the concept of next steps and new challenges. What do I want to dedicate the next seven years to? The last 10 years have been a huge challenge. I spent the first seven discovering what it takes to build a strategic design agency and now that I’ve left it behind I can see, with hindsight, all the good and bad choices I made along the way....
A few minutes thought now can save you years of stress when it comes to your business website. Often small and medium businesses will be sold a site that is good for the developers recurring revenue rather than their own. Knowing the process before you start will help you avoid getting a website that's not quite what you were hoping for. This guide will hopefully help you make an informed choice about the different ways to launch a website....
So now you understand your customer has a problem that needs to be solved. And they want to solve it using a little brain power as possible. You know WHO your audience is and WHY they are at your website. The next step is to write your outline script....
Your story is the unique thing that sets you, your business and your product or service apart from anyone else. This post will take you through the Storybrand framework, created by Donald Miller to help you to better articulate your brand message with clarity and simplicity. I’ve seen it improve conversion for websites, email open rates and most notably shift people's perceptions at how marketing works....
My client wanted to create a Chilli Oil that was at the more gourmet end of the spectrum. Read: higher price tag. It would be the kind of product that would appear in Asian grocery stores and then move into gourmet food stores. The kind that inner city cool-cats shop at....
I needed to update a clients Facebook Page cover photo and noticed that most sites that offer a template will make you read a novel of SEO backstory before they let you get access to the template and who has the time for that. So here are some templates in JPG, PSD and Powerpoint – quick and simple....
A clear and concise homepage structure will help convert your visitors into customers. So many websites are style over substance. Packed with design features, they do well for the designer who created them but neglect to inspire action in your customers. Now more than ever, the clarity of your home page is key to doing the heavy lifting for your business....
This story on the importance of details in logo design and typography is pure joy. Follow legendary type designer Doyald Young take you through the nuance of typography and lettering using examples of his own work. I have three comments to make on this...
I find myself fortunate that remote working is my normal. For nearly two years I’ve been working out of a home studio with the systems in place to work with a range of clients and suppliers. I’ve had many conversations this week about transitioning studios to remote working. I've done this a few times and can say the biggest hurdle for creative businesses is managing file transfer.There's also a real need to keep motivation up and loneliness down...
You know what it takes for you to do your job well. You know the hours you put in that the client never sees – or pays for. You do it for the love of the craft. For the sheer joy you get creating something from nothing. You should take your skill and self worth more seriously and share that with your clients in a comprehensive credentials document. With a solid credentials document you can outline the value you bring to each project before the pushing of the first pixels. Maybe then you can feel confident charging what you’re worth....
I stole that headline. It’s fantastically abrasive and the idea behind it is equally as hard to face.Designers (and probably everyone else too) should be more brave and authentic to themselves. I read that headline at the same time I was self-censoring a post on Linkedin.Linkedin is all about business, I thought to myself. You gotta be serious and curate your “workplace brand.” You have to make yourslef more attractive to the next potential employer.Screw that....
Because clients today want awesome work for next to no money, you can shortcut your design projects by standing on the shoulders of giants. In other words, by learning from the superstars you can adapt their creative styles, ideas and innovation to your local clients and you’ll be able to achieve more with less hours.While this is not a substitute for originality and paving your own way, sometimes the budget you have defines the direction you need to take and rather than stretching yourself to breaking point, you should implement some emotional intelligence and learn to not be too precious....
While working on a website recently, I had the opportunity to explore a quick brand redesign or refresh.Without much budget we opted for a refresh as the the icon had been in use for some time and had built up some conceptual equity.The main issues with the original were poor reproduction at smaller sizes, poor clarity, and it lacked a level of finish and craft that could elevate it to reflect the premium quality of the service.This redesign began as a free hand drawing with brush pen to achieve better strokes. I moved that to digital and then began crafting...
Being on the cusp of a new large scale project here's a few questions I thought worth considering...
In preparation for a clients new website I was conducting research around underlying frameworks. I was glad to come across the strategy by Tony Ulwick, (CEO of Strategyn) known as the Jobs-to-be-Done theory.After reading more about it I quickly realised that this theory is the precursor to some parts of UX theory. Its the original way of tackling User Journeys – a process I adopt which compliments my approach to web design using the Minto Pyramid Principal.I'll try to briefly explain how. Minto Pyramid Principal With regards to website design, I describe this method as a way of creating a logical content structure to...
Don't invest time, money and energy into designing and creating a product only to be let down by the photography at the point of sale. This is the message from so many ecommerce sites these days. Why would you invest your life savings and countless amounts of hours only to skimp at the end and use bad photos to display your products?Taking semi-decent shots these days has never been easier. You can invest in a simple lightbox and use your phone and do better than more than 50% of the people on the internet. It's such an easy win.Working recently with...
Mini screens for surfing the web seem to be here to stay – at least for the next few years. During this time I'm campaigning for a hamburger revolution.In the last two months I have designed and built three new websites. All of which were hugely different in their design approach and business need.I don't adopt a mobile first approach to web design – and the reason for that is that I find it unexciting to do so. Very few mobile websites are exciting. They are functional but not exciting. And getting clients excited needs to be part of the...