Good web design appeals by communicating visually in attractive and useful ways
As a brand builder I approached web design in 1998 with almost two decades of the experience of daily work in graphic design, working alongside great designers in advertising, design, illustration and photography so I was inspired, had a real enthusiasm to design great web experiences. I was inspired to confront the the limits of my knowledge and embrace the future of graphic design. I wanted to use this new media to communicate visually in attractive and useful ways.
My first project was to design the website to launch Absolute-Proof onto the global market, synchronised with the client’s sales trip to the Drupa Print and Media fair in Dusseldorf in June 1998. This project was a collaboration with a web developer in Reykjavik Iceland organised by the client.
Since then I have partnered with web developers on numerous projects, enabling me to offer a full website design and build service. The skills and disciplines I focussed on initially are web graphic design, interface design, user experience design and search engine optimization, the creation of web-formatted imagery and website design prototypes. The interactive design of my sites and creating more intuitive, user-friendly website interfaces are always priority considerations of the front-end (client side) design of my websites.
‘No bad surprises’ web project management
Paying attention to the needs of the web developers I have collaborated with and relevant knowledge and skills based study via books and tutorials has helped my projects, regardless of how large & complex, flow smoothly through the development pipeline because the wire-frames, pixel-perfect layouts, the information architecture and written content spreadsheets I supply the developer are all signed off by the client before a line of the site is coded
Marketing and communications design
Marketing and communications design, researching and identifying what ideas, language and visual communications tools and messages are going to work well for my client’s target market is central to all the websites I have designed. Finding the correct keywords and concepts that relate to the client’s particular audience and area of business activity, then weaving those into the site’s written content or story has yielded tremendous results for my clients’ sites in terms of markedly improving search engine optimisation and maintaining the new standard once reached.
Web authoring skills
Since January 2014 I’ve been building responsive WordPress websites using customised Premium Themes. WordPress sites use responsive design technology so they are guaranteed to look great on dozens of different screen sizes across ‘phablet’, phone, tablet, TVs, desktop, game consoles, and wearables. Screen sizes will always be changing, so it’s crucial that your site is ‘future-proof’—adapts to any screen size today or in the future. (Of course WordPress is not the only provider of responsive design technology.)
From low-cost brochure sites to projects that are more much more complex and expensive, such as very large and diverse product catalogues involving complex data structures that bring coherence to continent sized mind-maps of associated products. I take all of that and the elements of design, the single-minded strategy, the content, and present them in attractive and useful ways.
I have the expertise to make attractive and useful websites that your customers can easily find and provide web design services including;
- high quality photography (architectural, documentary, location, social, portraiture, product),
- photo retouching, restoration and composites,
- custom icons,
- ecommerce solutions,
- infographics, maps diagrams and,
- illustration,
- UI / UX design, and
- custom web apps.
Custom Content Management System (CMS) sites
Have partnered with selected web development firms in New Zealand to choose and customise the right CMS for my client’s websites, then project managed through to launch to ensure completion to budget and on-time for every project. The sites showcased are mostly content managed sites I’ve designed then populated with all content.
The Tru-Line Civil site is an exception, it was designed and developed by Dynamic Multi-media. For that project I rebranded Tru-Line with a new logo and brand identity system, shot most of the photos on the site, write most of the content and been responsible for populating and maintaining the site using the cms.
I work closely with my clients and web developers to ensure the process of web design flows smoothly and the site is well organised, visually compelling and very easy to use. These web design projects were all integrated with branding and identity systems design.
As required I follow through web design projects with proper CMS educational and training materials in the form of pdf and HTML ‘Step-by-step’ user guides, ‘site specific’ instructional videos and am happy to provide on-site tutorials if requested. This level of follow-through, in addition to the support offered by the web developer ensures that from my client’s point of view, the promise that a content managed website is sold on, is kept.
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