Whether you are starting a project or a company do you really want it to grow fast? Do you want to try and control a beast running wild? Far too many of us envision a quick start and a happy finish, but rarely do you see that today. Once that momentum builds up, keeping it is a lot harder than getting it initially.
Seth Godin wrote about overnight successes and if you follow the 37signals’ philosophy you know that they believe its much better to make your mistakes while under the radar than when you make it. The problem is that in this type of aggressive environment not becoming big quick can become discouraging.
With 9rules we had a very slow and steady growth and have made a number of mistakes basically because we don’t have another blueprint to follow. We know what we want to do and we have a feeling that what we are doing is right, but we can not be totally sure because it has never been done in our space before so there are bound to be some hiccups. However, every single time we walkaway feeling a bit stronger while learning something new.
If we would’ve blown up at the rate of Digg I don’t think I would have been able to handle it. I can’t speak for my partners, but I know the thought is cool and everything, however I would have to buy a new set of boxers everyday if that event occurred. Now that we have been around for over a year I much more prepared to handle challenges and have a better understanding of the overall picture and that definitely couldn’t have happened by getting big fast.
Think of the new freelance designer who takes on more projects than he realized he could handle. Think of the new music group that experiences overnight success only to disappear by their next album. The athlete with a superior rookie season that can’t be matched his sophomore year.
I know that we can’t always control how fast we grow, but we can control what we wish for so if I were you I would think twice before asking for that huge overnight success. Take your time and let things marinate, it usually works out better in the long run that way.
I think Rundle would appreciate this list more than me, but I can definitely go along with it.
- When your markup is readable by humans
- When your functionality degrades gracefully
- When you can increase the text size willy nilly and it doesn’t break your layout
- When your site works in Internet Explorer without you trying
- When your site’s hierarchy is hierarchical even without your stylesheet
- When your url structure makes sense
- When you make a really awesome form
- When the client says “this is great, this is exactly what we wanted” and you agree
Friday I said I believe your message is the most important aspect of your site to keep in mind when designing it. For me, the second most important issue is your audience. When designing a site it might be easy to say that you are designing for everyone, but you must realize that every site serves a specific audience.
When I say this I do not mean generic audiences like single white males age 20-35. What I mean are specific types of audiences. For this site I perceived my audience to be web designers and others who may have some interest in design or programming for websites. This along with my message helped me to develop the design of the site. I realized that most designers work with resolutions above 800×600 and so I made just a little bit wider than that. Content wise, I know I have to bring something different to the table to attract readers because there are plenty of other well-established design blogs out there and I also know what kind of style and tone is allowed. Finally, I knew that most designers would respect a minimalist site because they would also see the usability involved along with the design and understand that it is not easy designing something simple that is different. Once you have figured out your intended audience (besides “everybody”) then you can have a better idea of how you should structure your site.
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The message. This will always be the most important element of any design that you do. The message that your design gives will resonate through the minds of your users. If your design delivers your intended message then you have succeeded. If your design supercedes your message and hides it, then the design has failed.
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This comes as a surprise. Aux of Cogent Metal is vehemently against webpages that have narrow layout widths. And I thought web designers are now more worried about the opposite: the wide layouts that whip out the horizontal scrollbars in resolutions narrower than 1024×768.
This is another proof that you can’t guess every possible reaction to a design pattern. In this case Aux would rather have wide layouts because it would mean a larger area to present content. But what can you do about someone just like Aux, but who believes the complete opposite?
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It’s about time we clean up the blogosphere, it doesn’t have to be this ugly, and not everyone needs to hire me or my likes to get a pretty blog. There’s a lot you can do yourself, and most of it is related to your content.
Take a look at your average listing of posts, usually your front page but it could also be a category page or an archive. Post after post after post after post. Boring? Might be. Long? In most cases, yes. Too long? Yep, I’d say so.
I believe in using read more functionality, in other words, in just displaying some of the content (if the post is a semi-long or long one) in post listings. If you display a 20 paragraphs long post after a 30 paragraphs long post, but before a 50 paragraphs long post, then you have a very ugly page.
By using read more functionality, available in any good blogging software, you can show as much content as you like in your listings, and it shouldn’t be too much.
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For my first post here, I wanted to introduce a new idea, an authority profile. I want to create a small database of people that help answer the question, “who should I be following online?”
The first person on my list to talk about is Rand Fishkin. Who is Rand Fishkin? Well, first off all the SEO girls want Rand Fishkin. Being a dude, I really can’t say either way why that is, but I am pretty impressed with the site he has built. Rand is the CEO and Co-founder of SEOmoz, a site that includes a blog with over 10,000 RSS readers according to Feedburner. It was voted the best SEO blog in 2006 by Search Engine Journal, and has been mentioned in numerous high level places like USA Today, Washington Post, and Newsweek Magazine.
The reason Rand is an authority is because of his mix of understanding of Finance, due to majoring in the subject, the web, from all his years of experience and bringing it all together. His articles on SEOmoz are some of my favorites, and the site is just a gold mine of information. You can find him at Search Engine Strategies & Pubcon conferences around the world, and of course on SEOmoz.
Today I’ll just point you to a post over at Devlounge, titled My Design Process, by yours truly. Basically, it’s a five step walkthrough on how I tackle design projects, generally speaking.
- First, Consider the Problem
- Second, Bring Out the Sketchbook
- Third, Do that Mockup Thing
- Fourth, Time to Code
- Finally, Deliver and I’m Done
Take a look. I’m off to watch Alice Cooper hang himself.
Many of us web designers always see the little details: our little icons, the borders and shadows in our widgets, the typefaces and font–sizing we use in our type. But how often do we really put emphasis on the copy we write, on the words and prose we use?
Being visually–driven is a typical trait of every designer; we web designers may even be a bit more attentive than our print design counterparts since we always have to deal with the ever–changing configuration of the media used to display our work, the browser being the usual and major suspect. At the same time, publishing on the web presents other concerns not always dealt with in print. Yet, the web is more powerful now more than ever. Web pages are always designed to convey information, to send a message that elicits action.
Words that move
Designing for the web calls for graphical acumen, but more importantly requires an understanding of a page or a site’s purpose. It is this purpose that we designers must transmit through our visual design and the copy we produce. Thus, every designer should learn to speak the language of a page, one that is in line with the site author’s goals and the readers’ expectations.
A simple weblog or a complex web application can be made more usable through good copywriting. Interface design should use proper dialogs with the right questions and labels, just as widgets and headings should be named descriptively expecting to be understood as an average user would have it. 37signals’ Defensive Design mantra immediately comes to mind.
Blogs, on the other hand, were by–design meant to be personal and honest, though with the rise of professional blogging has been reduced to lifeless text that bounces around in an echo chamber. Certainly, it can be avoided by reviewing some of our favorite articles on ALA: “Attack of the Zombie Copy” and the ever–popular “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web.”
Let the writers write
Who should be writing for you? Who should be designing your interfaces?
If you are publishing your own site, you know your content inside out. It is you who knows how you intend to deliver your information. Building your own web application, you have an idea how a user should interact with your interfaces, ideally. But if you really think hard about it, the user determines how an article or an interface is understood, and should be written.
We sometimes get clients who provide us with content that reek of marketing–speak yet we don’t or are not allowed to make revisions to present it in a format more easily digested by a user. But honestly, there are times when we simply do not notice the content or choose not to. Web designers should learn to be good writers. Good web design does not end with the graphical aspect alone, it involves a process and a mission to get your message across.
Don’t just write
Projects typically allot a good part of the resources to design and programming. Unfortunately, interface and web copy is given little time and money for development. It is often overlooked, assuming that users already know how to use an application, or a reader already understands all the marketing and technical speak thrown around, assuming he actually got to finish reading a given article.
Good copywriting is part of the development process — it is not optional. It is part of good usability and accessibility. Don’t just let programmers or clients insist on what they think is good enough, look at it from a user’s point of view. If needed, let someone else who understands do the writing. Your design and content can only be good enough if it serves its purpose, if your message reaches the intended recipients.
Written by Markku Seguerra. He takes photos and blogs design at rebelpixel.com — sometimes.
The fine folks over at ManagerAssistant.com came to me and asked if I would help them with a critique of their old site. They have a strong product, yet conversions from their website seem to be dropping so maybe I can help them out some with my keen designer eyes. While I will cover the whole site in general the main focus will be on the homepage because that is what you are going to see first.
First Impression
Now quick, when you look at the site what is your first impression? While a couple of years ago I could easily see this site as being looked upon as being profressional there are just too many flaws that show how dated it is.
Site Alignment
While there is nothing wrong with left-aligned sites, I don’t think it works on this site because it leaves you with a feeling of emptiness. Centering the site will give it a little more polish and add more options to what can be done with the background and color scheme.
Logo and Typeface
