Nick Pullaro: Day 3, Planning

October 17, 2003 | View Comments (0) | Category: Design Journal

Summary: The planning and design phase for Nick Pullaro

These are the things that I have to stay focused on when planning and designing the site. Simple, intuitive, and clean can all mean the same thing, but they could also be completely different. If you are a good designer you are able to blend them into one element. I guess I have to try and be a good designer.

Creating simple and clean sites is usually not a problem for me because that just happens to be the kind of designer I am. However, creating something intuitive can be quite challenging for the mere fact that as designers when trying to see if something is intuitive you can not look at it through your eyes, but the eyes of the user. Everytime I create a site I always seem to have a wonderful idea about a cool way to implement a feature. 90% of the time these do not get put into my designs because I am the only one who a) sees them as useful and b) knows what purpose they serve.

Another issue that I have to deal with is that I want everyone of my sites to make people say their "ooohs" and "aaahs". However, Nick's site is for his clientele and the majority of them are not web savvy. This is probably not the time to wow them with eye candy (not my style anyways). The site will be simple, but aesthetically pleasing. More 37signals and less CSS Zen Garden.

I admit that it should not be too difficult to create the site since they are not asking for too much, but this does not mean I do not put less effort into it. The great thing about working with Nick is that his son is going to be heavily involved with the site. This is a good thing because his son is about my age so he brings a more modern viewpoint to the table. During our first meeting he provided me with a sitemap of how he saw the site. What is so cool about this is that after studying it, there is nothing I would change about the structure. I could only hope every client is like this.

When describing the site to me the key things seem to involve announcments and newsbits. The site also had to be easily updated. Seems like MovableType would fit this very nicely (don't worry I have already paid the business license). I showed them the MT interface and they were pleased with how easy it would be for them to issue new content. Note: JC pointed me to Macromedia's Contribute after I had gone through this, but it seems like I product I will have to look into for the future.

Other technologies that will be used include PHP, XHTML, and CSS. The site will be done in CSS and the arguments for that can be found all over the web. I am simply aiming for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which should not be a problem at all.

For fonts I am going to go with Times New Roman for headers and verdana for the text. Old school meets new school type thing. In many respects this site will look like other blog sites since the content fits that structure very well. Always fit the structure around the content and not the other way around. There is a reason why most blogs have the same layout.

I know by reading this it may seem that I have not put too much plannnig into this site, but I have, it just does not reflect here. I will admit though that planning is not my strong suit since I love to just sit down and go at the design. However, this never works. Really. It never works. So sit down and get out a piece of paper before you even touch the keyboard.

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