Design Shack » Paravel Design

35 Marvelously Minimal Websites

Paravel Design — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:29:32 +0000

Here’s to the design minimalists. Here’s to focusing on functionality, simplicity and basic design principles. Kick the tires all you want on these sites today – you’re still going to love using them tomorrow.

This is our roundup of 35 stunningly simple, marvelously minimal web designs. Enjoy!

Tobias Bjerrome Ahlin

Have some favorite minimal sites you don’t see on the list? Comment and let us know about them.

Defend Your Design

Paravel Design — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:00:47 +0000

We all know that acute rush of adrenaline experienced before submitting a design for review or approval all too well. You click down on that “Send” button, take a deep breath and look at the design one more time before releasing your mouse. It’s gone.

You’ve sent your design out into a cruel, critical world. Will it succeed or will it fail? Perhaps that depends less on the design itself and more on whether or not you’ve set it up to succeed. As designers, we need to be advocates for the craft by explaining what we do and educating clients on our method.

A Proactive Approach

Every time we bring in a new client I prepare myself to begin their web-u-cation, from scratch if necessary. Walking them through the basics of what a well designed and well built website is can eat up a lot of time, but you are effectively setting your client up to understand what you are doing and why.

Explaining web standards, user experience, and usability will help them see a design from a completely different frame of reference. Instead of looking at a site and responding with a knee-jerk reaction to obvious graphics or colors, educated clients will take the time to explore the subtleties of a design and consider the choices made along the way to the final product.

Don’t try too hard

While I do encourage informing and educating clients relentlessly, when it comes to presenting or selling a client on a design, don’t overdo it. Give them some information about the direction you chose or briefly let them know if you have a favorite option. Do not write a paragraph where you insecurely cite all the things a client might want to see changed. If you put a lot into your design, let it stand on its own. You aren’t doing it justice when you’re apologizing for it without reason.

Skillful Negotiations

Clients are going to take ownership of a project in one way or another. This can be done the easy way, or the hard way…

The easy way: Let clients ask questions, play devil’s advocate and kick the tires of your design. Then, use that to start a discussion where you evaluate the critique and bring your opinions and potential solutions to the table. This process helps everyone involved take ownership of the project through understanding the method.

The hard way: Take design critique as a punch list and quietly grumble your way through the changes. This is an unnecessary submission, allowing your client to hijack the project when, most of the time, they had no intention of doing so. Even if a hijacking was their intention, it probably could have been prevented through some of those moderately skillful negations mentioned above.

Choose your battles wisely.

If you have multiple design projects going on, invest in the ones you think will pay off. If a client comes to you with a stubborn, unyielding vision, you may need to either turn the project down or be prepared to concede more along the way than you’d like. If you continually decide to work for someone that believes he or she could hire a 12 year old nephew and get the same design, guess what you’re going to be treated and paid like?

Good Design, Now What?

Paravel Design — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:00:39 +0000

Here at Design Shack, we’ve built up a solid archive of the best designs the web has to offer. When browsing through the 3,000+ sites featured, it’s hard to fully grasp the amount of time and effort put into the design and development of each one.

That’s why it breaks my heart when I see a brilliant site screenshot taken the day it was launched, but when clicking to visit the live version, I find a shell of what it used to be.

It’s not our fault.

The site we delivered didn’t have that cluttered home page, confusing expanded navigation bar, or that insanely huge logo. All that work done in carefully considering user experience and overall design aesthetic has been picked apart by a committee with as many different web agendas as members. Why on earth would someone pay good money for solid design and development, only to turnaround and dismantle what has been put in place in a few short months.

Actually, maybe it is.

It is hard to be committed to educating clients. Things rarely sink in the first time, you want to make them happy, and you have to make good use of the time for which they are paying you. While there are occasions when you’ll simply be out voted, out numbered or straight up out of time, there are a few things you can do.

Set the right tone.

Do you want to be hired as the micromanaged grunt worker or the trusted expert with the skill set clients need? It’s easy to get into saying yes to whatever clients think they need at the beginning in order to give a good first impression or sell your services. They may like you as a yes man or woman, but I promise you they won’t respect you. It’s usually not because they are jerks, it’s because you haven’t earned it. Don’t be afraid to assert your opinions and establish a good working relationship. They’ll learn to trust you, and if you take the time to explain why and educate them about what websites need to be, you just might be looking at a long term business relationship where you are consulting and managing aspects of the site yourself.

Tell the truth, immediately.

Put your time into design and code, and try to avoid spending your time writing an overly-gentle email fielding suggestions or trying to incorporate bad ideas into your layout. While being nice and compromising are part of the collective creative process, it’s always good to be as efficient and to-the-point as you can.

When choosing or building a CMS, limitations are great.

I am pleased to say that we’ve always drawn a hard line on this. Half of the time we are hired for redesigns, it is because the staff or web administrator has too much access. Hot pink comic sans text and a quadrupled number of pages added to the site map happen all too often. As designers, we are branding their online content and architecting a user experience. Don’t give them the keys to the castle. I find it is fairly easy to convince clients of this when you talk about saving money regarding the increased longevity of their new site design. No one wants to have to pay for a redesign every year.

Be aware that sites can degrade quickly.

I opened up a psd version of a site I was involved in building last year and gave myself 5 minutes to degrade it. Check out the original here and the degraded version here. After carrying out a handful of common mistakes I’ve seen in site management, I was honestly horrified at how easy it was to ruin the layout. If you see a site even partially take a turn for the worse, speak up!

Good Luck.

To quote a friend of mine who is a farmer, “The only thing that is certain is hardship.” Clients will always be tough to deal with, but if you put time and effort into building an honest & communicative relationship, there is a good chance it will pay off in the long run.