Information Architecture
Design is about far more than creating pretty pictures. An attractive looking site that’s difficult to navigate is like an attractive looking person with a difficult personality — the first impression may be good, but the truly important things are lacking. That’s why I work with you to help you plan out your website needs and map out how to best achieve your goals.
Every site I create has a strong underlying information architecture — because to the user, the most important thing is that a site is easy to use, that it makes sense, and that he is able to access your content in a straightforward manner.
Design
Once we’ve established a solid architectural foundation, I go to work on creating a site unique to your identity, and helps you meet your objectives and reflects your company’s image.
Besides Websites, I offer a full array of print design services: banners, poster, magazines, brochures, post cards, letterheads, and anything else you can think of that has to do with shape, colors & type.
Brand Strategy
Every brand of every company is telling a story -– but are your customers hearing the same one you want to be telling? A brand that clearly communicates what makes you different and interesting is the key factor in taking your company to the next level of sales & growth.
As a brand strategist, I can work from the ground up with start-ups and new websites, providing a guiding direction for the company to grow into in the form of naming and branding services (complete with logos and comprehensive identity systems) or helping existing businesses evaluate and then grow their current brand messaging.
Social Media
Thanks to blogs and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, there is a whole new ballgame of marketing, allowing companies to dialogue directly and immediately with their customers. The potential for creating stronger brand loyalty, and building buzz & visibility is huge, but you can also quickly crash & burn your company’s reputation if you don’t use these tools properly.
I create comprehensive social media strategies to connect your company to your customers, and advise on the most productive roles of corporate blogging.
Code (HTML / CSS)
I make sure our code behaves itself on all modern browsers: IE 7+, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. This means you can be confident your site will always look its best and act the way it should when people visit your site.
CMS Integration
Keeping your site’s content fresh and updated doesn’t have to be difficult. Content Management Systems (CMS’s) let you make changes to your site without knowing any HTML Code. I can build your site using popular CMS’s like ExpressionEngine & WordPress.
eCommerce
If you need to sell products, digital products or what-have-you—I can help you do that more easily. Accept credit cards, PayPal and Google Checkout payments, as well as currencies from around the world. Even purchases from mobile devices!
An optimal set of deliverables from my point of view would be the design of the overall look and feel for a site or application, possibly some icon design, then coding the front-end XHTML/CSS templates and allowing someone from your company — or a third party contractor — to handle the technical implementation of those templates.
Additionally, tasks like content management system setup, light scripting, usability design and testing, and internet marketing are possible, if the conditions for it are right. I have enough experience to know what works on the web, and what doesn’t.
However, projects that require more specialized application programming, Flash programming, or in-depth usability testing should involve a third party that specializes in that area.
My coding work is all W3C-friendly. Web Standards like XHTML and CSS make sure that content will be available to the widest possible audience, thanks to better accessibility, support for mobile devices, and continued access in even the oldest browsers.
How do i work?
Most projects require a certain amount of custom process and back and forth that’s very difficult to plan out ahead of time. That said, a general outline of a typical design project might look something like this:
1. Research and analysis
Learning about your company and product/service, figuring out the goals of the design project, and planning a set of deliverables.
2. Proposal
From the research and analysis, create a proposal to address your requirements. If you’re happy with it, we commit to working together.
3. Initial design
Taking what’s been learned in the previous steps, and creating an initial set of mockups that address as many of those issues as possible.
4. Feedback and refinement
An agreed upon number of rounds where you give feedback, I make revisions to the initial design, you give more feedback, I revise more, etc. Repeat until we’re all happy, or the number of rounds end, whichever come first. (of course, in the latter instance, we’d talk about further work if it comes to that. Luckily, it rarely does.)
5. Coding and implementation
Once the design is finalized, I build out the templates and someone implements them. (Sometimes that someone is me, often it’s you or your people.) In many projects, at this point there will be further changes to the initial templates that require extra work; these usually come in the form of extra pages, templates, or content styling that came about after the initial deliverables have been determined. It’s common that we don’t have a clear picture of what all is needed at the beginning of the project, and closer to the end that becomes much more obvious.
6. Final Pass
After everything’s “done”, we do a quick review to make sure it all looks and works the way it should.
But keep in mind this is a general guideline. Once started, most projects tend to dictate their own process. And that’s fine.