I could really go to town on the Ryan Air website – it’s absolutely awful. You may say that they are actually clever and have inluded ‘Dark Patterns’ within their designs but I would have to disagree.
Going on their website is like stepping back 20 years. The colours are awful, there’s no thought to the user experience and how it passes accessibility tests is beyond me.
Continue reading “Ryan Air — The worst website in the world?” »
A few weeks ago I attended a course in Adobe Photoshop in an effort to achieve ACA accreditation. I was really looking forward to it because throughout 2011, I had already achieved accreditation from Google for AdWords and Hootsuite so to achieve a certificate from Adobe would rank highly along side them and display my breadth of knowledge for all things digital.
The course was great and although I’ve been using Photoshop for a number of years, there’s always some functions that I’ve never really understood and many intricacies that I may have taken for granted. Continue reading “How hard is it to achieve ACA Accreditation?” »
It was definitely a major buzz word during 2011 and I had always planned to ‘get round to it’ but as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Day, well probably when the haze lifted a few days later, I decided that 2012 would be the year I revolutionise my approach to web design.
I’d been getting tired of the same designs, tweaked and re hashed but based on the simple fundamental design rules.
Your search box must be above the fold.
Your logo must be top left.
It was time for something new, and time to think outside the box.
As web design continues to grow, we seem to be bombarded with an endless list of client requirements that we need to adhere to.Some are interested in accessibility, some think they are avid designers themselves, most won’t take no for an answer.There are a number of tools available to help alleviate some of the production time associated with our projects. Most of these tools are battling for our attention and they mainly deal with the initial planning of a project or website.I’ve recently been using Slickplan to create simple site maps.
Everyone can draw a sitemap if they really wanted to, but why should it take an hour when it could take 5 minutes. Slickplan is really easy to use and, although it’s not extensive, it will quickly produce a site map that your client can read.The hole in between a sitemap and a design is plugged with a wireframing application. In the past, I’ve been using PowerPoint to create wireframes. The presentation is largely dependent on the library of elements at your disposal but again the process can be slow and largely dissappointing. It can be quite difficult to line elements up and even if you manage that, it can still look quite poor. Continue reading “Web design protocols” »
