The Current State of Web Design: A Look into Professional Web Design Today
Web Design today is completely different than it was five years ago, one year ago, and even four months ago. The internet has grown at an exponential rate as well as the services, businesses, and platforms that revolve around it. It is not only the job, but the very life of web designers to keep up with trends in web design because they are constantly shifting. Staying out of the game for too long means staying out of the game for good. It’s important for any small to large website design company to ensure that all of its employees are up to date with the latest software, hardware, and know-how so that they can provide the best design site services to prospective clients.
These clients will often come to a web design company and ask hundreds of questions (not all of which make sense) and web designers have to be able to field all of these inquiries as well as respond in such a manner that they understand that the web design company they’re speaking with is the one for them. What I’ve found interesting about these discussions between clients and companies is that the client will always ask “what about free web design templates” when you hit them with the price tag for the fully customized website they were asking about moments ago. Designers and salesmen have to make sure clients know the limits of free web design templates and how unlike customizable ones, they will NOT grow with their business.
Weekly Kickass Web App x 2! Backboard vs Bento
Creative Fluff is coming at you with a Holiday Special: We’re tossing out two weekly kickass web apps in just one week! That’s a lot of awesomeness, I know, so just calm down and bear with me. I’ve made things easy by finding two web applications that are similar enough for comparison. No need to thank me now, just sit back and lets examine BackBoard and Bento. The first application we will discuss is Backboard, which at first seems like any other online project management software, but on closer inspection it’s actually a tool for people to review your work, leave comments, and offer advice. The second unique web app is Bento was is a great tool for freelancers to keep track of projects and invoices.
Backboard is a relativily new application which sets itself out to be an: ”easy [way] to securely collect feedback and approval on documents, presentations, graphics, and websites.
Use it with your team in the office or around the world. There are no meetings to schedule and Backboard handles all of the coordination for you.” Backboard makes a great place to have virtual meetings and get feedback and I figured the best way to see just how great the software was would be by testing it out. As most of you know I launched Megalongcat.com about a month ago so that Creative Fluff would be spared of my rants; so I decided lets test out how good it is at managing my super awesome game-plan for marketing Megalongcat.
There are some issues that are easily overlooked. You can set Backboard to take a screenshot of a website if that’s what you’re designing, however the script that takes the picture can sometimes mess up and it reads the code on the page wrong and re-creates the page wrong. Notice the two “feedback” buttons in the screenshot. There should only be one. Aside from the simple quirks of any online application, I found Backboard to be really streamlined and efficient. I could add a list of people via email addresses to review my work and leave comments. There was even a pen tool so that a person could mark up the page (with a red pen, get it?) and leave comments on why they did. However, all of this falls apart if you don’t have the proper personal file organization to even get work up on BlackBoard to review. That’s where Bento Comes in.
Bento is a file organizational software platform that has it built in to pretty much organize anything you might need, here are some examples:
- Address Book
- Animal Stats
- Article submissions
- Artwork
- Assets
- Book Characters
- Buddies
- Chat Dictionary
- Classes
The only gripes that I have with Bento are that it is only available MAC OS platforms, and that it’s a solid framework which doesn’t allow for excessive amounts of custimization. However I strongly reccomend Bento for Mac users who don’t want to bother with the nuts and bolts of a program and just get the files in order. If you haven’t looked them up already check these two programs out at:
http://www.filemaker.com/products/bento/overview.html
Weekly Kickass Web App – Action Method
Action Method – Online Project Management software for when Sticky Notes aren’t Enough.
That’s what the tagline for Behance’s online project management software called Action Method. The software claims to be a “radical approach to productiviity and project management”(ActionMethod.com) both online and offline. Therein lies one of the most interesting features: the fact that whether I’m on the go or at home toiling away, I can access my projects at any given time and update them with where I am on a project. Let me tell you being a designer means at any given moment there’s 1000 projects that you have to keep track of.
After making a free account you set up your project based on the following factors:
ACTION STEPS are tasks that need to be completed. Each Action Step should start with a verb: “Call Y,” “Follow up with X,” “Buy a gift for Z.”REFERENCES are notes, links, files, sketches – any information related to a project that gives context to your Action Steps.BACKBURNERS are the brilliant ideas that you want to come back to later, but are not yet actionable.DISCUSSIONS enable you to manage ongoing conversations across all of your projects with anyone that works with you. All relevant communications (shared documents, solutions to problems, feedback, decisions) are in one place.EVENTS are the key occasions/meetings/milestones/etc toward which you (and your team) are working. Events can be used to coordinate deadlines for Action Steps. (ActionMethod.com)
SEO: Pulling the Strings of New York Web Design
Search Engine Optimization; an old practice by logical web designers, but it’s something that is constantly reworked, changed, and improved (thought not always for the best). What has not changed in terms of optimizing a website for higher rankings in any search engine, is that there are proper methods, and then there are, well, improper ways to market your website. These SEO practices, both good and bad, have become a major driving force in how New York web designers design, develop, and spread the word about their creations. With hundreds of web development companies, and literally thousands of designers in such a closed space competition becomes fierce. No longer can NYC web designers rely on their beautiful creations to wow the public and garner a larger business base. SEO has become the single most driving factor behind NY websites and here’s a list of reasons why:
1. Too Much Competition
For all of the wonders that NYC has to offer because of its largely diverse population, therein lies the problem; New York is simply too large to stand out with aesthetics alone. New York Web Design firms not only have to design their own websites with search engine optimization in mind, but they have to do the same for their clients who are always asking to be at the top of the list for whatever it is their trying to market (be it themselves or a product).
2. The New Yorker’s Personality
New Yorkers are impatient, grumpy, and succinct when it comes to messages. They are constantly bombarded with advertisements in both the real world and the digital. This constant exposure to marketing firms leaves them desensitized when it comes any sort of marketing message. To get around this, web designers have to employee SEO techniques to get their sites at the top of a user’s search so that the first thing a New Yorker sees when looking for something like “FDNY Graphic Tees” is a specific website.
3. Too Creative
A great, wonderful, and at the same time horrible thing about New York City is that it houses three of the best art and design schools in the nation. The School of Visual Arts, Parsons The New School For Design, and Cooper Union. Each of these colleges are known for producing a large volume of creative graduates each year, and a large portion of these students join up with web design firms in various positions. With so much creativity exploding in a small metropolitan area, it becomes hard to distinguish one individual or design firm from another. Yet another reason SEO becomes the backbone for New York web design.
