CategoryDesign

June 10, 2020 — Stress isn’t just something that makes people feel uncomfortable. It stimulates the urge to “fight” or “flight”. The very last thing you want is to design a website that stresses visitors out, leading them to dread the experience or abandon it entirely. There are many things that might invoke this response from your visitors, including the design. In the following guide, we’re going to look at some ways to de-stress your design. Read more…

June 5, 2020 — Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, Eric Bailey will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. He will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people he interviewed. Read more…

May 22, 2020 — These days, product companies seem more interested in refining interfaces and simplifying user experiences. In this ninth issue of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explain how studying the work of Max Huber — one of the less well known but most distinguished Swiss designers — will teach you how to turn mundane subjects into exciting visual communication. Read more…

May 7, 2020 — The pressure to rush market and usability research carries risk. In this article, Eric Olive will offer four practical techniques to mitigate this risk and create designs that better serve customers and the company: context over convenience, compromise, better design decisions, design reduction. Read more…

April 21, 2020 — A landing page is a standalone webpage created to support a specific marketing campaign or targeting a particular search term. They are where users “land” when they click a link in search results, email or an ad. In this article, Paul Boag will show you how to create a compelling landing page, which involves a combination of clear focus, persuasive copy, considered design and relentless testing. Without all four your page will fail. Read more…

April 13, 2020 — In this eighth issue of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explain how learning about American graphic designer and typographer Herb Lubalin has transformed his approach to typography on the web. How can we combine elements to develop powerful headers and calls to action? How do we use pre-formatted HTML text, and the text element in SVG for precise control over type? How can we optimise SVGs and make SVG text accessible? In this article, we’ll explore just that. Read more…

March 31, 2020 — By now, you’re probably used to seeing design trends come and go. But have you ever given any thought to what passing trends do to a website when left there for too long? As a web designer, you have a few choices. You can ignore popular design trends altogether; you can adopt them, but pull them out of rotation the second they go stale, or you can put your own unique spin on them. This guide will help you figure out which approach makes the most sense for your site. Read more…

March 26, 2020 — Recent research has found that e-commerce category pages have higher click-through rates in search than individual category pages. So, if your e-commerce site is struggling to attract shoppers and convert them, your category pages (specifically, those on mobile) might be in need of a redesign. Based on the following data, Suzanne Scacca will show you how category pages have a role to play — as the intermediary between search engines and e-commerce websites. Read more…

March 25, 2020 — In Part 1, Paul explained the basics of the terminal, shared a few productivity hacks to get you started, and how to choose a code editor. In this part, he’ll continue with the topics of version control (Git), HTML and CSS, semantic code, and a brief introduction to some key engineering principles. Read more…

March 23, 2020 — In this seventh instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explore how American art director and graphic designer Otto Storch inspires his designs for the web. How do we use CSS Shapes to go beyond basic shapes to add energy to our designs? How do we use rotations on text for extra impact? How can we use mirroring and reflections to add interest to a design? In this article, we’ll explore just that. Read more…