Your website design sucks because… users can’t find crap!

I know ayh! A great title to start of another year of C2.0 Web Design Blog! : -)

To kick off the new year in Web Design, I thought it would be best to go through a couple of my tell-tale signs that can help you gauge if and when your website’s design sucks. Obviously, “Website design” in this concept does not only include the graphical elements of the page, but of course the Information architecture, usability, accessibility, etc. So without further ado– Let’s get going with round one of “Your website design sucks because…” with Your website design sucks because users can’t find crap! Continue reading »

Web design inspiration: Top 10 ways to get your groove back!

Hello hello…
It’s been a long time and  boy have I missed blogging. There have been a couple of endeavours I have been working on for the past couple of months which have kept me busy — enough that as much as I’d love to, I just don’t have any hours left over to blog. Hopefully a change is on the way and we see a bit more blogs going up!

We are  going to start this week by tackling the issue web designers (and developers) for that matter always face at some stage in their careers; a loss of creative juices. Sometimes losing your creative juices can’t come at a worst time; i.e. you have an appointment to go through a concept with your boss in 1 hour and you haven’t started! Oh Oh!

So let’s get going and look at a couple of ways which have helped me get my creative juices flowing in the past. Continue reading »

Project management: What is it? Part 1

Hey 2.0′ers!

I’m back and it’s time to blog again. Today we are going to kick things off by talking about Project Management; What is it, methodologies involved and breaking down the life cycle. In this, part 1, we will be dissecting the first two phases: Project Initiation and Project Planning. Hang around for part 2, which will finalise the phases with Project execution and control, and Project closure.

So without further ado, let’s kick things off.

What is Project Management?

Put simply, project management is the discipline of planning, leading, monitoring and organizing a team and resources in order to effectively bring about the successful completion of a project based on predefined budget, time, quality, scope and resources allocated. Continue reading »

Really wicked Photoshop glow lighting effect and Pen tool introduction

Hey guys,

I’ve been playing with glow effects lately for an upcoming website redesign, and I’ve been noticing quite a bit of work being done with Photoshop’s pen tool and cool lighting effects, so I figured I’d share some introduction to the pen tool itself as well as a glow/lighting technique which can be used in many, many ways with you guys. Sit back, relax, and enjoy another Photoshop tutorial.

Just as a sneak peak, this is what we are going to be creating… Continue reading »

What makes a great website?

We all know how important it is to have a website be able to communicate with the world. A good website just ‘does the job’ – a great website exceeds all expectations and thus has a far better return! The million dollar question is however; what makes a great website?

No, really – What makes a great website?

That really is the million dollar question. Many people have tried to tie this down to mitigating factors – but at the end of the day, in my opinion – a great website is one which meets the following rules:

Content

Content is easy to find

It’s simple – if a user can’t find information they are looking for, they have no reason to be on your site. You need to make sure content is easy to find; and in a variety of ways. For example, on Cheb 2.0, you can search the site for any keyword which will return a list of matching articles/posts, or you can click on ‘Archives‘ menu here on Elastique’s blog to show every article posted sorted by date. Further to that, there is a tag cloud to search by keyword or a direct link to each month with the number of posts that were published during that month.

You might be wondering why I have left that as a way to search for posts? Well, in essence it was a really easy decision. Not only does it just add another form of search – but there are times when monthly archives make sense. For example, if a website regular was to go on holidays for 2 weeks in one month and then come back to your website next month, all they want to see is what they missed out on – and this is where monthly-archiving achieves a sense of purpose. Continue reading »