Is Responsive Web Design the Right Path to Minimalism?
It is necessary to first point out that by NO MEANS is minimalism a trend! In actuality, it is a design style that emerges to prominent use in accordance when society’s common desire shifts towards excessive wants. If that is the case, what could this guy be talking about?
Well, in recent years the web community has been strongly gravitating toward minimalism as the go-to design approach. Recently some newly popular styles were coming along, the most notable of these being Parallax Design. However, since then, Responsive Web Design came about, seemingly delaying the surfacing of a new prominent design style. The question going to be answered here is whether minimalism was rejuvenated by Responsive Web Design, or not?
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A Handy Guide to Proper Web Typography for a Successful Design
Basically, typography is the art and technique of arranging typefaces for communication purposes. In other words, typography is a simple arrangement in order to transmit a message, while good typography is the attention to visual accuracy and details, even the small ones. Typography started when writing appeared. The most simple arrangement of letters was also some sort of typography. Nowadays, typography is an element we see everyday and everywhere — Prints, Books, Newspapers and letters, TV and Web. Even the foremost websites were caring about typography, and were trying to improve it as much as possible with the resources available at that time.
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Guide to User Flow – The “Foolishly Ignored” Backbone of Website Design
User Experience, Responsive Web Design and similar terms have made such a serious impact on the lives of web designers that they have almost forgotten the core of website design – User Flow. I hope that we, the web designers, remember that website design is not just about “how it looks” but also about “how it works”! It is easy to get sentimental with your passion – website design – which forces you to jump right into the website design phase without considering the end user expectations. Website designers concentrate so much on the information architecture of a website that they tend to forget the user flows that are the basis of all conversions benefiting the website. We can either give up on end user just for the look (and all other silly adjectives) of our website or start giving priority to User Flows in order to increase the returns from the website.
So, once you have made up your mind that you will break the shackles of information architecture, aesthetic looks, user experience, responsive design and other silly terms then you can start reading further. It is time to design user flows.
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A Handy Guide to Better User Experience
In simplest terms, UX, also known as user experience or user usability is the way most basic users feel about using an application, a program, a website or anything. User Experience is based on the reactions and responses the user performs and provides. While it can seem related to gaining feedback, it is actually not the same. User Experience is meant to understand and make the user reach the “final goal” which is defined by the owner of the product. Whether this goal is getting the person to subscribe to your newsletter, or make him buy your new t-shirt, the main goal of the owner is to make the user’s way as easy and hassle free as possible. There are many factors which can influence a user’s experience with your system/product. The following are some of the most important factors.
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Stop Designing User Experience! I Mean It!
User Experience this! User Experience that! Stop it, will you? There’s plenty enough research done about User Experience . Now, can we please start designing? The problem with the Internet is that literally anything can go viral in no time. Same has happened with the keyword User Experience (UX as the nerds call it). Wasn’t aesthetically pleasing design the end goal for every designer? Then, from where did this term UX find place in our brains and how come it dominates our thoughts? Isn’t an aesthetically pleasing design that delights our user enough to keep them riveted?
Well, lots of questions there. I might be acting a bit extreme but I am a bit upset. I am upset with the trend that has forced an average designer to read tons of content about User Experience just to understand whatever it is. For me, UX is totally unrealistic. And whatever is unrealistic cannot be designed. Let me prove my point!
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Tips on Designing the Perfect Navigation System for Your Website
Where is the Home Button? Does this website even care about its navigation system? And, by the way, why are they using breadcrumbs when I don’t see how it could be useful? Well, navigational menus can be a big turn off for your readers if they aren’t planned well. Although webmasters assume that a simple menu is enough, most of the time yet they forget that a navigational menu has its own requirements. Sometimes a simple to use navigation will do just fine for your website design while at times you will have to click a lot of links into your navigational menu so as to compliment the various branches of your website.
This discussion will pick up some of the obvious forms of websites and then shed some light on how the navigational menu changes for each of them. Hold tight and don’t leave!
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Why Creating Minimalist Design Makes You a Better Designer
Our target as designers most of the time is improving ourselves and our techniques. There are many ways of doing this. You can read books, find an internship or simply learn a lot by example from the internet. But there are some other ways as well. You might not believe it, but by only designing minimalist layouts you will become a better designer. You might ask yourself why, therefore I thought of putting together some ideas to try to convince you that this is also a good way of improving your skills.
Minimalist designs have been with us for quite some time now, emerging from nowhere a couple of years ago. It is easy to spot all over the place as everybody longs for such a design and everybody looks to have it. People pay lots of money for revamping their websites and minimalism seems to be everybody’s direction right now.
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What is the Trend for Web Design in 2012?
Just a month and a half has passed in 2012 and there are some patterns which are quite easy to notice in how people design. Sure, most of them are similar to the ones of 2011 – it seems 2011 and 2012 will not be too different, however there might be some small changes which I will talk about soon. There is no doubt that screen size is not an issue anymore and designing for all sizes is crucial – this is the stand point of web design trends in 2012.
Why is responsive web design crucial? Because there are so many screen sizes out there, that designing a solution for each one of them is too costly and there is no real reason to do this. Responsive web design offers us the solution to designing for all screen sizes in the same time back in 2010 and since then it became a trend. Responsive web design is brilliant and the results are more than satisfying.
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Why UX Design is like Your Clothes
Even if you gave five people the exact same clothes, none of them would wear the clothes the exact same way. This is because everybody looks at something in their own unique way, this is just a testament to the creativity every person has inside of them. You’re probably thinking to yourself what in the world does this have to do with UX design, correct?
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How to Make the Best out of the Fold
The fold, also known as the scroll, is the position on a web site where the browsers will begin to scroll down. Elements that can’t be seen without scrolling down are “below the fold” and some people believe that it is smart to keep the important information above the fold and don’t force the user to scroll down to view it. The whole space below the fold is for less important information and, depending on the resolution of the screen, this can be at around 600 pixels down on a 1024 x 768 screen, 850 pixels down on a 1200 x 1024 screen and around 1030 pixels down on a big 1600 x 1200 screen.
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