Author Matt Cronin

June 24, 2009 — Corporate Web design has certain elements designed to attract customers. One of those elements is the introduction. The page or website introduction does what you would think: it introduces the website or page to the user and entices them to visit more of the website. Read more…

June 17, 2009 — Website designs have so many different elements that work together to convey information in a usable and organized manner. For a website to be effective, every element on the page, from the header to the footer, needs to add to its overall usability and readability. In this article, we’ll take a look at the footer and see what exactly makes for a good website footer. Keep in mind that just because the footer is at the bottom of the page doesn’t mean you should slack off with good design practice. We’ll look here at what to include in footers, the importance of site maps, usability practices and styling ideas and trends. We’ve also compiled almost 50 well-designed footers to give you ideas and inspiration for your own footer designs. Read more…

June 3, 2009 — The main function of a good user interface is to provide users with an intuitive mapping between user’s intention and application’s function that manages to provide a solution to the given task. Basically, user interface describes the way people interact with a site and the way users can access its functions. In fact, usability is a biproduct of a good user interface and it determines how easily a user can perform all of the functions provided by the site. Usability is a crucial part of every design, especially on websites with a large amount of functions and users. This article goes over crucial features of the user interfaces of social media and social networking sites. It discusses important features, techniques and concepts behind these designs and explains why they are important, with examples from top sites. These easy and general usability strategies can be applied almost anywhere and to almost any type of user interface. You may want to take a look at the following related posts * 12 Useful Techniques For Good User Interface Design * 10 More Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs * 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques Read more…

May 27, 2009 — Web design is essentially the organization of information into a readable, usable, functional and accessible format. Good organization of content is crucial, and you need a strong layout that you can build a website upon. You can use numerous interface elements and structures to organize content, such as jQuery-based content sliders and modal windows, which are basically windows that float above the page. The modal window has many advantages. For example, when a modal window contains a smaller element, the user doesn’t need to load an entirely new page just to access it (another way to achieve the same effect is e.g. by using AJAX-based tabs). By providing modal windows, you improve the usability of your website. Having to load pages over and over will annoy most users, so avoiding that is definitely a good thing. Modal windows also allow you to save space by getting rid of large elements that don’t need to be on the main page. For example, rather than putting a full video on a page, you can just provide a link, thumbnail or button of some sort. In this article, we’ll go over best practices and trends for working with and building modal windows. We’ll also provide numerous examples of well-constructed modal windows and a few scripts to get you started with building them. Read more…

May 19, 2009 — The organization of content is probably one of the most important and influential aspects of any good web design. Organizing information into a well-built layout is the basis of a website, and should always come before styling concerns. Without a good layout, the website doesn’t seem to flow correctly, and nothing connects the way it should. Read more…

April 23, 2009 — When designing a website, the most important thing is to make it as usable and convenient as possible. On a website on which users could possibly get confused, it is best to include help elements. Help elements come in all different shapes and sizes: an entire page, a suggestion box or a quick tip. But they all have one thing in common: besides doing the obvious (i.e. helping the user), help elements provide an extra convenience that brings the website closer to that sought-after usability. With the number of forms, search functions and other navigational elements on websites these days, using them can occasionally become confusing for some users. Providing help elements in as many places as possible can be a great way to make the user’s experience more pleasurable. The better the experience of the user, the more likely the user will buy your product, come back to the website and fulfill the goal that the website was built to achieve. Below is a compilation of best practices for help elements, an explanation of when to use them and a showcase of excellent help elements. You may also be interested in the following related posts: * 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design * 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design * 12 Useful Techniques For Good Interface Design * 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques Read more…

April 21, 2009 — In print design, typography is one of the more crucial aspects. Typography is essential the practice of organizing, arranging, and modifying type. The typography techniques uesed in print has a direct impact on how the reader is able to receive the image. Read more…

April 9, 2009 — Last week we already presented our first selection of beautiful, clever and creative logo designs. This post presents the second part of our selection, featuring even more beautiful and creative logos that will hopefully inspire you or at least give you the idea of what the current logo design trends look like. Read more…

April 6, 2009 — There are an extensive amount of roads you can take in web design, specifically in navigation. Here, we will talk about one specific navigation technique, tab-based navigation. If properly carried out, tabbed navigation can be very clean and organized within a web layout. [Links checked February/10/2017] So what is tabbed navigation? Well, it is essentially a set of buttons most often set horizontally. Tabs generally follow numerous different styling guidelines. First, a tab set usually is attached to or slightly protrudes from a container, like in the example below. Also, notice how the open tab matches the background color of the container, and the other buttons are darker. This is another common styling guideline. When you look at tabbed navigations, you will also notice many styling trends. First, many tabs will have rounded corners on buttons. This helps to create a clean look. Also helping to make a clean look is the use of separation between buttons. Most designs use space to separate buttons, but a bevel, single line, or background color contrast will also look nicely. Read more…

April 1, 2009 — As designers, we are always in constant need of inpiration. Whether it be Web or graphic design, other work to fuel our creativity is essential. Logo design requires the most amount of inspiration, however. Read more…

March 31, 2009 — Web design has come a long way since its beginning, especially in terms of styling. Take a look at a website from 10 years ago and compare it to one from today. The differences are enormous. One of the major changes you will notice is the background. Today, backgrounds are one of the core features that determine how visually interesting a website is. The background holds the theme of the website, and there are a vast amount of possibilities when designing a website background. This article goes over the best practices and popular trends of backgrounds in the current stage of innovative Web design. You may also be interested in the following related posts: * Web Design Trends For 2009 * Mobile Web Design Trends For 2009 Read more…

March 25, 2009 — In this article, we take a closer look at the nature of drop-down navigation menus and analyze situations in which they should or should not be used. Read more…

March 18, 2009 — Readability is one of the more important aspects of Web design usability. Readable text affects how users process the information in the content. Poor readability scares readers away from the content. On the other hand, done correctly, readability allows users to efficiently read and take in the information in the text. You want users to be able to read your content and absorb it easily. Read more…

March 9, 2009 — The key to smart strategic Web design is finding an appropriate and interactive way to display information. One comes upon endless possibilities when searching for ways to display information. One solution, slideshows and sliders, is an excellent way to display information such as images in an organized and compact manner. Slider galleries are excellent for organizing content into a nice clean module. Read more…

February 19, 2009 — In website design, there are an endless amount of possibilities, styles and techniques that can be used to make a beautiful design that flows with the content. One of these styles is an illustration-heavy layout, which can take a website to a whole new level. Illustrations are becoming more and more popular, and some designers are really pushing the limits with some beautiful ones. Read more…

February 4, 2009 — Usability is an essential goal of any website, and usable navigation is something every website needs. It determines where users are led and how they interact with the website. Without usable navigation, content becomes all but useless. Menus need to be simple enough for the user to understand, but also contain the elements necessary to guide the user through the website — with some creativity and good design thrown in. Read more…