An idea?

An idea just popped like this some days ago. It was a simple, somewhat crazy but cool idea which might have some great impact, at least some minor incentive, on the Mauritian Web Design field. This crazy thing is currently called the “2010 project”. A better name might be found later on. Now, the cool thing about this idea is that this project will have a collective aspect. Yes COLLECTIVE in the sense that the Web Design Bureau’s (small handful of) readers will be associated to the project.

Why?

Why associate the Mauritian readership? Because the project concerns them, the project’s subject is some kind of representation of Mauritians all over the world. Yes you are right! You’re getting the idea of this project and what it will consist of. And you will participate!

What?

As said earlier, your representation on the web: the Mauritian government thing (yes, you can’t call that a website). The idea is that, as time goes by, more and more information is being added to this site. It is currently impossible to know how many pages there are in that site, how it is really organised and what SEO/SEM strategies are applied to it. I tried a spider simulator on it and ended with an #epic #fail (hello Twitter world) with a lot of 404 errors and a whopping 69 links in only one page while getting you lost in there.

So here is the project. It’s not said that it’ll be a killer success but it at least is an attempt to provide and alternative. The project is therefore a redux of the site.

How?

I have no idea yet but the concerned persons are Mauritians first. So we need to address the Mauritian public, well the site needs to address the Mauritian public. This is why major decisions on the design will be set as polls open to the readers. All ideas will be welcome and active participation will get interesting. No code will be generated, it is only a graphic design redux of the site just to imagine how it would have been if the right questions had been answered when necessary.

Let’s do this!

Ok, this project can be a huge flop but it has the advantage of budding (at least). The idea is not to take the place of anybody nor steal the job off anybody either. Just the fun of trying a real project management challenge on an equally challenging subject along with the web friends.

Some months ago I was promoting this entry on the major presence of typography in web design: 95% of web design is typography. It is true and proven that typography is what builds layout. The major problem with typography is that the average visitor is used to the stock fonts found on the Windows. Now the average Web 2.0 amateur web designer will try to use those stock fonts as default on their website. This will eventually end up bringing down the user experience.

The best solution for the professional web designer is to be aware of the limitations of the web in terms of use of fonts and optimise one’s knowledge of typography. Mark Boulton states in his book Five Simple Steps to Web Design that his education in typography and his unique grasp of layouting (based on typography) is what his clients searched for when they came to him. Conclusion, having the best knowledge in typography will get boost your web designing.

How can you do that? By following typography sites worldwide or by getting into a typography course which seems to be a rare thing (believe me, I’ve been trying to find a crash course near me for the past 3 years). The web has a lot to offer in this field. Here are the two fresh sites I’ve been following recently.

The first one, just because it allows me to follow the other sites without having to actually skim through all their RSS feeds. Type Daily. A great type oriented news aggregator.

The second one is really font oriented. It will help you reach new heights in terms of typography mastering and design skills in general. This one is a real must. FontShop Education.

All of my company’s network is down today. So I took some time to open a folder and re-read some chapters I kept around from diverse books. I happenned to come by a quote I did from Mark Boulton’s Five Simple Steps on the use of web applications that made me ponder on how we, web designers, fit in the big picture.

Design conventions are being born. Maturing online, and now business is starting to see the benefit. Now, if I wasn’t using these products or services, if I wasn’t a consumer of the web, I’d be blind to what was possible. It’s not enough to rest on your laurels. If you’re a web designer, you need to be a web consumer.

I think that this quote best describes the state of mind a real web designer must be in. This is how the web designer brings new ideas to his client or entertains same level discussions with hardcore application users. Consuming the web intelligently, this is the real deal. Consume it, understand it and see how you can set this usage in your work.

Not only does this allow you to keep up with trends but it also helps you know how people consume the web. In other words, you’re your own guinea pig. You will then be able to compare your consumption to that of other web users in order to, for example, work on the building of personas for usability testing.

Today, too many web designers forget that the web must be consumed and not just be a sort of magazine layout for companies. Just one question: how many Mauritian companies have a professional blog or a twitter account? Actually the question should be simpler than that: how many companies have a professional blog or a twitter account? How many web designers out there understand the social practices that are maturing on social apps and are proposing them to their clients.

A month ago, I wrote an article on web design education in Mauritius which got me some sour reactions from so-called “web design professionals” from Mauritius. Sure, the first reaction in Mauritius is to insult then think. But do you do it when you’re a professional? Anyway, this is their way of doing the business: ego and self-satisfaction ensuring that all the inequalities prevailing in Mauritius carries on healthily. [Rant and denounciation off]

Coming back to the issue of web design education, a lot has come out from the ongoing contest to win a copy of Mark Boulton’s “Designing for the web”. Read the comments and you’ll get a great view of how most people in the industry have learned their trade. As a matter of fact, school and university lectures are practically non-existent in web design. Most of the time this goes in this order:

1. Learn from the web with online tutorials
2. Learn by scouting portfolios and “big hats” in the trade
3. Books (depending on how they are written, bland and factual ones are not favourites)
4. Ebooks/PDF books (new technology has us)
5. Practice (trial and error)

Once again, read through the comments (and add yours if you’re interested in the topic or the contest) and get to know how people have started out in the domain.

Along with these are two excellent overviews that I would like to share. These might even be the groundwork for a new way of teaching or building a curriculum around web design:

• Teach the Web has published a Monograph where the underlying question is “What to teach to the next generation of web professionals?”. Leslie Jensen-Inman has interviewed 32 top category web designers to understand that intricacies and issues of learning web design and the results are astounding. They are to the point and well documented. A real view of what web design education should be.
• The School of Visual Arts has an MFA in interaction design as well as a great active blog on the theme of interaction design. Readers have requested reading recommendations in terms of interaction design and this has given a superb list of books to be assigned/already assigned to their courses.
  

  These could be landmark texts, underdogs, or critical reads, or stepping stones to other fields.

One of the last tweets I saw today stated: “Reading is hazardous for your stupidity…”. Thanks for the message pal! Looking back at what has been hazardous for my stupidity through the past week is the PDF book I bought off Five Simple Steps by Mark Boulton.

What I like with Web design guru Mark Boulton is his transversal view of web design and his direct and concise way of explaining the underlying design concepts. It reads with a great pace while giving you “to the point” information on webdesign in a 100+ PDF printable, personalised book! This is another example of a great Web design book to own. You can read other writings from Mark Boulton on his blog.

Having said this, the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius is offering 2 (yes TWO) copies of Mark Boulton’s book. Just leave a comment on this post about your experience of “learning” from books (most web designers, designers or programmers do so at a certain point in their lives) to enter the contest which will end on Monday 2nd of March 2009. I can assure you that you’ll even love the book’s layout!

Great analysis of one of the new trends in the web design world by Gopal at Productive Dreams: the “Price Tag”. Really cool insight of what is going on in web designing. Love the twitter bird at the bottom of Gopal’s site!

I’ve been working on new designs lately and found myself raking my brains on blog footer designs. They are useful and “fill up” a page. Here are some reviews that can be used for inspiration:

• Impressive @ Vandelay
• Gorgeous @ SEOMoz
• CSS Based @ SM

Popular designer Andy Rutledge takes arms against son bad layout conventions usually accepted as popular and well designed. His analysis and proposals are to the point and a good read for any designer wishing to optimise user experience.

Being a webdesigner implies coming up with fresh ideas for one’s clients. This is the first challenge the designer has to take and solve. Added to that is the fact that, most of the time, the client has an idea of what s/he wants while not really knowing what s/he actually desires. This is where the webdesigner’s inspiration comes into the game. We will not discuss the problem solving process right now but the way a webdesigner prepares him/herself to readily analyse what the client is longing for and understand the underlying idea.

My own opinion is that the webdesigner should be able to understand the trends and ways of designing and follow them closely for inspiration. New ideas usually crop up while looking at other persons’ work. Sometimes someone else’s idea triggers a new one in one’s mind and the constant nurturing of the idea can end up into a masterpiece. This is where inspiration works at its best. Let’s be clear just right now, we are talking of inspiration and not site ripping or design theft. Moreover, it is important also to build up new experiences from your inspirations and not merely copy an idea and end up being boring.

Webdesigners are quite prolific and have the “bad habit” of being unsatisfied people. The other face of the coin is that, working on one single design usually bores the webdesigner out and new ideas keep floating in, messing with the initial idea. Nearly all webdesigners out there understand these feelings. It is important at this stage to keep up with the initial idea and tamper the least with it and remain focussed. The advantage of this is the large amount of sites, therefore ideas, available online. One of the best ways to use these as inspirational debuts are galleries. There are hundreds of such galleries online and subscribing to their feeds is one of the best presents you can offer to your own self.

Here’s a list of galleries that I really find interesting. Please add yours in the comments:

http://www.mostinspired.com/
http://cssmania.com/
http://www.cssbeauty.com/
http://www.webcreme.com/
http://www.csselite.com/
http://www.cssheaven.com/
http://www.cssbased.com/

The list can go on and on. This is why I put most inspired first which aggregates quite a lot of galleries in one go giving you 24/7 service and inspiration.