Article Prospect Experience Design Thoughts on the 2009 HOW Design Conference by Mark O’Brien on July 2, 2009 Last week I was in Austin, TX. to present a few sessions at the annual HOW Design Conference. There were a few things that really knocked my socks off that are worth mentioning. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Mood Boards published on June 30, 2009 At Newfangled we recently began using Mood Boards as a first step in the design process to establish the branding, design components, typography, imagery, and color palettes that will be incorporated in a site's design. Mood Boards have proven very effective, but I have found that it is essential to clarify the distinction between these boards and the designs that will follow once a mood board has been approved. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Creative Block? Go To Prison! by Justin Kerr on May 8, 2009 I've heard a lot of suggestions for overcoming creative block: change your venue, sketch, take a nap, etc. But I think I've discovered one of the more effective methods— long periods of forced solitude and an orange jumpsuit. Photographer Marc Steinmetz has posted some very creative escape tools used by prison inmates. Of course, only some of these hand-crafted masterpieces were successful in springing their owners or else they wouldn't have them on hand to be photographed, right? Read Now About
Article Content Strategy New Technology, and Balancing the Fun with the Practical published on May 5, 2009 Following technology trends on the web is a dizzying pastime. New programming languages rise to popularity seemingly every month and the buzzword-laden web frameworks make their introductions and dance on stage for half a verse before bowing out to younger, fresher technologies. When deciding which pieces of new technology to build into your web presence, there are several things that a developer should consider and some simple guidelines to pull in new, fun technology. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design “You don’t find anything out until you start showing it to people.” by Christopher Butler on April 24, 2009 David Kelly, founder and CEO of IDEO Product Development and professor at Stanford, spoke at Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Speaker Series about design as an iterative process. You can watch his entire talk at the link I provided, but I pulled one quote that I thought was relevant to the thinking behind our grayscreen prototyping philosophy... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Elements of a Successful Home Page by Justin Kerr on April 21, 2009 Your website's home page is the first impression some* visitors have of your organization, so careful thought should be given to which elements will live on the home page. The more focused your home page is, the more likely a visitor will quickly understand who you are and what you do. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Hand Drawn Maps by Justin Kerr on April 10, 2009 The Hand Drawn Map Association is accepting submissions of hand drawn maps until April 30th. There's something very beautiful and personal about a device as utilitarian as a map when it's sketched in a notebook or a napkin. Some of the submissions remind me of the hours I spent as a teen carefully planning D&D maps (all of you born after 1980 can go look that up on wikipedia). Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Pimp My Battleship: Dazzle Camouflage by Justin Kerr on April 10, 2009 Dazzle camouflage was developed during World War I. Since ships were hard to disguise against an ever-changing sea and sky, a Royal Navy marine painter named Norman Wilkinson came up patterns that would disrupt the ship's outline, making it difficult for German U-boats to target.The Rhode Island School of Design has a permanent collection of drawings you can view online here. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Avoid design application issues with an overlay by Dave Mello on April 9, 2009 When a finalized design concept is being applied to a new site, it is of course important to make sure that crucial design details are not lost in the process. To a large degree, this can simply be facilitated using a methodical approach to the application. I have found, however, that often when I think a site is "perfect" there are actually a lot of elements that don't quite line up with what the designer had in mind. One method I've used to counter this is to add the original design source an an overlayed layer to the final site, one that can be toggled on and off. This allows me to verify that things like element placement, margins and padding, and even line height and font size are faithfully being reproduced. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Creative Questionnaire: Luke Wroblewski by Justin Kerr on April 7, 2009 Luke Wroblewski is an internationally recognized Web thought leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 600 million people. He is currently Senior Director of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc. Read Now About
