6May
Early this year we were approached by the guys behind Floor Heating Online who are specialists in Underfloor Heating to design, build and optimise their website. A couple of weeks ago the site went live.
From a design stand point the website provided little room for experimentation or innovation but then for heating products you don’t need this. These products are not luxury items or impulse buys so when someone visits the website they need to be able to find and buy a product as quickly and simply as possible. To ensure the website does this we removed the need to register in order to buy, simplified the navigation and rebuilt the Room Selector present on the old website.
Continue reading “Website: Floor Heating Online”
9Feb
As freelance projects go I thought building a website for my Mother would be fairly easy, with most decisions easily signed off because my Mother is less likely to disagree with my choices than a normal client. Although this is true it puts a weight on your shoulders to ensure you make the correct decisions to start with. These days I’m confident of my design skills so knew I could design something beautiful but I also had to make sure it suited its target audience and subject matter.
When looking at sites that ranked for Book Keeping many were directory sites or corporate looking sites with heavy use of straight lines and white backgrounds as you’d expect for that industry. However with a much reduced amount of content than these sites I needed to take a different approach.
Continue reading “Portfolio Website: hazelrichmond.co.uk”
25Jan
Every now and again you work on something that you feel truly proud of, that you feel showcases the best of your abilities. The new David Naylor website is one of those moments for me.
Back in December I took the decision to finally look into redesigning davidnaylor.co.uk. The previous design which I did only back in March 2008 appeared dated and when initially building the website certain decisions were taken that later created problems resulting in what felt like an incomplete, rushed and under developed website.
As most designers should attest to a client that knows too much about the web can be as difficult to design for as one who knows nothing, if not more difficult. When that client is your boss the process becomes even more complex. To remove the potential for issues I designed the new website at home. This allowed me to take my time with the design and concentrate on my own ideas, without outside interference. I prefer to work this way if possible and then amend or change a design upon gathering people’s opinions. Of course I would never recommend for a developer to work for free in their personal time, however in this case it was an enjoyable project and one I knew would benefit from being undertaken in my free time.
Continue reading “Portfolio Website: David Naylor”
14Jan
The customer is always right, and when they’re paying for a service it’s their decision that is final. But at times a client can bypass all experienced views and proven testing to impart their own personal tastes on a project. This may be suitable for a personal website but not for a business site.
In most cases a clients modifications can be worked with to ensure the final website is still an example of good design. However there are cases when a clients wishes result in a website more at home in the 20th rather than 21st century. Luckily at this stage of development you can disassociate yourself from the project if you wish.
Continue reading “Help! A client ruined my work”