Our Blog: What!? We Like To Talk About
Web Design Trends: Don’t be a sheep. Do your job right.
February 22nd, 2011
Trends are everywhere, especially in the design world:
fashion, web design, interior design, even type design – we can’t avoid them. But are they actually a good thing? In many ways I think possibly not…
People don’t buy websites based purely on how they look
The Web Design industry is a little different from other creative industries who may be, for example, purely focussed on creating visual impact. We have many other variables to consider in order to create websites that benefit the users by having a good user experience, and that also benefit the client by increasing conversion and/or awareness of their brand – which both go hand in hand with it having a quality design. My feeling is that some people get so hooked on design trends that they forget what they are actually supposed to be doing as web designers / developers.
We aren’t paid to simply create pretty pictures and seek the approval of our clients second to our peers, we are paid to create usable systems that benefit the users of the Internet.
MincePieCount CSS3 Animations
December 20th, 2010
Every year many companies, especially creative agencies have the dilemma of “what do we do for Christmas!?” We simply made some nice Christmas cards last year but this time we wanted to go one better and create something digital as well as something that’s fun, creative, and shows off our skills!
Flash on the Beach 2010 – A Round Up
November 3rd, 2010
Better late than never, we’ve finally come around to finding time to tell you about our experience at Flash on the Beach 2010, which took place between the 26th and 29th September. Now, we don’t do much Flash here at What!? Creative, but based our experience last year of being completely inspired by a massively diverse range of speakers, we decided to give it another go and make it two years running…
So, without further redo, here’s a round up of all the best bits from FOTB 2010:
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Font Embedding & The Law
October 7th, 2010
Choosing the right font is key to any piece of graphic design, whether it be for web or print. Unfortunately web designers have been stuck with the same old system fonts for years, unable to create intricate typographical layouts without the use of images. I think we’ve done a pretty good job to be honest because any old-school print designers would have a heart attack if they knew we’ve been working with a choice of about six fonts to fulfil the needs of every website that we create.
There have been a number of different processes and applications written to try and solve this problem by allowing custom fonts to be embedded into websites. In this post we will outline the latest and most popular techniques, and the legal issues that you may unknowingly face by using them.
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Texture in Web Design Part 2: Pixel Patterns, Noise, and Grain
September 15th, 2010
We began this two part series on texture in web design by talking about text and button textures, and how they can be used to inset, or outset page elements. These help to add more depth and subtle aesthetics to your designs, making them look more professional and polished. This week, we’ll be showing you how to add texture to other page elements such as your backgrounds / content areas, as well as how to use pixel patterns to make your text and box-shadows more interesting.
Noise and Grain
Noise and grain is all over the web at the moment, with some big players in the design community using it very effectively in their designs. A good example of this is Dribbble. If anyone doesn’t know what Dribbble is then you can read about it in this post.
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