Inspiration and the Design Process – Part 1
A few people have asked me about the inspiration and design process behind the idigit design website – so I thought I’d pull the answers together in a couple of posts. idigit design are a Brighton based website design and special effects company; the website took around 8 weeks to build from initial idea to publication.Week 1: Inspiration
Inspiration can come from anywhere; I often find myself thumbing through Art books, or looking for well designed adverts. But for me, when inspiration strikes, it's only ever the beginning of a long journey. The main idea for the idigit design website came relatively quickly – after a few generic draft designs, I tried to define the core skills of idigit design and decided upon 2D and 3D design. After that, I knew I was looking for something which would encompass these two skills. It was a relatively short mental leap to drafting the hand idea. The design concept behind the hand was simple – to deliver a 2-dimentional website in a 3-dimentional way. 
Week 2: Drafts
Once the hand idea was settled upon, I created a few quick, low-res visual concepts for the layout of the site. I always find Flash works best for quick easy layouts, although it wasn’t certain at this stage the final site would be Flash-driven.
Placing the hand on the left-hand side of the screen seemed like the obvious place to put the navigation at first, but after a few trials it became clear the transition to different information pages was going to look messy. The site also looked unbalanced when only the hand was on the screen. A brief foray into colour was quickly abandoned and so the obvious migration of the hand to the middle of the screen didn’t take long to happen.
Week 3: Working Backwards
As soon as the final draft of the basic idea is settled, I work backwards. Meaning, I start with the most information heavy pages of the site (normally the deepest in the hierarchical structure) and get their layout right first. When you achieve the right look for the busiest pages on the site, it is relatively straight forward to strip away what you want for the simpler pages. So for idigit design, I started by drafting the sections layout and the final, larger sheet of paper which would contain our services info, portfolio examples etc. I did this long before I designed the transitions between the two. Week 3: And So, to Begin…
So with the design and layout drafted, I had to decide upon the structure and programming for the site. I am sometimes, I must admit, a little too easily seduced by Flash, but on this occasion I decided a pure Flash site was best for the creative flexibility it afforded me. I also had to decide about where and how I would feed the content into Flash. A recent site I designed which utilized .txt files imported into Flash has suffered from a known bug which shifts the text around when you roll over a button; so I decided to embed all the contents. It was a tough decision and one that has limited my flexibility for content change and development, but it’s a pay-off with convenience. With that decided, I brewed a strong cup of coffee and started the process proper.Next time, I’ll talk about using Photoshop to improve the quality of the photos, the design tweaks along the way and the seemingly endless testing problems with the navigation system. Until then, please post any comments, I’d love to hear you’re thoughts.
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I LOVE the final design. The movement of the hand is so smooth and the way it throws out the paper. Can imagine very hard to get right. Excellent!
Posted by
Shelly |
3:28 AM