LanceArthur

There's two kinds of design. One is graphic design, which is making things pretty. The other is experience design, which is making things work. These are wild generalizations, but you get my drift.

I do both, and neither. In other words, I do not concentrate on the effect of one over the effect of the other. They need to be married to each other, and happily so, like Mike and Carol Brady and their whole brood of interaction, ease of use and elegant beauty.

I love playing with pixels until every pixel is just right. Does that mean reaching for perfection? In one sense, it does. I'm not happy until everything works, and everything looks right, and everything is arranged and in its right place.

I work with you to make sure we reach your goals, and come up with the best design for your site. And I don't stop until we get there together.

A web page's structure is dependent on HTML. You knew that already. But unless the structure is constructed carefully and according to standards, it could fall apart. Making sure that your site is correctly rendered in whatever browser and on whatever operating system your audience chooses means making this bullet-proof. Making a site bullet-proof means...well...making sure your site renders correctly in whatever browser blah blah blah.

Making a site bullet-proof is harder than it sounds, but easier than people make it out to be.

Start by using the HTML tags for their intended purposes. Paragraph tags for paragraphs, tables for tabular data, lists for lists, and so on.

Then use classes and IDs that describe the content, not its position on the page.

Use header tags in the order that they appear, not by the size you want them to be.

Close all your open tags, use title and labels liberally, use tag elements to further clarify meaning and intent, and make sure everything works in every browser.

That's what I do!

You and I both know there are only a limited number of fonts that are globally available to every visitor of your web site.

At least, that used to be the case.

Now there are new web font kits that allow you to choose from hundred of available fonts for specific uses all over your pages, and with a couple of script tags in your header and judicious use of font families, you can have pretty much any typeface you want.

Integrating new font-faces are easy! I can help you set it all up, or show you how to do it yourself. I can help you pick out some typefaces that work for your site, and then integrate them seamlessly into your style sheets so everyone can enjoy them.

It also means making your website faster! If you don't need to make 'graphic text' out of headers to make them fit your style guide, you can use plain text and typography so it'll always render.

Most of the time, you already know what you want. Your company probably has a team of designers and marketers who have (hopefully) fleshed out a color palette for your company and its materials and logo. If that's the case, then half the work is already done.

How do you bring that palette to your web presence? What colors work best, and where should they be applied? Are there any that are inappropriate for web use and legibility, and what are the alternatives in those cases?

Or maybe you don't already have your color palette. Maybe you need a whole new closet of clothes to give your web site (and your company) a fresh, clean, positive look.

Whatever the case, I can help you figure out whether pastel, jewel tones, earth tones or your tones work best to communicate your company's personality.

Do you need to use Flash to make fun stuff that does things and makes junk happen?

Nope. You do not.

jQuery is a Javascript library that manipulates the browser's document object model to hide, fade, slide, pop up, sort, filter and display different things all over your pages.

HTML5 lets you load audio and video without resorting to Flash or Silverlight, plus it can help your site load even if the visitor loses their internet connection, or edit portions of your page for their own benefit, or more easily code sections of your page to more easily describe it for people with limited (or no) sight.

“Can it really?” I hear you ask. Yes. Yes it can.

I've used jQuery to accomplish some amazing stuff. jQuery works in every browser on every operating system, and jQuery is open source so you never need to worry about your stuff suddenly not working on something like, oh, I don't know, the iPhone?

HTML5 is also an open standard, and nearly every modern (up-to-date) browser supports at least part of it. You can start using it now!

How you speak to your audience is at least as important as what you say to it. You have a message to convey and a personality to convey it with. If you don't have those, you're in deep doo-doo.

What is your voice - or your company's voice? What words does it use? How does it convey what you want it to convey? Is it playful or serious? Is it familiar or formal? Does it speak to your customers like a friend, or like an advisor?

Making sure your site speaks in the correct voice means having a document ready so that whomever you hire to update the site understands how to do that. Luckily for you, I've done it before! Huzzah! Yay, me!

If you just need someone to write some instructions on how to do something, or an email to your customers about the virtues of staying in touch (and please remember that email fails miserably as a customer acquisition vehicle, but works wonders as a customer retention tool) or an article about doing things and making stuff, I'm your guy!