Design that Speaks:
Communicating Messages through Innovative Graphic Design
Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Wendy Danko brings a wealth of experience to the graphic design field. Her creative impact has reached various industries, showcasing her versatility. Wendy's adeptness shines in facilitating successful business-to-business interactions, where her skill set encompasses websites, brochures, logos, corporate IDs, signage, and convention booths. Furthermore, her proficiency extends to engaging with business-to-consumer dynamics. Her artistic touch enhances a range of elements, including websites, packaging, menus, point-of-purchase displays, signage, banners, invitations, event booths, and an array of other imaginative projects.
Graphic Designed Portfolio
Explore more design work by Wendy Danko and Jennifer Nelson in Wearable Arts!
Does Website Design Matter?
Yes, it does. Here’s Why; First Impressions Matter.
Everything, in life, is judged in the first 3 to 5 seconds including your website. Dressing for success includes your website's appearance, load speed, navigation, with very limited pop-ups, and a clean look.
However, before we get too far ahead of our selves, let's consider when website design starts. Web design is more than pretty pictures, logos, and copy. It is about user experiences or UX. If the user has a good experience, they will return for more of that experience. If they have a terrible experience, they will go to your competitor.
Forget the Flash, pop-ups, and fancy animation. Creating a good user experience starts at the wireframe stage.
A wireframe will help work through the hierarchy of your website. A wireframe is the websites’ “blueprint.” At this stage, you are doing quick layouts to figure out how you would like your customers to flow through your site. Boxes will represent the photos, copy, and artwork including branding. Things will change quickly. There will be many notes to take and ideas to share to get the user experience on the right track. The most cost-efficient way to plan a website is wireframe.
A wireframe will help work through the hierarchy of your website. A wireframe is the website's "blueprint." At this stage, you are doing quick layouts to figure out how you would like your customers to flow through your site. Boxes will represent the photos, copy, and artwork, including branding. Things will change quickly. There will be many notes to take and ideas to share to get the user experience on the right track. The most cost-efficient way to plan a website is a wireframe.
User Experience Designers or UX Designers are the professionals that do this for a living. They can craft a user experience that will delight your customers. Their tools are excellent. The UX Designer will layout a simple design using boxes to represent photos, artwork, copy, text, headers, footers along any other elements needed. Then, the UX Designer will link every page or object that needs linking. This traffic flow is critical for the end-user, your potential clients.
The UX Designer will provide a mock-up of the wireframe to work out all the "kinks." Then, after reviewing the wireframe with their client, there may be many revisions to get a tight layout.
An article from UXPlanet.org has a list of nine best tools for wireframing. You may know a few of them if you are a graphic designer, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Indesign.
Others are Fluid UI, FlairBuilder, and Mockplus. One not found on their list is Adobe Xd. Xd is Adobe's answer to the wireframe tool.
UXPlanet.org is all about, yep, you guessed it. UX design.
This quote from the Interaction Design Foundation reveals a little more about UX design and the experienced designer.
“…UX designers don’t just focus on creating products that are usable; we concentrate on other aspects of the user experience, such as pleasure, efficiency, and fun, too.”
If you're interested in taking classes, the Interaction Design Foundation offers them.
Now that you know web design starts at the wireframe stage, make sure you start your plan at the beginning. Get it right with the first impression. Alternatively, if you have a website already, maybe a wireframe layout is an excellent way to map out a better user experience. If this is beyond your capabilities, hire a professional to do your project. It will be worth the time, effort, and money to provide a better user experience.
Now make a great first impression!
Size does matter | Website Design vs Print Design
There is a difference between web design and print design. A great designer should know the difference and should be thinking about both the web and print while working on a project. I can't count how many times a file from a website is sent to me while working on a print project. These web files do not work in print. Anything pulled from a website is a low-resolution file. Web files are a resolution of 72. Print files need a resolution of 300. Sometimes I have received files where resolution has been added to an original to make it 300; please do not do this; it does not work for print.
An excellent designer should know the difference between the two formats and keep it in mind when designing artwork. Working in high resolution is a good rule to follow at the beginning of the project. This way, when asked to reduce the size for use on a website, the file can be reduced by copying and saving it to the correct file size then you still have the high-resolution file for the printing press.
Size does matter. It is always a good idea to have access to both high and low-resolution data. Avoid paying for artwork twice and always have access to the high-resolution file.
Make sure you hire a designer who understands web design and print design differences.
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