NTice Blog » Design

Aesthetics and Functionality

Nathan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:52:52 +0000

When given a choice I prefer to work on functional issues instead of aesthetic ones. I trained for a few years to be an architect and learned quite a bit about aesthetics and design. I also learned enough to know I would make a much better engineer than an artist. Developing functionality in software and web design is often much more enjoyable to me than making aesthetic choices because you know when you built it right, it works. Often when I am working on a project I’ll field questions from my clients about Aesthetic choices. Why did you choose this color or place the ad in that place on my website? These questions have no real answer as the old adage goes beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Now there are some basic design principles that every designer should apply but once you get beyond that your design will either be approved or shot down strickly based on your clients opinion of what looks good to them. After all it is their business, product, service, etc and you are building their public face on the internet. The best advice I can give is design before you build and once the design is approved make sure your clients know changes can be expensive.

JStraitDesigns.com Website Launched

Nathan — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:26:22 +0000

Recently we worked with Jim Strait on a new website for his unique artistic creations. The website was built to showcase his tables, lamps, paintings, and accessories. JStraitDesigns.com is a great example of a permenant gallery for an artists work. We are planning on adding new content as it is created but as you could see on the site these complex pieces take a considerable amount of time to build. If you are interested in some unique art please visit the site and let Jim know what you think of his work and the new website.

Better Animals Show Series Website

Nathan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:27:20 +0000

I work alot with a graphic design company in St. Louis and they are great. They send me new and interesting projects quite often and here is a great example. The website BetterAnimalsShowSeries.com is a site we built about a year ago and have been gradually adding too since then. This site was built for Land O’ Lakes and has everything we could budget into it. The site has podcasts, great custom administration tools, databases of user and contest winners, user generated content, and great advertising etc. This project was so well done the client wanted to convert many of their other sites to a similar format or just fold them into this site.