Let's Build: A Consultancy Website - Part 9

Part 9 continues on with the design of the home page. I tackle a bunch of design decisions based on the content Alyssa has provided me.

Trial and Error

Much of this video is me going back and forth and back again deciding on a style to use on the home page. My goal is to remain consistent but to not be so predictable as a lot of sites are out there. You know, the ones that use theme builders in the background to create the same layouts we are all used to?

For brevity, A large chunk of this video is sped up. I think the design process for the designer is very exciting but bringing real ideas to life takes time. Rather than make you, my favorite watcher/reader sit through that I went ahead and sped things up a bit.

What's to come

The next part will hopefully round out the first comp for the home page of the consultancy website. Ultimately you will want to present any client options. That said, in a future part of the series you will see a new concept all together that ends up being the route we roll with!

Presenting designs and considerations for other designers

When presenting a design there are a few dos and don'ts I have learned over the years. These have filtered out the good from the bad clients and also helped optimize my own process when collaborating with others.

Dos

• Do present 1 - 3 different options and explore more than just options with different fonts and colors. A style guide is helpful here to show the client what "could be" rather than a high fidelity design.
• Do design a homepage and one interior page. This should be enough to capture the look and feel for most basic websites. Your mileage may vary here depending on the site of the site/client/ budget and more.
• Do meet with the client in real-time when presenting new material.
  
• Keep technical restrictions in mind at all times. When it comes to web load times are crucial to being the most optimized they can be. This is all especially true when loading a website on a device.

Don'ts

• Don't send a design offline hoping your client will understand every decision you made. They will judge the book by its cover here. The client will always choose your least favorite option. Why this is, I have no idea!
• Don't say "What do you think?" without first stating what it is you've done.
• Don't give the client any art files so they can put their own take on the design. The huge red flag here if this happens!

The Series so Far

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8