blog design (at blogconf)
DESCRIPTION
An introduction to web design aimed at bloggers. I run through my design process, take a quick look at design theory, review potential design apps and share plenty of links for further reading. This was presented at BlogConf on Saturday 4th October.TRANSCRIPT
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My name is Benjy, and I’m a freelance web designer
based in Swansea.
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I’ll be sharing my design process with you, along with lots of tips that
you can apply to your own blog.
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If you have a laptop, feel free to check out the links and ask any questions along the way.
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I’ve been working as a designer for about 10 years.
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About seven months ago, I returned to freelancing.
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Planning a design project
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1. Users 2. Content 3. Objectives
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I try to always frame each project by thinking about the
user experience (UX).
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What do they want?
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How can we help them to achieve their goals?
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How can we make the experience better?
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It’s good to have real data about your users.
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Watching people use our website
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Looking at Google Analytics
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Creating Questionnaires
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Credit: webaim.org/presentations/2012/html5future/overview3b
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Iterate.
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How does this apply to blog design?
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Top tip #1
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Release things often, get feedback and improve.
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What kind of blog do you run?
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What do your users want achieve?
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Primary Goal: Consume content
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Secondary Goals: Interact with you,
Subscribe to your articles
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Content
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Design is a bit like cooking, if you have good ingredients to start with,
you don’t have to work as hard.
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“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content
is not design, it's decoration.”
Credit: https://twitter.com/zeldman/statuses/804159148
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The Written Word
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Photography
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openculture.com/2013/12/british-library-puts-1000000-images-into-public-domain.html
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My Design Process
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Case Study: A Simple Banner Ad
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• Logo • Some copy • A Button or Call to Action • Imagery of a British
holiday destination
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Design inspiration
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Design Theory
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Top tip #2
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Learn as much as you can about typography.
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“95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical
to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in
other words: Typography.”
http://ia.net/blog/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period/
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The responsive web will be 99.9% typography.
http://www.welcomebrand.co.uk/thoughts/the-responsive-web-will-be-99-9-typography/
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What is typography?
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Typography is the practice of choosing fonts and laying them out in a way that helps the user understand the content.
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What’s the difference between a typeface and a font?
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A typeface is a family of fonts that contains a set of particular
styles and weights (e.g. Helvetica).
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A font is a single member of that family (e.g.
Helvetica Light Italic).
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Choosing a font
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Font size
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Measure is the length of single line of text, measured in characters.
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Line
Height
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A comfortable reading experience.
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Typography Resources
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• stylemanual.org
• practicaltypography.com
• webtypography.net
• fontfamily.io
• hellohappy.org/beautiful-web-type
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Colour
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green = go red = stop
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Red signifies passion or danger Green signifies nature
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Red can be a symbol of good fortune and joy in
Chinese cultures
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RGB and Hex
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Hex colour values look like this #FF0000
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Colour Pickers
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html-color-codes.info
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Layout
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Less is more
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Less is more
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Less is more
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Create Visual
Hierarchy
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Create Visual
Hierarchy
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White space
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Icons
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fontawesome.io
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Accessibility
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leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio
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Performance
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Downloading on mobile data plans can be slow
and expensive
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Don’t use too many fonts
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Games
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bezier.method.ac
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type.method.ac
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shape.method.ac
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color.method.ac
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Design Applications
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Top tip #3
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Get familiar with code via Chrome Developer Tools
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My favourite blogs
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Further reading
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Conclusion
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Release things often, get feedback
& improve.
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Learn as much as you can about
typography.
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Get familiar with code.