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Trees Greenville New Site Design
Here is a project that we are about to launch for Trees of Greenville. They wanted a easy way to update and maintian their site so we designed them a custom WordPress web site. Take a look TreesGreenville
Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
Launch of New Site for Trees Greenville
Monday, April 18th, 2011New Web Designs for Customers | Web Design Greenville SC
Friday, March 4th, 2011Here are some new designs that we have been working on for our clients:
Teludyne Tech – you can check out their current web site at www.teludynetech.com
New Web Design for Teludyne Tech by Mojoe.net
Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church web site design by Mojoe.net - you can check out their current web site at www.olrgreenville.net
Web Design for OLR Catholic Church by Mojoe.net
Trees Greenville- you can check out their current web site at www.treesgreenville.org
New Web Site Design for Trees Greenville by Mojoe.net
Here is an initial design for PHS (Preferred Health Services); you can check out the final design at www.preferredhealthservices.org
Initial web design for Preferred Health Services by Mojoe.net
Are Mood Boards necessary for Web Design?
Sunday, November 7th, 2010When I first begin designing web site’s over 10 year ago; I did not know what a mood board was or that it would become an essential tool in the design and development of a web site.
Recently, I had a potential customer come to me with a design from another development company. They had been through quite a number of revisions. I was asked to review the revisions and determine what was wrong with the design of the site. There were several issues with the web site; the logo was not very appealing and it did not establish the web site or the company with a strong brand. The font size was extremely small for the main text as well as for the main H1 tags. The main image or hero image on the main page had no reference at all to what services the company actually preformed. The overall colors of the site were not very complimentary to each corresponding color, nor were the hyper-link colors very noticeable as to what was a link and what was not a link.
This could have happened for several reasons; one the client was not very forthcoming with ideas and suggestions, the communications between designer and client was mis-understood, or the client conveyed his/her idea but the designer did not do enough research to produce what the client wanted.
So why use a mood board well the answer is clearly above; the design team above had been through 9 revisions before I reviewed one of the latest design attempts. It is my firm believe that if the design team above had used a mood board initially then they most likely would not have gone through 9 revisions.
So your next question must surely be, “What is a Mood Board?” Well, I am about to let you know. A mood board is a pre-comprised board of images, colors, fonts, and a layout style that you are proposing to your client. There are several industries that use mood boards; such as, fashion designer, landscapers and interior designers. You want to inspire your client by the mood boards that you present to them and not frustrate them in this process. This part of designing a web site can be one of the most frustrating and time intensive parts of developing a web site. So take your time and listen to your client spend time asking questions, about their brand, colors, fonts, and style that they are trying to achieve.
I did not originally create this idea; I got this information from Web Designers Depot. Here are some useful links from Web Designers Depot
Why Mood Boards Matter
Massive Compilation of Designer Tools
Case Study on Virgin Atlantic Airways
Cascading Style Sheets | Web Design Greenville SC
Sunday, October 24th, 2010The first time I designed a site about 10 years ago I used tables to do my layout and to construct the web pages of the site. Which for the time it was the latest technology for designing web sites, by putting tables within tables which is called nesting tables but proved to cause the web site to load slowly. This also caused the visitors to see the site differently in different browsers, so if you viewed the site in Internet Explorer it would look a certain way and if you viewed in another it would look completely different. Well, now the only way you should layout a site is using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
Why you ask? Well, I am going to let you know. The first and most important thing about CSS is that it is by far more compliant when developing for multiple browsers; you can control not only the web layout that your viewers see in their browser but you can control how a web page is printed, how it is seen in a mobile device, or even how it will be seen on TV. CSS allows you to control so many aspects of your web site; you can control link color, font types, font sizes, font color, page background color, positioning of columns and positioning of content. These are just a few of the many ways you can control your web page and other web related content.
If you are a beginner and want to know where to start I am going to provide some links below. My recommendation is that you start by just controlling simple content on your site like fonts, link color, and text. Learn the basics first what can you control and what you cannot control, what will be seen in browsers correctly and what will not. IE (Internet Explorer is notorious for CSS not working correctly and requiring special CSS just for IE to show the web site in the same manner as the other browsers. W3C is a great place to learn the basics and do some tutorials that will teach you the basics as well as more advanced CSS techniques.
One important piece of advice that I can give when designing a web site for a client, customer, or even for yourself is to study as much as possible and do as many tutorials as you can. Here is a list of links that I have used to teach myself as well as links that I referrer back to when designing a site for a client. However, always keep in mind what browsers your site will need to work in; such as, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer and as you become more proficient you will need to decide what level of CSS you are going to do use and whom your audience is going to be.
Recommended Links
Web Designer Depot CSS
CSS Tricks CSS
Layout with CSS
CSS for Beginners
Design Firms | Web Design Greenville SC
Friday, August 13th, 2010We have recently just signed up for design firms so we could be added to their directory of web desingers. Check out our link Mojoe.net Profile on DesignFirms. Let us know what you think about the site Design Firms
Web Site Design and Photography
Thursday, July 29th, 2010In designing a site I always ask for as many photos as I can from a client. The more images you have for a site the more visually appealing the site can become; but if a client does not have any images then we go to a photographer to take pictures for the customer or more commonly we go to a stock photography site. The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” is very true when it comes to web design.
When developing a piece of marketing whether it is a brochure, billboard, flyer, or even a web site. Society reads on an 8th grade level, which lets us know how visually-based our society has become. So when designing a web site the more pictures you can use the more you’ll be able to draw in your visitors.
When developing a web site; I always start out with a two hour meeting where we go through a creative strategy process where we ask the client a great deal of probing questions; such as, what colors do you like, what type of feel are you going for on your website, are you selling a product, and so on. (More to come on Creative Strategy in my next article) Once I have gathered this information I then go on and construct a light-box of images whether the images are from the client, a photographer, stock photography web site or a combination of the aforementioned sources.
So when you begin developing a web site for a client it is very helpful to start out by presenting them with a light-box of images. This is a great way to spawn ideas for the development of the site as well as get additional direction from the client. This allows you to develop a visual story for the client and will help visually layout the site with the images you have chosen. For you newbie’s out there I am sure you are wondering by now what is a light-box? Well, here is the official definition: “A folder used on stock photography site to allow a user to organize digital photos.”
When picking photos for a light-box there are several great stock photography sites out there; such as, www.istockphoto.com, www.bigstockphoto.com, www.shutterstock.com, www.rubberball.com, www.jupiterimages.com. I personally use www.istockphoto.com because the image quality is superior and the price is very reasonable when purchasing photos. Istockphoto.com also has a built in light-box which you can create for a specific client and then send the client a link to that light-box so they can review the images that you have chosen.
Here is an example of one of the light-boxes that I created for a client. Click Here
When purchasing photos make sure to keep a copy of all photos not only for the client that you have purchased them for but also to keep a copy for yourself. I have done this for the last 10 years and I have built up quite a collection of photos for my own library of images. I use these photos as my go too photos for clients before I purchase any additional.
Once the client has chosen the images that he/she wishes to use for construction of their web site I begin designing a Mood Board for their website. “What is a Mood Board you ask?” Well here is a link to the article that gave me the insight on Mood Boards.
Best of Luck in designing and developing your own web sites, please feel free to email me at dwerne@mojoe.net for any questions or comments in regard to this article.
What’s The Difference? | Web Design Greenville SC
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010Recently we had a potential client ask us for a quote on a web site for his business; we have course prepared the quote and spent several hours with our potential client going through our creative questions and we had several meetings as well.
Well, you know how it goes. The customer went and got pricing from other web developers and web designers. Of course all of the quotes that came back at a lower cost than ours. So the customer ask, the Million Dollar Question, “What’s the Difference?”
So I explained to the customer that not all web developers / web designers are created equal nor do they provide an apple to apple comparison and most likely that most of other developers that he received quotes from left quite few things out in their proposals. So the customer asked if I would write a list of all the questions that he could then asked the other developers to see if we were comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges. After about 2 weeks of waiting I finally received a call back from the client and some of the developers had answered all of the questions. Not to my surprise, all of their quotes had gone up considerably and we ended up being the more reasonably priced.
Due to this client interaction we have developed a new page for our web site called Questions where we answer all of the questions that we proposed to the other web developers / designers. We have made this page so that other potential clients whom probably have some of these same questions can get answers straight from our web site.
“Stuff We’re Diggin’ ”
2. DaFont
3. Web Page Design for Designers Resources
Current Projects Web Design Projects
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010Mojoe.net is currently working on the following sites; www.bridgeyourlove.com, www.greerpediatricdentalcare.com, www.championstudiosonline.com, and www.teludynetech.com.
We will be posting more information on the blog on, HOW TO DO WEB DESIGN. We will be linking to local companies we like in our area which is Greenville South Carolina, and Alanta Georgia.
One topic that we have been asked to cover is CMS which stands for Content Mangement Systems. There are a number of CMS’s out there and they all range from the very good to the not so very good. We will go in depth in our next post and highlight some CMS’s that we like and that we use. I will also let you know which ones we passed on becuase they where either complicated or too costly.
Launch of New Web Sites | Web Design Greenville SC
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009Mojoe.net has been incredibly busy lately. We’ve launched the following sites:
These sites utilize all of our skill sets from web site design, logo design, database development, programming, as well as search engine optimization and search engine registration. Each one of these web sites have been custom designed for our clients and is developed with the customer’s goals.
We’re now in the process of creating the majority of our sites in DNN, and we eagerly await the release of DNN 5. That being said we’ve converted some of our previous sites into DNN skins.
We’re also converting JB Lacher and Elmo Rietschle.
Design and Function | Web Design Greenville SC
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009We have been developing web sites for over ten years, and we feel that the design and function of a web site is one of the most important aspects. To do this you need the right web designer.
There are two types of web designers, the designer that is truly an artistic designer, then you have the designer that is a programmer. I think that every artistic designer longs to be a programmer and every programmer longs to be an artistic designer. I believe that being a developer with both skills sets makes you the best web designer you can be for your clients. You can have a very functional web site that looks horrible with bright neon colors, blurred pictures, improper text, and distorted layout. On the other hand you can have a beautifully designed web site that has bad function; such as, no hyper-links, forms that don;t work, no deep-links, no alt tags, no title tags, and no SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SER ( Search Engine Registration).
When we develop a web site, we strive to make sure it has the best of both worlds, both design and function. We create each web site as a one of a kind web site. We don’t use templates … ever!
We blend design and function by using certain resources to help deliver the perfect web site for you the client. Here is part of our process for providing you the perfect web site. We design your site initially in Adobe Photoshop, once the design is completed we will use Adobe Dreamweaver for back-end coding, we also will create a custom CSS page that will control the look and feel of your site. Then we might use Adobe Flash to add some animation to the navigation, animate a logo or we will add a animated intro. Once this part is concluded we will make sure that all pages are linked and that all the code is validated. We then check your site in all browsers to make sure that the site will function properly so we can eliminate errors. One final thing that we do is make customer error pages that will help trap visiting customers in a page that will allow them to navigate to another page if they have an error.
We finish up by doing the SEO and SER, which alot of web site designers forget to include. As Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams” is famously told, “if you build it they will come.” Well, when building a web site if you don’t do SEO or SER your site, then no one will come.
That’s all for now. We’ll be back soon with more thoughts on Web design. And now for the good stuff!
Stuff We’re Diggin’:
Color Scheme Designer
Browers Shots
Browser Compatability
