We wear a lot of hats! Besides being fashionable, we also provide a wide range of services to our clients, whether they be independent businesses or other agencies outsourcing projects.
It's hard to have this conversation without geeking out (Trevor is the worst offender here), so we have put together a handy guide to our technobabble. You may want to read that first.
Maybe you've wondered, maybe you haven't, but there is a difference between graphic and web design. While each disciple is primarily concerned with using visual elements to evoke a desired response, web design has a smaller patch of dirt out of which to grow its garden. In other words, where graphic design is limited only by the bounds of a designer's imagination and a client's budget, web design is confined within a system of limitations.
The first limitation is browser technology. To ensure that a design looks as good in Internet Explorer 6 for PC as it does in Google Chrome for Macintosh, designs conform to browser standards. Practiced web designers know these standards and ensure their designs will both be attainable with CSS, load quickly and not be so complex that they require the whole web site to be made of images that take longer to load.
Everyone experiences the internet differently and to be sure a site is friendly to everyone, normative rules demand certain elements (such as navigation) appear in a limited number of locations – across the top and down the left, for example. In web design, visual devices are used to help people get from Page A to Page B.
User time committed to comprehending a visual message likely is the biggest difference in creating designs for print and web sites. A web user spends less than 10 seconds with a page they see before moving on to a different web page or site, which doesn't leave much time for cognitive message processing. The most effective web site designers know how work within limitations to instantly engage users, direct them through a site and give them a reason to return.