I had a meeting with a client a few weeks ago and I shocked myself completely.
The client requested that I design a Flash intro for his site. Before I could think twice the words had already come out of my mouth.
“Why do you want a Flash intro for your site?” I asked.
His response was that he wanted to outline his company’s offerings.
So I responded “Knowing that most of your viewers are on dial up connections, you’ll be cutting out over half of your possible clients by doing this. Doesn’t the site itself tell the viewers what you do? Wasn’t that the purpose of building the site in the first place?”
After much discussion I persuaded the client to stick with static HTML for this particular project.In a way I felt that I had turned my back on Flash. After pondering for several weeks now I know that I had made the right decision in not making the Flash intro for the client. I know I would have designed a great intro, but that’s not what I was hired to do. I was hired to help the client send his message out to potential customers and in the bigger picture help him to make more business for his company. If I had decided to add the Flash Intro considering his audience, we wouldn’t have fulfilled the purpose for the site.
Before you even start designing a site you need to take a look at what the project requires, the audience, and any other factors needed.
When I was in grade school I wrote a paper for my class assignment. After hours and hours of hard work I finally finished the paper and turned it in to the teacher. I remember Ms. Pennington saying to me “I can tell that you put a lot of work and effort into this paper, but what is the purpose for you writing this paper?”
Being a child of 12 I responded, “Because you assigned it to us?” She laughed and then told me, which has stuck through writing into design, every paper that you write needs to have a purpose. You need to have a reason for writing, or else you’re wasting your time.
Now, before I even move the mouse to start designing a site, I pick up my pen and paper and just as I would write a story. I go through all the steps that you would if you were going to write a paper for your 2nd period English professor.
Now I hope you can see that a lot more goes into a site than just the “pretty” graphics. I hope the next time you’ll do your duty as a designer and try your best to help make the Internet easy to use.
When you’re building your site, or your client’s site, ask yourself, “Is the site accomplishing its purpose?” If you say yes, then you’ve done your job as a designer.
Content comes first!
Now that you have your Purpose ready, it’s time to look at your content and your design.
Isn’t the point of web design to portray information for viewers? Each site has a purpose for being on the web (or should anyway). For entertainment, for business, for facts, for school, etc. The reason we design is to make information more accessible for the viewers of the Internet.
It’s our job to make the Internet easy to use.
If we are too worried about how the design looks without giving much thought to the content involved we are cutting out the whole reason we built the site.
To Share Information!
I notice myself designing sites, then looking back and them and saying, “um… that doesn’t quite look like I want it to”. After making a thousand versions of the same site I finally realized what I was doing wrong. I was paying more attention to the design of the site than the reason I had intentionally built the site – to share information. On every single design the content was difficult to read. The over all look of the site was nice, but I was neglecting the content.
There are thousands of sites out there that have great content, but lose viewers within the first 10 seconds because it’s difficult to read, the page is loading too slow, they can’t find the navigation or they can’t understand how it works because it’s not labeled, and tons of other “design” flaws. This has become much more common since the release of Flash. Flash Designers get enthralled in the site because they want to design something “cool”.
Macromedia is right along with them. Not in the “cool” factor exactly, but now that the bulk of their site is in Flash it takes FOREVER to load. I’m on a T1 here in the office and if a page doesn’t load pretty quick, then something is wrong and well, Macromedia it HORRIBLE now. It takes me like 50% longer to find something I’m looking for, and you can’t copy links, or right click and open in a new window. It’s very very very frustrating. What’s that old saying? Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke?
I’m so tired of finding sites that are 100% Flash with NO other purpose than to show a few neat little tricks. Or sites that take so long to load that you’ve already found the information in your second browser before the original site you were viewing has loaded. Or sites that are so bogged down with “crap” that you couldn’t find the good stuff. What gives?
Take a look at the most useful sites on the Internet:
CNN.com – Yahoo.com – FlashKit.com – MSN.com – Google.com
What do they all have in common? They way they portray their content. They also all have a purpose for existing.
So the next time you are working on your site take a look at your content and really consider if you are paying attention to content over design. Can you read the content easily? Does it load quickly enough? Flash is just a tool to help you be a better designer, so think about its use and how you can design more effectively.
Now I’ll get off my soapbox and hope that FlashNewz readers will design for accessibility of information rather than just for “pretty” graphics.
Send me your thoughts – john@flashnewz.com
Having created the outlines for FlashNewz and FLADownloads, John has become a strong voice in the Flash Community. His reviews and tutorials give great insight and knowledge to readers around the world. He has a keen eye for what’s hot and what’s not in the Flash world. He has also developed and continues to run his own flash portal as a side project to keep his mind on the Flash community
Being a key designer for advertising creative, he’s got style when it comes to grabbing readers attention. With a proven track record, there isn’t much this guy can’t handle.
