Sarah Lynn Design | Business Web and Print Design » Design Resources

A Splash of Summer Color

slynndesign — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:58:14 +0000

Summer is almost here! To put you in a warmer, more colorful mood, I thought sharing some summer color palettes, photography & illustrations would help inspire brighter days! Whether your a designer, painter, photographer or metal smith you need some sort of inspiration to help you create stunning and innovative works of art this Summer.

Summer Color Palettes

Sunny Summer Photography

Back door bokeh by Richard0

Lake Powell by Wolfgang Staudt

Moth Caterpillar by Lukjonis

Orange Splash x2 by John Steven Fernandez

Chicory Flower by aussiegall

Old Summer Fun by Supagroova

Dunes by CharlotteSpeaks

Ice Cube in Tea by kevindooley

57 flavors of summer by Robert S. Donovan

Baby g by jonny2love

Illustrative Summer Colors

Russian Summer by Maria Khokhlova

See.Saw by L Filipe dos Santos | Illustration

Turn on the Bright Senses by Archan Nair | Illustration

White Spaces by Archan Nair | Illustration

Smells of Summer by Masha Levene | Painting

Summer by Nichlas Boysen | Illustration

Summer by Luis Afonso | Painting

The Puti Trees by Nod Young | Illustration

Places for Inspiration

Related Tid Bits

Articles on Sarah Lynn Design for Inspiration

Have some Summer inspiration to share? Feel free to drop links to anything bright, vibrant & summery that might inspire something great!

Online Shopping Usability: The Role of Color

slynndesign — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:29:30 +0000

Give your customers what they expect, when it comes to making their way around your website. With so many online shopping options, customers don’t have to put up with confusing navigation or unintuitive shopping carts. Make sure you’re guiding your customer in the right direction and not causing them to leave your site.

“What does color have to do with it? Everything.”

Some of the most successful retailers use color to help guide their customers through their site. Where do you want your customer to look when they are ready to checkout? Make sure they are looking in the right place by adding color in the correct places. Using colored buttons and contrasting colors in your website’s navigation can dramatically help your user’s customer experience. The same way aisle signs and section banners in a retail store guide customers.

Using Color to Guide Your Customers

Let’s take a look at some examples of how color is used by some of the most successful online retailers on the market today.

Amazon Usability & Color

Amazon, known for their incredibly smart and user friendly shopping experience, uses different colors to gauge the importance of their buttons. As you can see both add to cart buttons are designed to appear brighter and more saturated in color than the add to wish list and baby registry buttons right below. Also notice the blue coloring behind this extremely important panel of options. Not only do the buttons guide the eye in this area because of their contrasting colors, but the blue background helps to break-up the white space and pull the customer’s eye to the right as well.

You’ll also notice in the upper left-hand corner, shop all departments is given a bright orange color. When on any other page besides their homepage, the navigation collapses to make way for a more narrowed list of search results, based on the section of the store you’ve chosen. Amazon wants to make sure their customers are aware that their main shopping categories are still available and easily found when collapsed.

Cafe Press Usability & Color

Cafe Press does an excellent job utilizing color where they want their customers to take action. With a minimalist design style, the other, less important links are presented in subdued colors allowing for less confusion and overwhelming feelings from visitors.

Buy.com Usability & Color

Buy.com follows suit with Cafe Press and allows their products to stand out on their own with a minimalist style of design. Again, green is used for the most important elements on the page. If you look at the print this page, email a friend and add to wishlist buttons, they are a lighter shade of blue and less saturated than the add to cart button above. Usability design is extremely important when it comes to getting a customer to checkout. Your customer should have no problem finding their shopping cart and adding an item to it.

“If the checkout buttons are not visible to the shoppers or they do not stand out in some way from the rest of the page, you will have a difficult time converting many of your shoppers to buyers.”

-eCommerce Optimization

L.L. Bean Signature Usability & Color

The L.L. Bean Signature site has an excellent overall design. They use the color orange to showcase when their customer’s should make an action. In the examples above, It is important to keep the color consistent throughout the site as customers will eventually become accustomed to orange and what the color is associated with.

The North Face Usability & Color

Navigating through the North Face website is like riding a bike with training wheels. There are always three ways to know what page you’re on, made apparent by the color red, large fonts and the use of effective bulleting and overly large bread crumbs. Similar to the other examples, only one color is used to represent the shopping cart related actions.

Eddie Bauer Usability Design

Eddie Bauer (above) and First Ascent (below) use color to highlight the background of the active page the user is on. Eddie Bauer also is using color to highlight the active page in yellow. The more consistent you can be with your color choices, the easier it will be for your customer to shop!

First Ascent Usability & Color

Usability Takeaways

Always give your customers a clear indication of where they are on your website. Color is a great way to do this.

Make sure there is some differentiation between common buttons and buttons that have specific actions (IE. shopping cart functions).

Choose one color to use to assist in guiding your customer. This way they know what to expect.

Use more than one option to show your customer where they are (IE. breadcrumbs, color highlighting and large title headers)

Design Usability Resources

The #1 Secret to Design Success

slynndesign — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:16:42 +0000

There is only one key ingredient in any design that will hold it together, make it rise and make it deliver what it is supposed to. Whether the design is for the web, a book cover or a simple business card, there is one piece to the puzzle that must be present for the design to be successful. What is it you ask?

When reading through the many design blogs and books out there today, you’ll find showcases of beautiful designs, tutorials on how to make or use a specific design program, what certain colors mean and where they should be used and many more things. But no matter how much you learn, there is still only one element that truly matters. Designers must ask themselves one question:

Is the design appropriate for the target customer?

The website or brochure may be designed with the most stunning colors, stylish fonts, and newest trends. But this doesn’t mean it’s great design or appropriate for your viewers. There are certain trends that are age, industry and location appropriate. Simply because you are utilizing them doesn’t mean the design will be successful.

What to Consider When Designing for a Specific Target Market

How will the product or service improve the customer’s life?

Whether you’re selling food, a new tie or a trip to Europe you have to showcase the reasons to why the customer would want any of these items. You’re not going to reach the customer by relying on a slick navigation, pretty pictures and an easy to use shopping cart. There needs to be a clear reason why they need or will benefit from the product or service. Design is a great way to guide the customer through the reasons why, in a particular order or way.

Product Example

Photo by Aaron Alexander

Say for example your selling a new tie. Why would someone want to purchase that specific tie over another? Maybe you’re showing imagery of a man wearing the tie on his wedding day. So what? That man looks great in that tie, but so does every other man that happens to be photographed with a fancy tie. What makes this tie any better?

Maybe the tie is made of special material that is meant to feel comfortable and breathable during high-stress occasions like a wedding. A good way to connect with the customer through the design knowing this detail is by increasing the size of the text and overlay it onto the photograph. Not only will the “pretty” photograph pull your customer’s attention into the page, but the large text with the tie’s fabric benefits will give the customer a reason to buy that tie over another. Highlighting specific details can really improve a designs overall success rate. And yes, it can be as simple as pulling out a product detail that already exists.

The key with products are to avoid leaving beneficial details to waste. Bring out the little details, especially when you’re selling something as common as a tie. Once your able to focus in on the benefits, use colors and other design elements to bring the viewers eye even more towards these little details.

Service Example

Photo by Alberto P Veiga

In this example, let’s say a travel company’s website is selling a trip to Europe. The client wants to push the ultimate travel package versus the basic travel package. How will the design help sell more ultimate packages for this client? A solution for this scenario could be to compare each package side-by-side without price involved, graphically. Highlight the ultimate package and the details that would make that choice better than the others. Show a video/written testimonial of a customer who has chosen this package in the past and why they liked it. Customer reviews are proven to be more beneficial and trusted by viewers than company recommendations alone.

Customer Review Focus

Customer reviews are becoming more and more common to online businesses. As a business owner, you should be aware of Google’s SideWiki. It allows customers to write their own reviews on any website and publish it. When another customer visits the website with a SideWiki, they can then see those reviews made by other visitors on the SideWiki. The power is in the customer’s hands. This technology may not be utilized by very many customers today, but it is important to be on the lookout for similar releases & technologies that will give customers the upper-hand on your websites. The last thing you want is a customer complaint shown to all your potential customers.

Checkout this useful article reviewing the SideWiki:

Google’s SideWiki Shifts Power To Consumers –Away From Corporate Websites

The target market in this travel example is likely a customer that has a mid to high income level and could afford a premium travel package. If the targeted customer was of a lower income bracket, the design would be entirely different. Maybe the company would be trying to sell travel packages during a non-peak season to Europe. You might highlight the discounted price with a sale burst or a bolded tag-line saying “Now you can visit Europe too, for half the price.” Instead of comparing special vacation packages, you are emphasizing with the design the urgency of traveling now and the benefit of saving money and being able to afford a trip.

The key is to pull out the details that are most important to highlight within the design. This takes both efforts of the designer and the business owner/project manager.

Tip for Designers: Most clients aren’t going to offer up all the details you need to know to target their specific market. Chances are you’re going to have to dig deep and ask! Your clients are the experts of their market. Is the business a start-up? Maybe you can do some research as well to help your client pull out essential details they might be missing. Show them you want the design to help improve their business.

Tip for Business Owners: To end up with a successful design for whatever you happen to be selling or showcasing, it is important to open up communication as much as possible with your designer. Make sure they know your end goals and your target market. Also make sure to give them the details you want to highlight or what is most important about your promoted products and/or services. Not sure what else to prepare? Read ” What to Prepare Before Hiring a Web Designer“.

Share your Expertise…

Designers: In what ways have you used design to successfully target a specific market?

Business Owners: How has design help to improve your business? What reports or analysis have you put in place to track the success of the design on your website? (if applicable)

Key Elements for a Successful Website Design

slynndesign — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:50:32 +0000

As a business owner, you want your website to tell your story correctly and efficiently. Here are a few key elements you should know when designing a website for your company.

1 | Searchable

Search Engine Optimization is very important for any website. Make sure your designer is knowledgeable on SEO topics and how to lead potential customers to your website. Make sure the site isn’t all imagery and the text on the site contains keywords you think your customers will search for to find you. The more you use those keywords the better! When using images, make sure they contain alt tags with those important keyword in them as much as possible. These help spiders (search engines) find your site. Using flash? Make sure and use it in a minimal amount. Spiders (at this point in time) cannot crawl flash areas. Keep this in mind when working with a designer.

SEO References & Articles

55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love

10 Fundamental Tips to Improve your SEO

2 | Easy to read

Make sure your site is readable, not everyone has 20/20 vision or the knowledge to increase their font sizes, especially if the text is in an image. San-serif fonts such as Helvetica/Verdana/Arial are preferable for body text. They are also great because they are easier to read at smaller sizes. Keep in mind text is also easier to read when you use dark type on a light background. Try and stay away from white text on black, especially when you have a large amount of body copy.

4 | Unique

“Simply because a style of design works for another company, doesn’t mean it will be appropriate for your business.”

A high-tech, glossed over approach could be appropriate for a computer company or perhaps a type of manufacturing business, but not so much for a family friendly one whose focus is on customer service. You want your company to be portrayed in it’s own unique way. Every business is different, even though their might be hundreds of business that sell the same products or services. How do you want your customers to feel when they see your website? Emotion is a big part of a company’s reputation. A great way to start building on it is your website, logo and other designs your customers see even before they meet you. Make sure you know who and what your company is all about before working with a designer. Establish your values and goals as a business.

5 | Logical Navigation Make sure your website uses consistent navigation that stays in the same location no matter what page you visit on your website. Your web team/designer shouldtest your website with a group of different users in your target audience. Do they know where to look to find the information they are looking for? People are unpredictable and all think differently. To make your navigation as successful as possible, ask your test users similar questions to those below while walking them through a mock-up of your site (try paper mock-ups first before coding!)

1-Where would you click to find the contact information of this company?

2-Can you get through all the pages within the site without clicking the back button on your browser?

3-Do you know what page your on at all times? (Does each page have logical titles?)

Successful Navigation Resources

Good Website Navigation: Reaching the Information Instantly

The Do’s & Don’ts of Website Navigation Usability

6 | Style Guides When starting a new website design, you want to make sure you define your site’s theme and stick with it. A theme includes, but is not limited to: fonts, colors, sizes, layouts, etc. A great way to keep all of these elements the same across each page is to have what is called a style guide. It is very beneficial to have your designer create you a style guide when handing over the final set of files. This way, if you need to make updates or hire someone else to upkeep the website, they know exactly which fonts, colors and any other design guidelines to follow. The more consistency you have with these key elements, the more each page will carry your business identity. This should be one of your main goals of a successful website design.

7 | Loading Times

Flash can be a great asset to a website’s appearance. But it can also turn customers/viewers away in a matter of minutes. I absolutely hate waiting for flash websites to load. I want to see the content I was looking for as fast as possible. That is what the internet is for! Having to wait for a site to load gives me a similar feeling to trying to find a book in a library and it’s misplaced or unavailable. It’s just frustrating! Another issue to keep an eye on is image optimization. Your designer should be aware of this and use optimization for web options when they export your graphics. The larger your graphics files are, the slower your website will load. Design, in this area, has the chance to turn your customers away. Test on multiple computers and internet speeds when possible. Make sure your site runs smoothly and quickly, even with spiffy graphics!

Optimization Resource

Website Optimization: 13 Simple Steps

8| Know your Audience & Let it Show

“Maybe your selling tights on your apparel website, perhaps your target audience enjoys dancing and you didn’t think to consider it when designing. Don’t leave anything characteristic out!”

When designing a website, it is important to first define your target customer and their likes and dislikes. Detirmine who would use your services and what a typical customer would act like or prefer when it comes to your website design. Here are a few questions to answer about your target audience:

1-Age (This will help you define sizing of text, style of graphics, and type of language used in the copy of your new website.
2-Location (This can assist you with a color scheme and a style of graphics depending on the part of town the business is located in etc.
3-Likes & Dislikes (Speak with your customers, ask them about themselves, try surveying them to find out what types of activities they enjoy. These can help define many characteristics of your website’s design as well.)

9 | Easy to Maintain

One of the more common requests I receive from my clients is to create a website that they can easily maintain and update. This can be a challenge for many solo designers as this is when a CMS could come in handy and usually this takes a good developer/programmer by your side to do the dirty work. A CMS allows you and your client to easily update and maintain their website once it is live. Keeping fresh content on your website is another great way to increase your site’s SEO as well. If your client has a smaller budget, there are many free CMS options out there that allow for complete web design customization. Take a peek at these:

Hope you enjoyed these website design tips! Reminder, keep an eye out for a guide on how to create a style-guide for your website!

Have anything to add? I want to hear what you have to say. Feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers!

How AIGA Helps Businesses & Designers

slynndesign — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:42:56 +0000

AIGA (The American Institute of Graphic Arts) has been an important part of my design career thus far. Not only is AIGA an important organization in the design world, but they also bring businesses and designers together. They educate businesses on the importance of design. Here are a few ways in which they help businesses and designers…

3 Ways AIGA Helps Businesses

1 | Networking

When I took part in one of AIGA’s “So…”Emerging Designers Workshops, I realized that AIGA is an important part of the community, not just the design community. Our workshop took place at Open Book in Minneapolis, MN. During the workshop we learned about letterpress and book binding and utilized Open Book’s fantastic facility. Not only was this a great opportunity for those attending, but for their business as well. Open Book offers many classes, studio space rental, and a different environment to be inspired in. As far as networking, they were able to discuss one-on-one with us, potential customers, about what they have to offer simply by lending us their space and teaching small workshops.

2 | Business Promotion

Quantum Graphics | Printing Sponsor | Photo by Mike Habermann

AIGA is not only an organization solely focused on design. They also promote related businesses in their creative endeavors. AIGA is always looking for sponsors to take part in a wide array of events. Quantum Graphics sponsored the Design Show 2009 and did a fabulous printing job. But not all sponsors have connections in the design market. Pabst Blue Ribbon was another sponsor for the show and yes, they were a hit in case you were wondering!

Interested in being a sponsor for AIGA?

3 | Resources

AIGA’s website is a great place for businesses to learn about design. Especially those of you that haven’t worked with a designer before. I thought I would share a few bits of information from their business section:

What will my business gain with effective design? | What every business needs
Case Studies & Articles on Business & Design

3 Ways AIGA Helps Designers

1 | Networking

AIGA Design Show 2009 | Photo by Mike Habermann

Getting yourself out into the design and business community can be a challenge at times. With such a saturated field, we must make networking a top priority! AIGA is the organization to join if your looking to network. For starters, post your work on their website. If your a recent grad or simply new to the design world, take part in their well known Portfolio One-on-One Event. I attended this in 2008 and it made all the difference in the level of design I was putting out. Being a part of the event also gave me many great contacts through the different activities AIGA had scheduled for us. The first day opened my eyes to the type of studio I would like to work in, as they take you on a few studio tours. I toured Catalyst Studios, p and h (now Partners & Hunt), and Graphiculture in Minneapolis, MN. During the second day, I showed my book around to about 4 or 5 designers/art directors/creative directors/owners. It was very beneficial to practice my presenation skills, process and simply talking about my work and design concepts. One of the hardest aspects of the design business is explaining your design concepts to non-designers. Basically the vast majority of your clients won’t have a large knowledge base of design. Overall this event is a great place to network with other designers as well! Check out other portfolios. Who knows what will inspire your book’s apperance and layout!

The Design Show is also a great event for networking. Personally, working at the front table was a great opportunity. I met many amazing designers right as they came in the door. There is nothing better than being in a room filled with people who share the same passion as you do. It was also fun to put a face to some of the designers that entered work into the show and ask them about their processes.

2 | A Multitude of Resources

Are you starving for new experiences and resources to keep up with the fast-paced learning curve of technology? Join AIGA in your new area to learn the ins and outs of that specific design community. It’s a great way to get to know a new town if you’ve just moved, or to be in-the-know on hot design studios, freelancers, and learning opportunities in your area.

Personally, I’ve made a lot of connections and have only been a part of one AIGA committee thus far. I’ve learned how to be part of a large diverse team of designers and work together effectively with them.

Here are a few of the great resources/studios/design related locations I picked up from being a part of AIGA Minnesota
BaseCamp | Project/Group Management
Open Book | Reading, Writing & Book Arts
Penco | Art Supplies
Ratchet | Web Design/Development
Periscope | Full Service Design Agency
Imagehaus | Design Studio (uber talented copywriters found here too!)

Don’t forget the local restaurants & pubs in Minneapolis, MN

3 | Friendships

AIGA Design Show 2009 Committee BBQ – June 2009

“Not only is AIGA great for making business connections and learning new things, but it also gives members the opportunity to make new friendships!”

Being a part of AIGA’s Design Committee 2009 was a amazing experience. I met some amazing folks and had a ton of fun while working hard towards our group goal. Experience is priceless. No matter what form it comes in.

Interested in becoming a member? Join today!

Designers: Tell AIGA how they have benefited you. Because of AIGA… or post your experiences below! I’m always interested to hear which events have been hits in your books.

AIGA Upcoming Events
Minnesota
Luncheon Series 2009

Wisconsin
How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer

San Fransisco
Design Week

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