Year 2010.
Lately I’ve been on a kick of researching and writing about upcoming trends for 2010 in the design world. At the very least your website design and development should be staying with the game in terms of what is hot and what is not in the design world, but more importantly, why not be ahead of the game? In my latest research I stumbled upon the hand written design style. I fully support the prediction of this style becoming a widespread trend throughout website design and development and here are my top three reasons why.

1. Bringing it back to the roots.
As I’m sure you’ve seen in fashion, in print advertising and a wide plethora of other design mediums, style-based trends move both forwards and backwards throughout history. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might have noticed that the 80’s are back in style. Trends come and go and often times resurface again. Where did design begin before the computer emerged? Paper. During my college studies for visual communications, before we were ever even allowed to use a computer for design, we were strictly hand rendering designs on paper. Bringing this basic hand rendering style of the past into the future of website design is going to do wonders in the world of internet marketing. Not only does is it give you the freedom to manipulate things exactly how you want them to be, but it gives your website the look and feel of being meticulously crafted and well thought out. It takes a lot more effort to render things by hand than with a simple filter application.

2. Multiple levels of meaning.
Some might say that the (re)introduction of hand rendering brings a child-like feel, but I would argue that it is all about the style that you render in. A thick, chunky, curvy hand rendered font with stick figure drawings will surely bring an amateur feel to your website design. But what about writing that appears on blue prints? I would say an architectural hand rendered font doesn’t suggest a child-like style, but rather, a more professional style, representing a mindful and comprehensive process used to achieve an end result. Styles such as this appear clean and well thought out, while maintaining that focused thinking was put into creating purposeful work. The style you render in will certainly affect the look and feel your website has.

3. Break the rules. Break outside the box.
Why hand-write something when you can simply type it? I say, why not? Between the move to computer-based design and the arrival of web 2.0, I think we became stuck in a world of website design that was flat. It consisted of generic shapes and basic web-safe type that all looked the same. This is because most designs were made up of preset, computer-generated pieces. We no longer live in a world where the vision you see on your screen has to be flat. Be bold. Bring shading and shadows to your website design; bring hand rendered sketches and letters straight from the paper to create the world that exists on your screen, and ultimately strive to reflect the physical world that we live in.

Will the hand rendered style become one of the big trends in 2010? I can’t say for sure, but I can say that we’re already using it. Are you?

Have your own predictions on what will be big in 2010, or simply looking to take your website design and development ahead of the game? Contact us. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Check out some of our recent work for examples of effective use of hand renderings

Hand-written cut-outs to call out our work within our home page billboards.

Hand-drawn logo to convey ideas behind brand’s mission.

Branded apparel utilizing hand-drawn lettering

By Blythe Langley
Designer

Be it blue.
Truth, calm, trust, hope, serenity, sadness … what does the color blue mean to you? Blue is one of the most commonly used colors in web design and development, and it will continue to be a hot color throughout 2009. What is it about the color blue that makes it so widely used across the Internet? Simply put, it’s versatile. In fact, Blue Iris was named the Pantone color of the year in 2008 showing its extension beyond the world of web development and into print advertising, brand identity development, fashion, home products and so much more.

Blue for you, blue for me.
Blue is a unisex color, appealing to both males and females. One of the most important things to consider within your website design and development is appealing to your target audience. If your target audience happens to be a broad demographic, including both males and females, then blue is probably a good choice. Versatility and unisex appeal help to make the color blue a very safe choice, but that is not to say that it is a boring color by any means!

Blue across the board.
Like all other colors across the spectrum, blue comes in a wide variety of hues, tones and shades. Navy, sky, powder, baby, cobalt, sapphire … just to name a few, and the list goes on. Choosing your variety of blue is a big decision to make when trying to convey the correct message to your audience. For example, a large portion of navy blue is going to have a much different presence within website development than a large portion of sky blue. With this in mind, make sure you are choosing the variety of blue that is appropriate for your message.

Blue around the world.
Your audience is a huge consideration when choosing your variety of blue. For example, blue may symbolize something different across various cultures around the world. In eastern countries, blue is a very spiritual color and considered the color of heaven. However in western cultures, it is used a lot in the corporate world, but can also have a tendency to represent sadness, tranquility and truth amongst some as well. The color blue can take on a different meaning for just about everybody, so it is important that you know your audience and use it accordingly to get the best results.

Pairing blue.
The different colors you pair with blue within your website design can also change the message it is sending to your audience. If you pair a mid-tone blue with a bright orange you are going to have a much more technical and energetic feel. Pairing it with a mid-tone green creates an organic and natural feel. If you decided to pair it with a charcoal gray, it will feel corporate and serious. There are millions of color combinations possible and each and every one of them will have just slightly a different feel, so be sure to always try a few combinations before settling with your final pick!

Blue in all mediums.
Blue doesn’t exist just in your graphical user interface design, it extends throughout the rest of the design world as well. Did you know that colors play a large put in the food industry? Have you ever asked yourself why the McDonald’s golden arches are yellow, or perhaps why you don’t often see a lot of foods that are blue? These concepts come from intelligent marketing techniques based on color research. The color yellow is an appetite stimulate. It creates the feeling of happiness therefore increasing the sensation of hunger. Its counterpart, the color blue, is an appetite suppressant because our minds have been trained to associate the color blue with things that are bad when relating to food, such as mold. It is rare in nature that we have foods that are naturally blue, as opposed to neutral colors like yellow and tan. Most people don’t realize this because their bodies react naturally to color stimulation without much thought.

These are just a few little tid-bits on the color blue. The color has proven popular in 2009, but will it stick around for 2010? We have our predictions . Contact us and see how we can improve your brand identity design strategy. Will blue be the right color for you?

Make your icons recognizable.
I bet when you look at the three icons above, that three distinct things come to mind in terms of the Internet: home, email and print. These are three examples of universally recognized web icons that can be used in a graphical user interface design within your website. How does something become universally recognized you ask? Exposure, the more you see something visually associated with an idea or something verbal, the more you continue to associate the two naturally within your brain. Our minds have been so constantly exposed to these visual images on the Internet and the purpose they serve, that it has become natural for us to associate the visual image with the functionality behind it.

Use text for support.
If you are looking to use icons that are not universally recognizable, this is a good opportunity to use text for support. The last thing that you want to do is confuse your user within your graphical user interface, prompting them to click all sorts of random buttons, only to eventually get confused and leave your site. “Easy to use” is a key component to a successful graphical user interface design. This is usually accomplished with a simple rollover of the mouse.

The question mark icon is widely used across the Internet, but it doesn’t always mean the same thing for everybody. A “?” to some people may mean Frequently Ask Questions, where as within other graphical user interface designs it may direct the user to the “Help” or “Support” area of the site.

Although the areas are related, they may not be the same across all user interfaces, highlighting the opportunity to support your icon with text.

Always use in moderation.
Although icons are fun and can be visually pleasing, too many icons within a user interface design can become confusing and often times overwhelming. Much like the downfall of a user clicking on an icon where they are unsure of its functionality, if there are too many items to click, users may find themselves being taken to different parts of the site they were not searching for. Keep your icon use in moderation to avoid confusion and it will be easier for visitors to navigate within your graphical user interface. The easier it is to navigate, the happier the visitor will be.

Be creative.
Although your icons should be universally recognizable, it doesn’t mean that your graphical user interface design has to be boring and look like every other site out there! Be creative with your icons while allowing them to maintain their ability to be visually recognizable.

Perhaps your icons have a three-dimensional quality to them or have reflections that appear on the background of the site.

Don’t feel as though you have the throw every bell and whistle that exists at them either. Just make sure they are true to the overall look and feel of your site and your brand identity and they support the message that your website is presenting.

Create a family.
The icons on your site should not only support your overall brand identity look and feel, but should also feel like a family. Use consistent colors, style and treatment for all your icons. Consistency across your icons will help your users recognize them easily and be able to distinguish that they are icons representing a certain function.

Consistency.
It is equally important that your icons remain consistent in functionality. If you are using the same icon more than once within a site, it should always be representing the same function. The same is true in the reverse. If you are using an icon to represent the same function in multiple areas within your user interface design, make sure you consistently use the same icon. As mentioned earlier, consistency across your graphical user interface design will help your users to identify icons/functions that will aid them in being able to easily navigate within the site.

Interested in creating effective web icons for your site. Contact us!

Welcome to the world of [insert your company name here].
When preparing for your next big tradeshow, be sure to carefully consider the design of your tradeshow materials. The success of getting people interested in and paying attention to your product is directly associated with the ability of your booth itself to invite people in. Your booth needs to be its own world, revolving around your product but also standing out amongst all the other booths available.

The TOTAL experience.
Your booth should be a TOTAL experience for your customers. The way it looks, the way it feels, perhaps even the way it sounds or smells should draw them in and hold them so they become engaged and interested in learning more about your product or service. How? Use colors that set the mood. Whether the mood is hyped-up, soft and comfortable or scientific and intelligent, choose colors that support and present this mood to your customers. You want them to be comfortable in your booth and start to feel the presence and excitement around your product.

Think big!
The most important message at your tradeshow booth should be visible from a good distance. The goal is to draw people in so they come and read more – set the bait in order to lure them there, and then read your supporting messages. Text looks great on screen but if it looks like ants on a wall at the tradeshow, people may just pass it by.

Positioning is everything!
Not only does your information need to be large in size, it also needs to be placed on areas of the tradeshow booth that are easily visible. REMEMBER, your tradeshow booth is an interactive experience, People will be walking through, standing outside and inside, so keep your information around eye level if you don’t want it to get missed. Position the most important information in the places that are most easily seen, where people are most likely to look to first.

Your centerpiece.
Your product or service is your focal point … the most important element. Make sure it is easily visible and digestible for the customers. Be creative in the way you display it. If your product has a demo, consider TV screens displaying the demo or perhaps have a live demonstration. Make sure everything is well lit. Good lighting will help add to the overall atmosphere of your tradeshow booth and help direct people’s attention to the highlights.

Overall look and feel.
Your tradeshow booth design should have a look and feel that supports your brand identity. Incorporate elements from your brand identity that make it easily recognizable and memorable. The more exposure and consistency to your brand, the more people will become familiar with it and recognize it from a distance. Increased brand recognition will draw visitors to your booth and keep them coming back in the following years’ tradeshows!

Make it a lasting experience.
Make sure your tradeshow materials leave your customers with a lasting experience. A great way to create a lasting experience is to provide tradeshow programming and materials such as flyers or t-shirts (or any materials customers can physically take away with them). Most importantly, make sure your booth itself leaves a lasting impression through its tradeshow materials so customers remember the experience, the product and the brand.

Let us help you create a physical world around your brand and your product through your tradeshow programming and materials. Contact us!

How many times have you stood in line at a store waiting to check out, grabbed the small item on a nearby shelf and made an unplanned purchase? Point-of-purchase (POP) is defined as a place where sales are made; the point at which a customer decides to purchase or pass over a product. What are the components of a design that make your point-of-purchase design stop the customer and encourage them to purchase?

Take the road less traveled.
Your point-of-purchase design should stop people in their tracks; make a statement. If all the competition goes with red boxes, take the road less traveled and go with blue. You want to use a design that is going to let you stand out and be set apart from the competition; don’t blend in with the group, stand out in front. Ask yourself, “What is going to make them see my product first?”

STOP.
We face visual cues in our lives everyday. Have you ever wondered about the design of the stop sign? The stop sign was created as an octagonal shape so it was easily distinguishable from other traffic signs that were all of similar shapes and sizes and so it could be identified even from behind. Designers (or more likely roadway engineers in this case) knew that this sign carried an important message to be conveyed. The only way for it to succeed in doing so was to be visually compelling and stand out amongst all the other signs on the road, hence the 8 sides and the bright red color. Can you think of another sign that looks the same?

Apply the STOP concept to your design.
Although that stop sign is certainly not trying to sell a product, it succeeds in the area of stopping the eye visually, which is the effect your point-of-purchase design needs to have. Make it POP. Think outside the box, perhaps literally in this sense. Products don’t need to be unappealingly stacked upon one another in a plain box with just your brand identity logo displayed, or do they?

Be true to your brand.
The first step is to know your brand and to know the competition around you. If your brand identity and overall brand presence is very clean and sophisticated, I would suggest avoiding the neon flashing lights, backed by hoards of bells and whistles. Sometimes clean simple design is all it takes to stand out from competitive point-of-purchase designs around you that are crammed and cluttered with information and other elements.

Start your own trend.
If your brand happens to be a little more energetic and bold, have some fun with your point-of-purchase design. Consider materials outside the norm and colors that will stand out that will make people think, “HEY, I’ve just got to see what this is”. Take a look at what your competition is doing and, perhaps, go one step in the other direction, or more importantly, one step above and make yourself stand out. Start a new trend instead of following the current one.

Want your point-of-purchase design to POP and STOP customers in their tracks? Give us a call and let’s make some stop signs together.

Family resemblance.
Have you heard the phrase “family resemblance”? Think of your brand identity and collateral designs as members of a family. The head of the family is your brand’s graphical manifestation; your logo. Everything that falls below that, such as your letterhead, business card, flyers, and brochures (essentially everything that is embodied as collateral designs of your brand) should share a “family resemblance” not only to your logo, but to each other. You want a commonality between all the elements within your collateral design that identifies them as a family, which supports your overall brand identity.

Finding strength in numbers.
Having a visual commonality between the different elements of your brand identity helps your brand become more identifiable. The more elements that you have within your collateral design that embody the look and feel of your brand identity, the more support your brand will have. When you have too many different elements that do not tie together, or use a multitude of colors without having one common feature to tie them together your brand becomes more obscure. These elements can range from the treatment of your logo, to the fonts you use, to various design elements. People need to see visual relations in order to associate things as related. The more you visually relate your items and the more creativity you use to do so, the more your brand will become more memorable. The ultimate goal here is for people to recognize your look and feel through extension of your logo design. When it works, your logo can become a stand-alone symbol of your brand. Think of the NIKE swoosh.

Target. Enough said.
The more you can reinforce your brand the more successful you will be. Each element, whether large or small, should embody some part of it. Take the company Target for instance. I bet you are already picturing the little red and white target/bulls-eye logo mark that represents their company. This is a pure example of effective brand identity and collateral designs that has helped to expose and continue to support a brand everywhere, from the store sign to their letterhead and business cards to their circulars and television ads. By integrating this one visual element into their various collateral designs, they have built a great support system for their brand that makes it easily recognizable and memorable. They do this through something as simple as a bulls-eye logo design. Every time you see that bulls-eye, I bet you think of Target.

Start a family.
Build a family for your brand and create chatter around your company. Whether it is through something as simple as a green bar that appears consistently within your collateral designs, or the way you treat your brand logo across all the elements. Give your brand a look and a voice and make sure that all your collateral designs inherit those family traits. And don’t forget to give them an environment to live in … every family needs a happy home.

Let us help you get started on creating your brand family and introduce it to the world.

Recently I attended the special event of my sister getting married. As maid of honor I had the duty of making a toast at the wedding, which, unfortunately for me, is a nerve racking instance of public speaking. Should I be funny? What can I say to make people laugh? Should I be sentimental? What is it that is going to move people to tears? What can I say that is going to appeal to all the individuals at the ceremony? Should I speak to just my sister? Should I share inside family stories or provide some broader insight as to how I see their future playing out or offer up some unsolicited advice, as if I am the expert on their marriage?

In the weeks before the wedding, I realized preparing this speech is similar to the job I do everyday here at MicroArts. Working with varying brands, I am continually asking a range of questions. What can I create in my designs to draw in the target consumer? What colors and shapes should I use for a consumer package design that is going to make a customer pick it up off the shelf? What keywords can I use to search engine optimize a website that will drive customers to the site? What elements should be included in a banner advertising campaign to make a user click through?

Start at the end.
Essentially it’s best to start with the end in mind. Many of the questions we ask ourselves within design and development mirror the kinds of questions that we face everyday in the world outside of where we work. Both outcomes result in some sort of answer or conclusion, but often it is the path you took to get to that answer that is most important. Understanding which answer best reflects the needs of the target audience you are trying to reach is a key component of the design process. Which brings us to:

One Simple Rule: Consider your target audience.
They are your number one priority. Who are you trying to reach? Why do you want to reach them? And what do you want them do once you reach them? Asking these questions allows you to define what you want your outcome to be. For instance, if your target consumer is young children, use fonts on your consumer package design that they can relate to and are large enough for them to read. In this case, we should not use super sophisticated script fonts at a seven point size because we understand that children are drawn to things such as bright colors, large fonts, rounded edges, etc.

If you’re working on the graphical user interface (GUI) for a website where the primary target is senior citizens, you should use large buttons and fonts in your interface design that are easily recognizable. Your GUI design should be as simplistic as possible in order to be digestible for your target user, especially one who may not be computer savvy. Present information that is clear and easy to follow which keeps them interested and moving seamlessly through your site.

In the end.
In the end, whether you’re working on a consumer package, graphical user interface or simply writing a toast at a wedding, first define your audience. The most important thing we can ask ourselves when presented with a challenge is “what do we want the outcome to be?” Once you know where you want to end up, finding the best way to get there becomes one step easier. Always have a clear start and finish.

Draw them in and if you do it right, you’ll end with glasses raised in unison.

Is your retail package design flying off the shelf? Does your website design connect with your target consumers and end with conversions? If not give us a call and we’ll help you connect your company with your target consumer.

So I’m sure you’re wondering how my speech went. Let’s just say that if it was a package design … it would be sold out.

White space is our friend.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard the phrase “it looks like we have a little bit of extra space, so why don’t we add …” I would be a rich woman. In reality, people don’t pay me a nickel each time I hear this and, as a designer, it’s one thing I dread hearing. White space is a designer’s dream. It is not a hole waiting to be filled, but more an area of clarity that directs your eye to the elements of the page that are of high importance. White space helps us design an effective graphical user interface which is crucial to the user experience aspect of a successful website strategy.

White space at the supermarket

Think about page space in relative terms to a physical space such as the supermarket.

When you go to the supermarket for your essential items such as bread, milk and apples, do store managers hide the bread behind the muffins and clump all the variations of apples into one bin for you to dig through to find the kind you want? This would mean spending ten minutes digging through the apple bin only to find that the kind you want is in a completely separate bin buried underneath the oranges, instead of on a clearly labeled display in an easily locatable space. Unless you go to a supermarket on another planet, the answer would be no.

Essential items are placed in key areas around the supermarket with open aisles marked with signs pointing you in the right direction.

The same concept applies to graphical user interface design. When items are placed on a page, with relative space to one another (supported by white space), the viewer’s eye has an easy path around the page to find the items that you want your customer to pay attention to. If it isn’t relevant and of absolute importance on the page, it shouldn’t be there (even if you have a one inch x one inch cube of space in the upper right-hand corner that you think you can squeeze some size seven point font into).

Less is more.

Decide what information is most important and allow a designer to utilize the blank canvas to present that information in a visually engaging way that is digestible for your clients. Ten pounds of groceries do not fit in a five pound bag. Sure, if you squish the bread on the bottom of the bag, break seven out of the 12 eggs in the cartoon and duct tape all the apples to the outside of the bag, but do you really need all those groceries? Essential items are key, and the rest will probably just get forgotten (and moldy).

Hopefully you walk away from this with a new friend—and a little hungry. Interested in learning how to use white space to your benefit in your latest graphical user interface design? Don’t understand why your website’s user experience is failing? Come visit with MicroArts and we’ll help you craft an effective user experience.