Our Process is what Sets Us Apart
Since we work in both the print and web design industries, we've been able to translate many of the same techniques we use in the print design process over to the web. Most of us are more familiar with print since it's been around for a much longer time than the web. It's also more of a tactile process which is much easier to grasp, so it serves as an excellent model for how the web design process should work.
In a typical print project, the designer starts out by developing a concept. This is where creativity meets logic, and it's where abstract ideas of form and function converge. We start with the obvious question, "Who is the company and what is their message?" Once that is established, the next question is "What is their voice?" There are a myriad of possibilities here since every company is unique. Their tone might be serious or playful, so it's very important to answer these questions before pen is ever put to paper.
Once the concept begins to take shape, the designer begins to pull some of these ideas together on paper. This is when images begin to come to mind, different kinds of typography which might be appropriate, etc.. They work with industry standard software which is specifically designed for this purpose, usually a combination of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. These powerful programs are able to convert the designer's layout into digital media which can be used for multiple purposes. It can then be run through a printer, viewed on monitor, or run through a printing press depending on what you're ready to do with it at that point.
This makes it very easy for the client to become involved, since they can see exactly what's going on. In the initial stages a digital file which can be viewed on a computer monitor is the simplest way to go since that can be emailed to the client's desktop in a matter of moments. Once they approve the concept and like the general direction, more details are included, and eventually you arrive at a final product which is ready for the press.
Our web design process works exactly the same way in every respect but one. Since print lives on paper and web sites live on the web, there is no need for hard copy proofs, press checks, choosing paper stocks, etc.. We simply post our graphic mockups on the web so they can be viewed right in a browser window, which is for all practical purposes where the web actually lives. This frees up our designers from worrying about what can or can't be done within the confines of html programming. They simply approach the project exactly the same way they would a print project, and once everything has been approved by the client it's essentially ready for the press as before. Only in this case it's not being printed, but programmed for the web instead.
Good Web Developers are like Good Printers
In the world of print, what actually happens when the final product trades hands from the designer's studio to the printer is that a whole new process begins. It first goes through the pre-press department where digital output professionals check the files and perform a series of tests to make sure these will print as desired at high resolution. They usually run hard copy proofs on inexpensive paper just to make sure the fonts are loaded, no images are missing, the color modes are set correctly, etc..
Once all of this checks out, digital plates are "burned," and these are used to roll the ink out on the paper from the press. This is where the press operators come into play, and their job is to make sure the paper loads smoothly, the ink colors are set correctly, and that everything comes out looking just as nice as it can.
The role of a web programmer is much the same as this. When the job trades hands from the designer's studio this time, it's going to a web programmer instead of a printer, but the process is very similar. What happens when digital plates are burned for the press is they are run through what is known in the industry as "RIP" software (shorthand for Raster Image Processing). This is a complex computer application which translates what is seen on a computer into a series of mathematical expressions known as vector curves and shapes. This process is largely transparent to anyone running it since the computer is handling this for you, but the desired result is that you want the file to be converted from a series of digital expressions which only a computer can understand, into a physical product. On the web we're using a different conversion process. Instead of producing a product in physical form we're producing a product which can be read from a browser on the World Wide Web. Rather than RIP software we're using HTML software to make that conversion.
One important difference here is that while RIP software runs behind the scenes on a computer (the moment you click the button to print out a page on your ink jet printer for example), HTML programming is much more like software engineering where the developer starts from scratch writing code with a unique programming language. A web site is every bit as much of a computer application for delivering information and performing complex tasks as something like Qwiken is a software application for handling your taxes and book keeping. These applications need to be developed by hand because they are too complex for a computer to simply churn them out. Human decisions have to be made at every step of the way to determine the best strategies for delivering the information to a user interface, so that the experience of using the final product is a pleasant one (as opposed to the nightmare we often experience with poorly written applications).
As anyone who's dealt with a print project knows, there are good printers and bad ones, and the devil is in the details. There are many ways for a project to break down between the designer's studio and the output press, and a printer who isn't up to speed will often find them. This is no less true with a web developer. What's worse is that some critical tasks performed by the web developer are not seen by the end user or the client.
Search Engines - The Invisible Layer
So lets say our concept has been approved, the end product has gone to the web developer, and it's been expertly programmed and everything is looking and working great. That's all there is to it and we're finished right? To the end user the web site looks and works exactly as it should, but what if your most important information is not visible to search engines? You would never know this by looking at it because most of that work is embedded in the programming itself and this is not visible to someone using the web site.
The simplest way to understand search engines is to look at what they're trying to do. When someone performs a search on Google for example, Google's job is to deliver the most relevant information relating to that subject they can find. It's not in their best interest to direct us to web pages which aren't related to what we're searching for, so they don't like junk web sites any more than we do. To address this problem, they have developed a system of checks and balances known as "page ranking." What this means in it's most simple terms is, the better job you've done programming your web site to provide them with the kind of structures they like to see, the higher they rank your pages.
It turns out that the kinds of things they like to see are the same kinds of things we like to see when we're browsing the web, and this makes sense because we're the ones they're working for after all. It's easy to see how technology has advanced in every industry in the last century, but it's easy to forget that the same thing is continually happening on the internet because it's a relatively new phenomenon. The internet is one of the purest forms of technology in fact, and because it's accessible to so many more people in real time, it is probably advancing at an even faster rate than anything else. This is especially true of search engines, and their algorithms for checking web sites for relevant information is becoming more sophisticated all of the time.
This is a fascinating subject all by itself for which whole volumes could be written, and for the nitty gritty details of how this works, there are plenty of good web sites out there discussing the subject like this one which we think is one of the best,
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
We will be adding articles to this section soon so please check back in the near future for updates. If you have any comments or questions about web or print design which you would like us to address, please send us an email using the link below.
