Must Design

Designing a good website that accommodates a lot of content is a tricky balancing act to pull off. Does one attempt to present the user with all the information

We asked several developers what their favorite sources are for web design and code inspiration, and they pointed to these 17 wide-ranging sites.

Marty Note
I like several of these designs including Web Design Ledger and The Source for their creative balance between images, copy and headlines. There are so many things dancing on the head of a pin on any homepage such as:

* Your desire to SHARE everything.

* Their (visitor's) desire to find what they want.

* Navigation.
* Images.
* Headlines & Copy.

Getting all of these dancers to tell a coherent story in 9 seconds is the challenge. Usually as content being shared increases understand decreases. Several of these designs manage to present a lot of options intelligently.

Which one is your fav?

The purpose of this post is not just to present the state of today's web design - it’s more pragmatic. Seven basic principles of a good web design are presented here.

Marty Note
This is a great post about what web design IS and IS NOT. I'm going to include my notes here so they follow the post since the writing, though brilliant, is not as direct as I like. Here are my much more direct interpretations of the 7 Basics of Great Website Design:

1. Website Design Can’t Win, But You Can Sure LOSE Due to It.
We've past the period when shinny websites work. Every website has seconds before a visitor clicks off to find what they are looking for on some other website.

2. Create Website Surfaces For Scanners and Skimmers since Readers will work for what they want.
Key to know not all information is great for "scanning" and "skimming". Tease the click don't drown it is another way to think of this idea. Also, content such as news, Q&A and testimonials have more attention hooks than sharing complex or highly detailed material. If your website depends on sharing complex and highly detailed content tease it with snippets and with graphics firs.

Stay with simple, clean and useable as your guide.

3. Avoid NEW until it is UNDERSTOOD.
You don't have to wait until some new thing is old hat, but avoid using The New simply because it is new. New hurts conversion because it requires explanation and is hard to tease since visitors don't have "made to stick" context. If you must present "new" present with an "old" analogy.

Read Made To Stick by Heath brothers for more.

4. Confused customers do many things, BUYING and CONVERTING and never among them.

5. Hierarchy of information and navigation is LIFE online.
People know there is a YOU or a team behind your design. They want to know what YOU want them to DO and why they should do it with YOU. Sites that make the curator's hand visible via navigation, images and copy win. Those who challenge visitors to figure everything out for them selves lose.

This is NOT to say some mystery can't work in a web designer's favor, but make sure the mystery is immediately solved before posing another one. Daisy chain one mystery on another and visitors get frustrated and leave since benefit doesn't equal the work to realize it.

6. Colors can ruin a website.
Colors have so many overt and covert signals they should be used sparingly and consistently with the brand. If you use RED for a Zen website do so in accents and carefully since red is an ALERT color and so may be inconsistent with the brand.

7. Devil is in the web design details.
In my almost 15 years of experience NOTHING on this list is more true. Once you make a website simple and clean any small dissonance becomes LARGE because it sticks out like the proverbial "sore thumb". Make sure your site is a smooth surface with a clear message.

Want To Learn Graphic Design?
Don't know about you but I learn best now by doing. I'm too old to sit in a classroom and listen. If I can't Tweet, G+ and Scoop I don't learn. I love the approach for how we train doctors for learning Internet marketing:

* Watch One.
* Do One.
* Teach One.

That last phase, teaching, is where whatever you are trying to do becomes solid and real. This is why social media, blogging and great tools like G+ are so valuable. We can share, teach, learn simultaneously.

When I created my first website in 1999 we couldn't afford to hire anyone. I learned photoshop and enough HTML to be dangerous and we set off on a journey.

Marshal McLuuhan was right. Today the medium is the message, so marketers need to speak graphics too or be too far behind (waiting on someone to create something). If you want to learn great graphic and web design FOLLOW, READ and LEARN FROM the Museum of Modern Art's design team.

Not a huge surprise MoMA would have a rockin design team, but more than brilliant designers these guys share and play well with others too and that was a tad unexpected. I would become a snotty jerk if my designers were good enough to work for MoMA.

Friends are laughing now. I know I will NEVER reach such graphic design heights, but that's okay because I know and can learn from great design when I see it (as can you). MoMA design rocks and they share so learn from these gifted artists / designers.

Designed by Colin Harman , How Would You Like Your Graphic Design? made me laugh this morni...