Tekpals

Next we’ll integrate your brand. Any business needs to develop and manage their brand. Think about how you want your business presented to the world. What do you want your audience to take away? What images or emotions do you want to convey? Look at your level of professionalism, innovation, enthusiasm, attention to detail, reliability or many other categories. These will all have an effect on your brand.

The most tangible element of your brand is your logo. For example, the Tekpals logo is intended to make technology accessible and friendly. That’s why we picked the ‘dough boy’ and had him with a friendly greeting sitting on a laptop – all to make technology easy and accessible. We consciously chose a non-traditional font to emphasize the approachability and openness. Your logo will become the basis of the look and feel of your site and it needs to be designed carefully.

The next thing to look for is the overall graphic feel. Every page will have common features that clearly identify the page as yours. Are you going for light or dark? Are there any colors that you’re looking to use? Even color choice has an impact. Once you have a logo and an idea of your brand, we’ll look at colors.Colors convey a message.

Blue is actually the most popular color. It conveys honesty, trustworthiness and loyalty.

Black means authority, power, elegance and sophistication.

While shows purity and peace. It is neutral and calm.

Red shows passion and energy. It’s full of excitement.

Green conveys feelings of nature and earth. It also suggests growth and rejuvenation.

Orange is equated with happiness, creativity and playfulness.

Purple shows a mystical or spiritual quality.

Primary colors are usually associated with childhood and simplicity, while pastel colors are associated with warmth and happiness.

There are also many cultural connotations with color. Different cultures associate different meanings to colors. For example, in the US a dark green often conveys a sense of wealth and fortune. However, in many Asian cultures wealth and fortune is usually associated with red.

Whitespace

Judicious use of whitespace is also important in web design. Just because it’s possible to do something doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to do it. Whitespace helps the eyes manage the content and makes it easier on your reader. Back in the early days of web design people thought that blinking and flashing text and graphics was all the rage. The problem was that it was also extremely distracting. We’ll work with you to keep your pages easy on the eye. The flow of the page is important and lots of whitespace helps your reader.

Screen Dimensions

We are often asked about the empty space down the sides of the Tekpals page. That’s there for an important reason. When you design for print everyone knows the dimensions of the page you’re designing for. Whether it’s a 8 1/2 by 11 page or a huge billboard, the dimensions are known in advance. The web is different; you don’t know the capabilities of the user’s computer. They may be viewing your site on a 27″ wide monitor, a small iPad or netbook or even a mobile device.

So we need to make some base assumptions about the intended viewing device. More often than not, that assumption is a width of around 1000 pixels (dots). This accommodates most computers sold in the last 10 years. If you’re viewing the page on a monitor that’s about 1000 pixels wide there won’t be the empty space on the side. If your monitor is wider, you’ll see the space. This way everyone is happy!

Designing for mobile devices is an entirely different endeavor. We’ll cover that in another post.