Adam Turtle, Freelance Web Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Adam Turtle

Since1986

Refresh Belfast

Over perhaps the last 6 months or so, I’ve found myself being more drawn in to web design, and design in general. It’s become one of the big passions of mine, and it’s great that in a city like Belfast so much is going on to fuel the creative community that’s growing.

If you’re at all interested in designing for the web, Refresh Belfast is a fantastic event to head along to.

Refresh Belfast

Refresh Belfast is our city’s chapter of the larger Refreshing Cities movement, aiming to promote design, technology and standards as well as serving as a place for local designers to get together and gather ideas on a monthly basis.

Last Monday was my first time at Refresh Belfast. I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I was certainly educated by the evening’s proceedings and drawn to the event mostly for the speakers – Design By Front. Front are a well respected design studio located in Belfast and regularly talk at events such as Refresh, Barcamp and other events throughout the UK and Ireland.

The Web as a Conversation

Paul McKeever of Front was first to speak on the topic of Be Where People Are. One of the more important points he made was the changing nature of the web, and how it has evolved from adopting the linear nature of traditional advertising (i.e. company advertises, promotes product, we listen, we buy) to stimulating the market through conversation.

Today, large corporations are embracing social networks as a means to get to their customer base, and stimulating conversation to spread their message.

Sites such as Amazon and Twitter allow the user to post opinions and generate discussion, and it’s important to be where people are in order to reach them. Businesses would do well to generate buzz through these platforms, as opposed to building their own community.

Talk Like a Person

Another important point I felt Paul covered well was the sense of voice a site delivers. People tend to engage more with a site when they feel a more human experience, so spending time to consider the tone of the content on a site can go a long way to it’s success. Sites such as Flickr, Wufoo and Mailchimp convey a more casual, friendly tone of voice than, say, Myspace. Of course, ‘friendly’ isn’t always going to be the appropriate choice, but it is often overlooked as a possibility for many sites.

Designing with Visual Language

This topic was covered by Jamie Neely of Front. It’s a little harder to describe what he covered, but he raised some interesting points.

One item I took away from his talk was Yahoo’s Design Patterns Library which gives examples of good design (in terms of both visual and usable) for common interaction scenarios. In essence, it provides solutions to common usability problems.

Design Process

Jamie also talked a bit about the design process. A good tip for dealing with a large site design is by beginning with the things you know. Designing separate elements and piecing them altogether can help to break down a large task into something more manageable.

Finally, he covered working within branding guidelines. In interesting point is that branding guidelines should always be under review. Writing the rule book, as it were, and forcing compliance to it is not a progressive way to manage your corporate identity. Sometimes it takes a step outside the guidelines and a little explanation to the client that there is a better way to do this.

Next Month

The next Refresh Belfast will be on 15th June, 2009. I strongly suggest you consider trying it out and remember that it’s 100% free to attend, so it really is worth it.

If you’re interested, Front have written their own summary of Refresh which has video and the presentations available for download.

See you at Refresh Belfast in June!

Back

Add your comment