This post is Part 1 in the series “A Picture is Worth 1000 Words” on the essence of good design.
Design, by definition, is the purposeful planning and communication that expresses the objective thing that is your business or organization. More simply, design is communication purposed for a desired outcome. It is the clothing of your business.
One of the most common downfalls of any site with great potential is to flatten its communication. Communicating never comprises just words. In fact, words are one of the worst ways in which to communicate!
Think about your everyday living experience. Communication comes from all sorts of directions. It is received through the five different channels of your senses. Words that you see are only a small fraction of that overall input and, not to mention, they’re not really natural. Your brain has to go through countless conditioned steps of interpretation in order to construct a thought or scene from words, whereas a beautiful, crisp photo of a peaceful meadow is understood naturally. Upon seeing the image you immediately feel something for that scene, whether good or bad.
Design is an art and a science. It concerns engineering the communication of your site so that it will inspire within your audience the feelings and thoughts that are wanted. That is, with as little effort needed on behalf of your guests.
Trusting your design to do your communicative heavily lifting can not only save you time (and money!), but it can also help ensure that your site stands out from the rest, especially against your competitors.
Before placing any new words on your site, first ask yourself: “How does my current design communicate what I want to say?”
If you’re not sure your design is meeting your needs, check back next Thursday, April 1st for the next post in this series: But I’m not a Designer! Design 102