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in Tutorials, Usability on January 30th, 2010
In his book, Communicating Design, Dan Brown defines wireframes as:
“A simplified view of what content will appear on each screen of the final product, usually devoid of color, typographical styles, and images…”
Wireframes can technically be generated by just about anybody. However it is painfully apparent when someone with little or no experience takes it upon themselves to do so. The classic example is when a client has some ideas they think are great and feels the need to express them. More often than not those ideas could be communicated through words via email or on the phone and it would…
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Posted by
in Business, Findings, Inspiration, Tutorials on December 2nd, 2009
One of the most challenging aspects of working in an advertising or interactive agency is managing sensitive agency-client relations. Taking clients down the path to creating a successful marketing message or making a recommendation that they may not agree with can be fun and exciting or it can be an emotional, difficult and even scary process. It seems like it should be easy. Clients hire us for our expertise in creativity, strategic direction and user experience. You are paying for our service, so why not use us to our full potential?
There is definitely something to be said for letting an…
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Posted by
steve
in Code, Findings, Tutorials on October 18th, 2009
1. Using Pre-made Form Elements
Often when designing a web comp we need to incorporate items that are part of the browser GUI. These elements, like it or not, are part of the overall design. So its often many designer’s habit to fire up their browser, find a checkbox, radio button, text input, etc. and grab a screen shot. However, there is a better way. The Designer’s Toolbox has done all this for us and organized every browser’s unique elements into an easy to use layered PSD file. Just keep them nearby and whenever you need a browser GUI element you can…
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Posted by
Ryan Nasipak
in Code, Inspiration, Tutorials on May 18th, 2009
Welcome back! 
This is part two of (how many I’m not quite sure) a tutorial series in working with AS3 fluid flash layouts. If you missed part one (Creating Fluid AS3 Flash Layouts: The Basics.), I’d highly recommend giving it a look here (especially if you have some lingering questions on how all of this is working). It goes much more in depth as to the how and why of what we’re doing to create some of these CSS like effects in actionscript.
Another reason I would recommend starting from that first tutorial is that we’ll be extending the original file we…
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Posted by
steve
in Code, Tutorials, Usability on May 1st, 2009
Recently at Billups Design we built a fully functional HTML replica of a client’s flash site and were puzzled as to the latest and best practices for integrating that HTML site with the existing Flash site to ensure the greatest usability and SEO results. We had a few options that came to mind first.
- A splash page to allow the user to choose the HTML Site or the Flash Site.
- A separate directory for the HTML Site to live that only Google would see.
- A flash detection that would redirect the user to the HTML site if it didn’t have Flash, Google included.
None…
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Posted by
charles
in Business, Tutorials on April 2nd, 2009
We published this as a whitepaper a while back, but feel it still has the power to benefit any organization involved with planning and producing a web development initiative.
Perhaps the most costly and painful experience for any company initiating a new web project are the planning and launching phases. In the case of planning, different departments within the company (too many in some cases) are invited to early conceptual and business objective meetings. Each person has a different perspective. Each person has a different level of expertise. Personal and professional agendas get in the way, too. Draft after draft, plan…
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Posted by
Ryan Nasipak
in Code, Inspiration, Tutorials, Usability on March 20th, 2009
When I first started developing in flash, there were inevitably things that just made me want to pull my hair out. Basic physics, Actionscript vs. timeline animation and embedding assets vs. creating them at run-time were just a few of the areas I really wrestled with early on. Part of the problem stemmed from a desire to go from 0-60 in 2 seconds (and that might be on the high side). I was like Nike, just do it. *** As a side, that reaches my corny joke quota for this blog….so please, read on.
When I jump in to a project…
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