Interactive Art Director - Approach
- Started
- Last post
- 13 Responses
- Hayoth
Hello Community. I seek your help and information.
I come from a print design background, but have been doing digital digital design seven+ years for banners and websites. I come from the age where we just wireframed in our sketchbooks the designed the site. But things have changed and I need to bring a better approach to the digital realm.
How are you guys going through your web design into development?
Wireframes
Are you wire framing all page templates and creating interactive mockups before the site going into design comp stage?Element layouts
Are all of your boxes exact pixels? For example, are your images or content areas always exact like 300 x 195 or because do they ever venture into obscure terrority like 302 x 191 pixels?Development
How are you turning over your design documents to the developer?Are you adding exact measurements over your PSD files of every content block, image size, and spacing between content?
Are you creating UI templates the developer can pull from for buttons, navigation, graphics etc?
Can you share any resources on all assets that need to be created when doing web design?
Client
Once the wireframes are approved and the site goes into BETA or test site, are you letting clients alter the layout? Or do you consider that outside the scope?Any insight would be much appreciated.
- utopian-3
If you can create wireframes you can instantly become a Senior UX designer/developer and make the big bucks!
- Hayoth-4
Anyone have any insight to my questions?
- _niko0
this day and age, forget pixels and work in percentages. It's all about responsive layouts. Also, create all graphics for retina devices and have them scale down.
- microkorg0
axure for wireframes - pretty decent
- Hayoth-2
Thanks for taking time to respond. The retina situation I need to take into better account.
- formed0
Retina - how does everyone address this for an image intensive site? It would be cumbersome to download the retina sized images for everyone, all the time.
Is there any good solution yet?
I'd be interested in hearing answers to other questions too.
- You can detect the user's screen specs and send images accordingly. Similar to responsive design break points.zarkonite
- mandomafioso0
Everyone in my circle is talking about Sketch. You can wireframe and design within the same app. I don't have a lot of experience in it but sounds promising.
- are you talking about the app or sketching by hand?yurimon
- Sketch: http://bohemiancodin…mrpt
- it's fireworks, basically.monNom
- spot130
My biggest hurdle with designers coming from print is getting them to learn what is possible technically in the web space in order for them to start being creative. A lot of the time, what I get back is a PSD or flat image of a design, without indication of different states, dynamic content, responsiveness, etc.
I would spend time understanding front-end development first, learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc and then your designs will work technically and you'll be able to come up with more creative designs and solutions to the technical and UI problems than come up.
- Hayoth-2
Spot, thanks for the response. I have good understanding of tech and languages but def have poor communication with the content you described. That's something I'll work on.
- Miguex1
I come from print too, and if that is the case you are 90% already there, now more than ever before, mainly due to large agencies seem to favor very specific positions over designers that can tackle more than one medium. (not the case for small shops where wearing multiple hats is needed).
So think about a website as creating spec-sheets for a package design, you have to outline every single thing that could go wrong, or else it will. If you think about it is incredibly similar, with the exceptions of a few rules that vary from interactive to static medium.
Type sizes
Fluidity on layouts
How does the elements on the composition react to interaction
How does the user navigate through the piece
these are a few that come to mind on top of my head.If the agency has a position called Sr. Art Director, chances are that they will have developers, so you just handle them a psd of each page with your layouts. ( Personally attach a grid outlining measurements between columns, typefaces, space between paragraphs, button overlays etc.) so they have as a reference, but this I got from print.
If you are a Sr. Art Director, (in my experience at least) you will be in charge of the look of the "guide pages", every iteration of those, will be finished by a designer or production artist, your job will be focused to present different looks of the site to your CD and the client and conclude the general direction of the look and feel.
Clients, will intervene at all stages of the project most likely, sometimes even when the project is finished, this will be most likely a decision made between client and your project manager, who sometimes will ignore realistic deadlines in order to make the client happy, but sometimes he can be good negotiating with you and client in order to find a middle ground.
If you have a solid base of design theory, I believe that you can go to any medium you want, it's always the same (just a few medium specific adjustments)
- Hayoth-2
Thanks mig. Much appreciated
- omg0