Above the fold, most web designers out there absolutely hate that term. If you don’t know what it means, where the hell have you been? It’s a term mostly used by clients when they want more eyes on a certain piece of information and want it repositioned further up the page where a user doesn’t have to scroll to see it.

The general feeling on this one from the world’s web designers is that the fold doesn’t exist and to a degree they’re right. Obviously computer screens and monitors don’t fold, the terminology has been adopted from the graphic design world where newspapers were folded for display purposes – hence the important information being displayed above the fold. (more…)

Pick up an industry magazine, read an industry blog and it won’t be long before you come across some kind of list of the best designers in the industry (and let’s face it, there’s no shortage of list based blog posts out there!). The problem I have with these lists is, while they often do feature some good designers, they are almost always centred around the most prominent bloggers. And there’s a difference. (more…)

Following on from my post about breaking into web design, I’d like to talk about how to be a successful freelance designer. What qualifies me to talk about this? Well that would depend on what you define as being successful. Success in the freelance world is all about keeping busy, avoiding barren patches and retaining clients – which is something I have thankfully managed to achieve.

Over the past 4 years I have established a method to my work, a set of rules that have formed my working code which have now become habit… (more…)

I was recently asked by a client to provide multiple different design concepts (3) for the same website, yet this is something I haven’t done in years. I don’t have a problem with it, but in my opinion it’s the wrong way of doing things, and here’s why…

The way I see design, it’s all about educated decisions. From the very start of a project you will make numerous decisions and you will discount certain things based upon a combination of the current brief, your experiences from the past and what you believe is right for the project. Producing multiple varying visuals goes completely against this. (more…)