Like a lot of industries, the design and website development world has trends that surface practically daily. Because of new technology and seemingly new design concepts, the trends in the industry come quickly and leave even quicker. So what should be done with “the next big thing”?

With web development it is a lot easier for us to distinguish between the newest items that are good and those that we ignore. We approach this in the same way that we approach design for a client; we approach this with marketing in mind. If the latest development item goes beyond just looking cool and actually helps the client, then it is something that we would use, when appropriate. If the new development item does not perform well across platforms (Internet Explorer as the prime example), or is not read (crawled) well by the major search engines, or just is inappropriate for the audience, then the client would not benefit by using that development.

With design, sifting through trends is a little more difficult. If something is “too trendy” then there is the risk of a design becoming obsolete very quickly. If a design is “too traditional” then there is the risk of the design not effectively speaking to the intended audience.

All design should consider the 5 elements of art, line, shape, color, texture and balance. Each of the elements should be considered and followed (or purposely broken) for the design to be good. There is one more element that i would like to add to this specifically for designing for clients and that would be the purpose of the design. The purpose of the design will help determine goals, audience and the creative direction of the piece. What would work for a contemporary, young brand would probably not work for a corporate established brand. It is all about purpose for effective design.

More could be said about this but just remember this, if design or development is done for a client, then it should be done to better the client. Happy designing.
-jeremy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, ad, brand, example, fun, logo, marketing, messaging, print, tip, web. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.