[thelist] Web design presentation process
aardvark
roselli at earthlink.net
Sun May 27 01:30:55 CDT 2001
> From: "Michael Lovitt" <mlovitt at oaksanderson.com>
>
> I'm writing an article on how to improve the Web design
for who, if i might be so bold, are you writing this? yeah, web
designers, but for a print mag, a zine, something else? just
curious, really...
> process, specifically, on the best way to present creative
> to clients. Some of the issues I'm addressing are: keeping
> things like content and site architecture separate from look
> and feel; presenting interactive elements like animation and
> roll-overs; and conveying how the site will look after it's
> been translated into HTML on various browsers and platforms
> and at various screen resolutions.
well, site architecture vs. site look is quite easy... we present a
site map that details the structure of the site... the navigation
design often reflects some of that site map... the design itself
shows the home page and any content pages that would be from a
different 'template'... we always present on-screen (often
Photoshop files so we can switch layers on and off), and not via
PDF... we include aliased greek text to show how copy might flow,
and wrap the entire design in chrome... we show at the smallest
size the site will accomodate, and show a sample of how it might
scale, if it all... we don't print them out, doing that brings
consternation over color and font sizing all too often, so we avoid it
since it clearly confuses the client... we have no real reason to
show how some sites will look on alternative browsers, since some
will look the same for the most part and we can describe what will
be different... for CSS-driven sites, we show how it would look for
non-CSS browsers... rollovers are just shown as if it were a screen-
cap with the mouse in place... animations are described, or even
story-boarded if necessary, but never built...
> I'd love to hear about how you deal with these and other
> issues, and what your presentation process is like in
> general: does your look and feel presentation include just a
the presentation is informal and held wherever the client wants...
we'll show on their machines, our machines, third-party machines,
projecters, etc... it doesn't matter since it will conceivably be seen
on any one of those anyway at some point when it is built...
> home page and a secondary page? Do you present as Acrobats
> or GIFs, or something else? What are the major milestones?
> Will you make design changes after programming has begun?
> And so on.
we never begin coding until the client has signed off... once the
client has signed off, no design changes occur unless the client
pays for out-of-scope work -- they've already approved it, and we
aren't going to re-do our work at every whim and go over budget...
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