The Design Process
Saturday 20th November 2010
Join us for the last Presents event of the year, featuring three Multipack regulars; Gareth Brown, Andy Higgs and Paul Lloyd, as they talk about wireframing, AB testing, style guides and more. We meet beforehand at the Old Crown in Digbeth for lunch and a pint, before heading to the offices of One Black Bear for the presentations.
Event Details
Styleguides for the Web
Paul Robert Lloyd
Our industry has approached a turning point in how we develop websites. As the number of devices we need to accommodate increases, so the flexibility and adaptability of our designs needs greater consideration. Yet at the same time, designers need constraints and creative control over a project.
In this session, Paul will discuss how clearly communicating the fundamental aspects of your design during the different stages of a project can help you better communicate with clients, developers and your peers, and ensure your vision doesn't get lost in the transformation from static comp to dynamic, every changing website.
Wireframing & A/B Testing
Gareth Brown
Like the structure of any good building, a website needs a good framework and blueprint to render its construction as pain-free a process as possible. These critical first steps allow web designers and developers to build speedily and efficiently.
Websites will never be perfect from day 1 and should never be considered 'finished'. It is best to consider them as living, breathing entities that require nurturing and care in order for them to grow, evolve and live a longer life.
Gareth will plot the journey of wireframing, from conception to delivery. Then identify weaknesses, and how using A/B testing can lead to improved results.
Improve Your Image: Photoshop Techniques
Andy Higgs
Everyone possesses a toolkit of their own tricks of the trade, and in this session Andy will share a number of his own practical techniques for manipulating and improving image content for the web, using industry standard image editing applications like Photoshop and Fireworks.
Speakers
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Paul Lloyd
Paul is a Graphic Designer specialising in interaction design and front-end web development. Having worked for small design agencies in England and burgeoning start-ups in California, he quickly realised which he preferred, and now works for user experience agency Clearleft in Brighton, Sussex.
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Gareth Brown
Gareth is a founding partner of One Black Bear. Since starting the agency, Gareth has been instrumental in shaping the online personality of many clients from their web presence to their social media strategy.
His recent work includes the Cream Awards-nominated site for Subaru UK, National Express and The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, plus many more local and national brands.
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Andy Higgs
Andy Higgs is a 25 year old web designer and developer working in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. Whilst at university studying industrial design, he started The Higgs Design Co., a web and graphic studio, which specialises in producing original design work for organisations including the O2 Academies, RateMyPlacement, Rattle, Channel 4, the BBC and Umbro.