Everything evolves over time; fashion, music, recipes, and especially art. Web design is no different. With constant updates in technology, trends and tastes, websites face the challenge of staying up to speed. We’re the first to admit when a website could use some spring cleaning, and our website was in need of some TLC. Our tastes as an agency have progressed through time and we became increasingly eager to spruce up our website.
So what did we do to get started?
First, we researched. The most difficult part of turning any creative vision into reality is getting out of first gear. The best way to start the creative process, whether it be for a website, print design, or photography, is to find inspiration. We drew inspiration from our favorite creative websites and took a good look at current agency trends. This is a crucial step we follow before beginning any project for our clients as well.
Then we wrote, re-wrote, edited and wrote again.
Before we could start designing our website, we had to figure out exactly what we wanted to say. We wanted our personality to shine through our words, while being informative and to the point so our audience could quickly and easily understand who we are and what we do.
Next came the fun part – the visuals.
We’re masters at transforming information into a visually compelling piece of art. Just like getting dressed in the morning, we had to decide what our website would look like. Would our website be wearing a suit and tie? Would it be more relaxed, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie? Our final decision was to fall somewhere in-between. The consensus was to make our website as friendly as possible while also showing utmost professionalism – you can call it business casual.
How did we accomplish this?
We created a minimalistic color palette paired with large vector graphics and a mixture of classic and modern design elements to create the best possible user experience. Big, bold rollover effects act as a tour guide so you can get to the meat of the website as quickly as possible with no distractions.
Our driving force was to make it as easy as possible to get in contact with us (after knocking your socks off, of course) so we cut out all the extra fluff normally found in many websites. Instead of creating visual stoplights, we turned every signal green by creating an extremely simplified navigation and contact function on every page. Websites are far from simple, and our lives are busy. Viewers have less and less time in todays world to dedicate to digging through websites. It is vital that a “less is more” approach is always taken into consideration when designing.
In addition to a big, bold and beautiful website, we accompanied our redesign with new custom diecut agency cards. Snail mail isn’t dead – and who doesn’t like receiving personal hand-written messages, a rarity in our digital age? We created a series of thank-you, birthday, and branded cards with the same minimalistic look and feel of our website to send to our clients, friends and family as needed or just becasue.
We’re extremely proud of our new website and branding – but a true artist will tell you that no piece of work they produce is ever “finished”. They will always find something in their work which they would like to tweak or adjust. There are best practices to follow and rules of design which will never change, but each website is always evolving. The DAY Vision website will continue to develop and grow as we do as an agency, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.