Creative Design meets Creative Development

Author: Mitch Renton 18/8/2011

The web has certainly changed a lot in recent years, most recently so with the introduction of HTML5 and CSS3. The bridge between design and development is diminishing and this can only be a good thing for the web design community.

But, let’s not get carried away just yet. We’re still very much aware of the existence of pre-historic browsers such as IE6 and 7. Unfortunately, we can’t ignore them just yet but thankfully there are tools out there that will make these browsers play nicely.

A good starting point with any web design project is to scope out the existing audience for that particular site. Google Analytics does a great job of supplying us with the browsers that users to that particular site are operating on. Keeping an eye on the latest browser stats are also a must.

For instance, if you find that no users are accessing your site with IE6 then there’s no need for a PNG fix. Likewise, if nobody is accessing your site with IE7 then lets not hold back using more pseudo elements in our CSS. Good research into the habits of your users will ultimately mean less of a workload (and less costs) when it comes to development time.

With the emergence of degradable CSS3 techniques it’s now possible to get creative with code. One thing that has always been difficult in the design process is illustrating interactions in Photoshop or Illustrator. Yes we can create animated Gifs but when showing interactions on a full mock up of a homepage too much quality is lost and ultimately we’re not doing our designs justice.

We’ve considered leaving the interactions until the development phase, giving our clients that extra something they weren’t expecting. Hopefully they’re already over-the-moon with the outcome of the design process, and once they start interacting with their site they might find themselves left without words!