Only: Guest Lecture
Only are a Design studio based in the centre of Leeds at Monroe house, the specialise in digital design and branding strategy, working for company’s as big as Austin martin and goldsmiths university, it was founded by 2 young men and is now run by 4 people. The idea for their lecture was to go through their design strategies and how they work and then show us some of their finished projects.
Starting with how to design for screen, the perceptions that people have of web designers is that they need to be able to code, they aren’t real designers they just set the design up and that it can be boring. What web designers actually need is the ability to communicate a vision and work with other disciplines, not to be able to code themselves but to work with a coder to create the finished outcome. Initially it may have being boring but technology now has made web design limitless meaning there is much more that can be done.
Usually on a clients deliverables list, in today’s society a screen design is usually wanted, some sort of animation, web design or Internet based design. There are now endless opportunities and it’s a fast paced business that’s constantly evolving.
They ran us through their design process...
Research> wire framing > visual design > front end
Research is where the ideas stem from, it looks at business objectives and audience perceptions, to do this they make up profiles of people that the product would be aimed at, giving them a specific person to target the represents the mass they want to target when the finished product is done, this helps because the profile can then be referred back to and checked against the designs at every stage.
Wire framing is a stage I have heard of but don’t use very much due to the lack of websites I have built for projects however in the project I am working on at the moment I am working on one, s this will help me a lot. The idea is to sketch out ideas and prototypes, and then test with users for accessibility and aesthetics, making sure the websites structure and look will be fit for purpose.
Only showed us some wire frames they had done for a company, they explained that they are
Boring looking black and white boxes, but this is the step that tests if the audience are finding the things they need to, they test their assumptions.
Visual design is the step after this stage, it takes the wire framing and the way its structured and places it into a way that looks aesthetically pleasing, the designers come up with flats and prototypes working with the front end developers, this is a back and forth relationship between stages until the project is done, web designers have also started to make their sites tablet and phone accessible.
Spy- London design agency
New co- Leeds Design Company
