Blog - Dayspring Web Design and Development » Graphic Design

Compliments to the graphic design chef

John G. — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:41:23 +0000

You have to feel pretty good when the vendor that is pitching you is apologizing for its own website after looking at yours. “Went wild with praise” is the operative term in the email thread below.

Nice work design team!

Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 11:23 AM

To: (Dir. Marketing)
Cc: (EVP)
Subject: IOA Web Design has the [...]

Typekit Fonts get attention at DrupalCon

Bruce Y. — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:37:41 +0000

Here’s a font resource that I heard about at DrupalCon:

Typekit – The easiest way to use Real Fonts on your website

Description from their website:

Typekit is the easiest way to use real fonts on the web. It’s a subscription-based service for linking [...]

A Graphical Toolkit for Visualizing Data

Janet M. — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:41:52 +0000

Came across Protovis as I was thinking about different ways to report financial data for EEBA. There’s a good gallery of examples. Some of the examples show the same data presented in different formats. A great exercise to determine what types of graphic best represents different types of data.

Love me, Love my Mega Menus

John G. — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:34:00 +0000

Our creative team used these very successfully in Jameco and IOA, both of which fit the typical use cases of lots of category hierarchy and high volume of hierarchical content. I’m currently planning to work them in for a new client which doesn’t fit the above. Why?

In this client’s case, the content is pretty limited, [...]

25 New High Quality Free Fonts

Young-Ki K. — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:02:00 +0000

This post is intended largely for the design team. Need more fonts?

25 New High Quality Free Fonts – Smashing Magazine

Alternately, check out the Typekit subscription service to get access to Open Type fonts.

Where Am I? Breadcrumbs In Web Design

Young-Ki K. — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:49:15 +0000

A basic primer on breadcrumb navigation. Covers topics such as when and when not to use them, the three main types, design considerations, design mistakes, and using them together with drop down sub-menus.

Also includes a gallery of examples.

Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices – Smashing Magazine

Progress Indicators in Web Design

Young-Ki K. — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:45:09 +0000

A good primer to implementing ‘progress indicators’ in interface design. Includes discussion on different uses of progress indicators (not just for store checkouts), best practices, and when not to use them.

Progress Trackers in Web Design: Examples and Best Practices – Smashing Magazine

Keep Content Above the Fold? Breaking the Myth

Young-Ki K. — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:44:43 +0000

An article that questions the theory of making sure all content shows up above the fold.

Over the last 6 years we’ve watched over 800 user testing sessions between us and on only 3 occasions have we seen the page fold as a barrier to users getting to the content they want.

The myth of the page fold: [...]

A Website Redesign: 5 Months Later

Chi-Ming — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:48:11 +0000

It’s been just about 5 months since we re-launched the Dayspring website with a fresh design and a custom content management system. We’ve gotten quite a few positive comments on the site’s clean, precise look.

But how has the site performed? Sure it’s a laudable goal to make the Web more beautiful, but, [...]

Fancy Fonts with Cufon

Jeff W. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:12:12 +0000

Janet recently found a site that is using non-standard fonts for most of their text. As we explored the site to figure out how they were doing this, we found Cufon. Cufon allows for text replacement similar to sIFR, but without the use of Flash. This opens up design possibilities using more fonts without making [...]