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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Design that works, May 1, 1998
By A Customer
Web Design is more than good design. Good design is necessarybut not sufficient. It needs to be complemented by clever design. Thisis the point that gets driven home by the book from Adjacency. And funnily enough, its not just talk - all the concepts are tried and tested. It is refreshingly different to read a "how to" book that gets down from the pulpit of painful platitudes and makes a big deal about techniques and tricks that really work. Not to short circuit great design, but to augment it, for a medium that is bursting out of its technological seams for the last three years. Conquering the trade off between high graphics and high download speeds, making pictures bleed off the page without scrolling, how to design for the 640-480 monitor as well as the 800-600 monitor (a personal favourite) - these are some of the magic tricks that the book shares. In addition, the attention paid to site management, updating, information design and branding, are eye-openers to web designers overly preoccupied with the interface design. The profile of the authors is really where the book takes off. Pascal (love the name!), who can't figure out whether he's a designer or a programmer. And Andrew Sather, with training in graphic design, creative writing and art history, there's always enough in the book to suggest a level of thinking that requires the burst of brilliance made possible by the synergy of distinct disciplines. Proving once again that the web is really the Wild West for interdisciplinary cowboys. Take the issue of branding. The book suggests the creation of a brand board - a practice not uncommon in real-life branding and communication exercises. The idea is to create a set of visuals, images, words and actually create a collage that is used by the design people. Further, there is also a clear need to develop a user profile (beyond saying NRI or all Indians). The user profile needs to get into psychographics, demographics and technographics. The last refers both to the kind of comp! uting infrastructure and access to the net, browser preferences, screen resolution and the like, as well as their attitude to technology, information and browsing habits. A particularly interesting technique to handle mutiple browsers, for example, is to use large images with transparent GIFs and hypertext. The background image can be a JPEG, which will exactly fit a 600-800 screen. But the text and the foreground are all designed to fit the 640-480 screen. The bottom and right end of the image, therefore, are areas which are not always seen and serve primarily to present a complete picture. The compression can be increased in this area, so that the overall file size stays small. Clearly, there is no reason to succumb to the trade-off between rich images and download times. Instead there must always be a push to break the trade-off to achieve both. It is this thinking which, more than anything else is the signature of "Creating Killer Interactive Web Sites". The authors don't stop at design, they highlight the need to stay in touch with the client after the launch. Quarterly reviews of competing sites and updates on technology are some of the things that you can do to promote the relationship and elevate it to a new plane. The site launch has not been ignored either. A site needs to be launched with some fanfare. A press conference, an event, a competition or an on line event are some of the things that you can do to promote the site at launch. The drama of unveiling the site has a certain power that makes the site larger than life. This is another good idea that has actually been implemented. Using the web itself should be a natural corollary while talking about it. After all, as the final chapter in the book says, "A web Site Manager's work is never done. For a great web site to remain viable, it must grow and evolve visually, editorially, functionally and technologically. Your site must at a minimum, stay abreast of devel! opments in your business. Ideally, you will continually evaluate your site's effectiveness vis-à-vis your business objectives and its usefulnesxs from the point of view of the user."
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