While not new, this post from Smashing Magazine on 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines is worthy of noting and keeping around as it is a round-up of specific issues and the of the results of the studies done on them.

INTERESTING POINTS

Users Scroll
The debate as to whether users scroll or not was one that came up often a year or two ago, so it’s great to see a study that says they do indeed scroll. Of course keeping key content ‘above the fold’ is still important, but all is not lost if it does fall below.

Blue is the best color for links
Good to know, but I’ll admit as a designer, a tough one to cater to at all times. It makes sense on sites like google and yahoo to have standard color links when you hope to have the world’s population clicking on them. But, if you have a specific look or branding that needs to be iterated on a site, it’s not going to be appropriate at all times. As long as a link is clearly delineated in some way, whether it be a much different color or underlining, it will still be usable. When appropriate, I try stick to blue.

Effective user testing doesn’t have to be extensive
That it doesn’t take many people to find the holes is helpful to know. I try to pay attention to the little voice in my head that might say ‘is this too ___’. Those nagging thoughts are usually right, but when working with large groups, there may be many people with valuable input and they don’t always agree. So it is extremely helpful to know that testing to a very small group is valuable and therefore, in many cases, actually doable.

As web sites become more streamlined, copy becomes even more critical. Leading the user through the site is accomplished not only through design but also, and possibly more importantly (did I say that), through words. The tricky part is to keep the text concise and, as I know from working on this redesign, it is tempting to say too much. There can be the feeling that there is always more information to convey. But, for a website there should be small bits of information that are easily scanned, then the decision can be made as where to go from there. I believe that people read online, but they mostly want to read articles of personal interest.

As a designer, I don’t claim to be a copywriter, but it has helped in mockups to throw suggestive copy, for content and length, rather than lorum ipsum. Often, since I am coming in fresh to the brand, I can provide insight on what someone new (ok, i’m not always the target audience I realize, but i can pretend) is going to be looking for or what would make sense to them.

Here are a few articles that better articulate these ideas (written by real writers).

Web Design from Scratch: Writing for the Web
A List Apart: Learn to Write
Provenance Unkown: Principles of Good Copywriting

Announcing the redesign and launch of Marker Design!

It was time for a long overdue site and brand update after working with the last logo for almost 10 years and the site not quite that long, thankfully.

This time around we went with a wordpress site for faster updates and blog integration. It’s based off the theme simplified2 from Themeforest. And, we are using Museo Sans as an embedded font.

A special thanks to Ben at DevPatch who helped wrangle this theme to our liking.

Next up…tackle the business cards!