The Structure Principle

Design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with overall user interface architecture.

The Simplicity Principle

The design should make simple, common tasks easy, communicating clearly and simply in the user's own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures.

The Visibility Principle

The design should make all needed options and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don't overwhelm users with alternatives or confuse with unneeded information.

The Feedback Principle

The design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.

The Tolerance Principle

The design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable actions.

The Reuse Principle

The design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.

Create a Mock-Up or Prototype

After thinking through the paper description of the design, it's time to build something more concrete that can be shown to users and that can act as a more detailed description for further work. In the early stages of a simple design, this concrete product might be as simple as a series of paper sketches showing the interface while a user steps through one of the representative tasks.

UI Design Process

The user interface design of your website or application should be organized in a useful, clear, and consistent manner. This is a step-by-step look at the UI design process, where each phase of the process is outlined and explained, from initial rough sketches all the way to final design.

Flyers are Still Effective

You will find that an effective design in printed material can help you develop your brand by delivering your company's specific message to a targeted audience.

Outdoor Advertising Display

For advertising campaigns that need to reach a broad audience within a distinct geographic area, outdoor advertising can be a very effective solution. Ranging from billboards to street banners, truck-side ads, or transit advertising, such as bus wraps or train station advertising, outdoor advertising can blanket an area with your message over a significant period of time.

No, I want to go paperless

A lot of people are surprised that catalogs even exist anymore. It costs a lot of money to create and mail a first rate catalog and the Internet was supposed to handle the catalog job. What happened? The answer turns out to be pretty complicated. Even with everyone on the Internet, catalogs are still mail in the billions and the reason from the marketers' perspective is the foundation of direct marketing: catalogs work! They more than pay for the costs of getting them into the hands of customers and prospects.

You can draw... if you draw

There is a widely held belief that drawing is a gift. That some people are born drawers and that others are just out of luck and did not get the drawing gene. We often overhear people say, "I wish I could draw". Perhaps you hear yourself say that too. Drawing is not a gift. It is a skill. A skill that we can all learn to a high degree of technical competency. The practice of this skill brings joy and deeper appreciation of life.