Design by Kyle McDonald on March 15, 2016
At Ninjality we take pride in creating the highest quality designs for our users. This is always applicable to any design job that we do including web and graphic design. I will honestly say our design process is not that unique or too groundbreaking but it is a solid structure that always seems to do the trick for us. Our design process has four main steps which include: sketch, mockup, program, and make changes. These steps help us keep a consistent workflow in each project and not only that but it also helps us keep in mind why we made the design choices we did. So with this in mind I’ll take you into more detail for each step of our design process.
During these phase of our design process is when we really gather the ideas that we want to do in our design. Most of these ideas come from either the client or by doing research on comparable things that relate to the design. With this step we establish a rough sketch of the website and lay it out in the most user friendly way we can. This also gives us an opportunity to really fine-tune the design from the beginning. Most of the time our sketches occur on graph paper and are then shared throughout the team. Doing it through this sort of medium makes it really easy to make quick changes to the design so we don’t waste our time later down the road.
The mockup phase of our design process is where we take the previously drawn sketch and turn it into a visually appealing design that we can show the client. This step helps us a lot because sometimes our sketch doesn’t translate over to the digital world as well as we originally thought. This gives an opportunity to tinker with the design a bit more before we start writing actual code for the website. This phase as stated previously is also shown to the client. We want to make sure the client is satisfied completely with the design before we start putting in the longer man hours to actually code the site. This is not only beneficial to us but it helps get a design into the clients hands a lot faster.
This step is pretty simple; we take all the information gathered from the sketch and mockup phase and turn it into code. Depending on the project we use different things but for web design we obviously code the website in HTML and some kind of CSS framework. This process varies in length depending on the complexity of the project but with the previous steps completed it is definitely a lot faster than starting from scratch at this step.
This step as well is pretty self explanatory. Sometimes either we or the client don’t like some design elements once it is turned into a usable site. So from the program step we make the necessary changes to satisfy not only us but also, and more importantly, the client. Normally this step is the last but sometimes we have to go back in steps to make sure we have the perfect end product for the client.
So as stated before our design process isn’t too revolutionary but it does get the job done. We take pride in looking at every detail when starting a new project for a client and this process definitely gives us the opportunity to do so. If you have any questions or recommendations to add to our process we would love to hear your feedback!