Articles from July 2009

I come from a print background and moving from print to web has obvious differences; margins need to be tighter, screen dpi is smaller but the main challenge I discovered was designing with web standard fonts. In print I can use hundreds if not thousands of typefaces, in web I use Verdana, Arial and Georgia. Using the same three fonts day in day out is tiring, there's only so many times you can capitalise Verdana or underscore Arial. Having said that, 2009 is said to be the year of typography in web design, with many new techniques such as Typekit in development.

Flash has been about since 1996, and has since built up a progression of uses and options for deployment, commonly to add animation or interactivity. The impact of flash on webpage (if done correctly) can give some lovely visual effects and really bring a page to life.

However it does have some down sides, before any design through flash can be achieved, you of course need the application, currently a new install of flash CS4 would cost around £620. In terms of a webpage, the flash content is completely invisible to search engines and visual impaired user tools (like screen readers), designers can get carried away with design and so file sizes increase rapidly, slowing down page load times and increasing server strain for busy sites.