Project Overview

I have been working on and off with Never Paint Again since 2008, with the site having gone through many changes over the years I am excited to be a part of it’s latest manifestation.

Back in early 2008 www.neverpaintagain.co.uk looked quite different. Purely HTML and CSS based the site was over 400 pages of static content and needless to say a bit of a nightmare to update. A change to the header needed 400+ pages to be edited… individually. So, in 2008 I redesigned the site into a more manageable PHP solution, looking back it wasn’t the best solution at the time but it made a very large site much easier to manage.

After a year or so and with the emergence of WordPress as more than just a blogging tool, it was clear NPA would be better served on a CMS. Unfortunately largely down to my workload at the time I was unable to undertake the project and work was passed onto another designer. Without going into any details that didn’t turn out too well and in early 2010 I was asked to undertake some more work for NPA. Along with several other projects tidying up the existing WordPress installation became a priority and a much needed new look was born.

With lots of work still to do on the site you can rest assured there will be many more exciting developments to come and I look forward to working with NPA for many years to come.

Project Overview

With more than 20 years experience in the display business Retrospective Displays cater for commercial, municipal, charity and an ever growing band of discerning individual customers.

Their line up has a distinctly retrospective feel with reproduction British heritage icons, interpretative and commemorative plaques and panels and a strong promotional range including exhibition kits and leaflet dispensers.

Retrospective Displays is built using WordPress and makes use of the WP-ecommerce and Contact Form 7 plugins.

Check out Retrospective Displays Facebook page here.

The guys over at Lateral – Design & Technology with Passion have gone above and beyond with their about us page. It just goes to show an about us page doesn’t have to be a boring page nobody one reads, this one is a lot of fun and a real cool feature of the site.

The web looks very different today than it did 10 years ago.

Back in 1994, Yahoo had only just launched, most websites were text-based and Amazon, Google and eBay had yet to appear. But, says usability guru Dr Jakob Nielsen, some things have stayed constant in that decade, namely the principles of what makes a site easy to use. Dr Nielsen has looked back at a decade of work on usability and considered whether the 34 core guidelines drawn up back then are relevant to the web of today. "Roughly 80% of the things we found 10 years ago are still an issue today," he said. "Some have gone away because users have changed and 10% have changed because technology has changed."

Sites for sore eyes

Some design crimes, such as splash screens that get between a user and the site they are trying to visit, and web designers indulging their artistic urges have almost disappeared, said Dr Nielsen. "But there’s great stability on usability concerns," he told the BBC News website. Dr Nielsen said the basic principles of usability, centring on ease of use and clear thinking about a site’s total design, were as important as ever. "It’s necessary to be aware of these things as issues because they remain as such," he said. They are still important because the net has not changed as much as people thought it would. "A lot of people thought that design and usability was only a temporary problem because broadband was taking off," he said. "But there are a very small number of cases where usability issues go away because you have broadband."

Design decision

Dr Nielsen said the success of sites such as Google, Amazon, eBay and Yahoo showed that close attention to design and user needs was important. "Those four sites are extremely profitable and extremely successful," said Dr Nielsen, adding that they have largely defined commercial success on the net. "All are based on user empowerment and make it easy for people to do things on the internet," he said. "They are making simple but powerful tools available to the user. "None of them have a fancy or glamorous look," he added, declaring himself surprised that these sites have not been more widely copied. In the future, Dr Nielsen believes that search engines will play an even bigger part in helping people get to grips with the huge amount of information online. "They are becoming like the operating system to the internet," he said. But, he said, the fact that they are useful now does not mean that they could not do better. Currently, he said, search sites did not do a very good job of describing the information that they return in response to queries. Often people had to look at a website just to judge whether it was useful or not. Tools that watch the behaviour of people on websites to see what they actually find useful could also help refine results. Research by Dr Nielsen shows that people are getting more sophisticated in their use of search engines. The latest statistics on how many words people use on search engines shows that, on average, they use 2.2 terms. In 1994 only 1.3 words were used. "I think it’s amazing that we have seen a doubling in a 10-year period of those search terms," said Dr Nielsen.

You can hear more from Jakob Nielsen and web design on the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital

By Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News website

The Internet is constantly changing. BusinessWeek.com spoke to a bevy of experts and distilled the must-follow rules top online designers live by in 2008

Since the Internet emerged as a major force, altering everything from the way people work to the way they date, it has been a roller-coaster ride that made the world giddy. Microsoft, Netscape, et al. fought the browser wars, Web standards were championed, and the Web became community-minded and social, ushering in the reign of Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. From boom to bust and back again, with staggering amounts of money changing hands at every point, the online industry rides on with no end in sight.

The Net has also attracted prophets, gurus, theorists, and evangelists of every stripe. Many of their promised game-changing technologies—Jini, DHTML, and countless others—never panned out, while seemingly simple innovations—metadata, XML, and CSS—have led to major breakthroughs. Meanwhile, Web design vogues from the effervescent jumble of HotWired to the stark utility of Google have continued to evolve and become more contradictory—and entrenched.

To try and make sense of it all, BusinessWeek.com canvassed a broad range of Internet luminaries to discover the design rules they live by right now. Contributors ranged from the guru of Web usability, Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, to the design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, and John Maeda, president-elect of the Rhode Island School of Design. These 10 commandments of Web design for 2008 are the combined results of our survey. For the full list of contributors, see the end of the story.

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.

Adobe’s popular Web animation technology powers everything from the much-vaunted Nike Plus Web site for running diehards to many humdrum banner advertisements. But the technology can easily be abused—excessive, extemporaneous animations confuse usability and bog down users’ Web browsers.

2. Thou shalt not hide content.

Advertisements may be necessary for a site’s continued existence, but usability researchers say pop-ups and full-page ads that obscure content hurt functionality—and test a reader’s willingness to revisit. Elective banners—that expand or play audio when a user clicks on them—are much less intrusive.

3. Thou shalt not clutter.

The Web may be the greatest archive of all time, but sites that lack a coherent structure make it impossible to wade through information. Amazon.com and others put their sites’ information hierarchy at the top of their list of design priorities.

4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.

Apple often sets the standard for slick and cool—in all forms of design. But some experts say the company’s habit of creating glassy reflections under photos of its products has been far too commonly copied, turning the style element into a cliché.

5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.

The Web has brought with it a strange nomenclature that’s only got weirder over time. Hip, smart Web sites have been named either with a superfluous number of vowels or strategically deleted ones. Cases in point: Flickr, Smibs, and Meebo. These names are memorable but destined to sound dated.

6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.

Designers say that despite the increase in broadband penetration, plain text has gotten a second wind in cutting-edge Web design. Mainstream sites such as Craigslist have led the way, while designer-oriented sites such as Coudal Partners and John Gruber’s popular Daring Fireball blog represent the cutting edge.

7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.

Merely looking good doesn’t cut it anymore. Sites like Facebook and YouTube draw in users with compelling content and functionality. Creating Web sites that can capture and hold users’ attention is what matters most.

8. Thou shalt be social.

Web 2.0 is everywhere. MySpace and similar sites only launched the trend of having users communicate and interact—sometimes obsessively—on browser-based sites. Designers are now filtering those same elements into diverse sites, from smart advertising to online office productivity.

9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.

Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, and their cohorts have become a part of daily life. Sites that can incorporate these elements into their design will connect with users in a meaningful way by providing functionality and an interface with which they’re already familiar.

10. Thou shalt make content king.

Though the slogan is old, it still stands. Aesthetic design can only go so far in making a site successful. Beautiful can’t make up for empty.

by Matt Vella