D856C
12-16-2006, 07:58 AM
Reading the forum subject you can see Client-side > Concept, Layout, Graphics & Multimedia
Clearly the way the heading is worded means your concept is not graphics or multimedia, and not layout. Okay, whats a website concept and how do you develop one?
One way to understand the idea of a concept or theme is to see what happens when you don't have one.
One site had a flash header with the word balance in it. Beautiful Flash effects danced around, but nothing else on the site mentioned balance. A website design firm used a stock photograph of a lone tree on a grassy landscape. Why? Why not. Sites without concepts are visual trivia, images so completely seperated from text they have absolutely no relationship to it. (There is one, primitive relationship: proximity -- images and text share the same layout container) Sure, the colors work. And the image fits the layout. But there is no site concept.
The same site header can use balance in text, when describing the business philosophy. (Yes, superficial as it was, the header was for a business consultancy.) Go ahead, use the fancy header, but then tie it directy and clearly into the basic operating principles of the business.
A tree can be used as a visual figure of speech for how the sites you build grow along with the needs of the client. Perhaps that's why you use a CMS. Perhaps that's why you do more site planning that the typical web designer. In any event, the concept for the site connects the different elements and creates a business identity. Contrary to popular opinion, business identities aren't logos.
A logo is a logo. A business identity is what your site concept communicates. Your site concept supports your unique selling proposition.
In the movies, art directors are usually responsible for creating the “look and feel” of the film. In advertising and print work, art directors (often teamed up with a copywriter) come up with “concepts,” the creative ideas which communicate with us on a gut level through such devices as theme, metaphor, and symbolism.
-- A List Apart Art Direction and the Web (http://alistapart.com/articles/artdirweb)
Art direction isn't graphic design any more than an ant farm is a city. And the site concept isn't the layout, graphics and multimedia any more than an autoparts store is a car.
Clearly the way the heading is worded means your concept is not graphics or multimedia, and not layout. Okay, whats a website concept and how do you develop one?
One way to understand the idea of a concept or theme is to see what happens when you don't have one.
One site had a flash header with the word balance in it. Beautiful Flash effects danced around, but nothing else on the site mentioned balance. A website design firm used a stock photograph of a lone tree on a grassy landscape. Why? Why not. Sites without concepts are visual trivia, images so completely seperated from text they have absolutely no relationship to it. (There is one, primitive relationship: proximity -- images and text share the same layout container) Sure, the colors work. And the image fits the layout. But there is no site concept.
The same site header can use balance in text, when describing the business philosophy. (Yes, superficial as it was, the header was for a business consultancy.) Go ahead, use the fancy header, but then tie it directy and clearly into the basic operating principles of the business.
A tree can be used as a visual figure of speech for how the sites you build grow along with the needs of the client. Perhaps that's why you use a CMS. Perhaps that's why you do more site planning that the typical web designer. In any event, the concept for the site connects the different elements and creates a business identity. Contrary to popular opinion, business identities aren't logos.
A logo is a logo. A business identity is what your site concept communicates. Your site concept supports your unique selling proposition.
In the movies, art directors are usually responsible for creating the “look and feel” of the film. In advertising and print work, art directors (often teamed up with a copywriter) come up with “concepts,” the creative ideas which communicate with us on a gut level through such devices as theme, metaphor, and symbolism.
-- A List Apart Art Direction and the Web (http://alistapart.com/articles/artdirweb)
Art direction isn't graphic design any more than an ant farm is a city. And the site concept isn't the layout, graphics and multimedia any more than an autoparts store is a car.