Things I've Learned About Design - the 6-month list.

When August rolls around,  it will mark 6 months at my current (awesome) internship.  I had intended to start a blog quite early in those 6 months, at the urging of my (superhero-status) supervisor - so I started taking notes.  I called them "things I learned about design today."  As work got busier, some days I forgot about the list - okay some weeks I forgot about the list - and here I am, approaching the 6 month mark.  It seemed as appropriate a time as any to write this post.  So here are some things that I've learned in my 6 months of interning.  Some of these will seem painfully obvious - but they made an impression on me, so I'm going to share them.

1.)  A single uniftying theme - like a color - can be the basis for greatness in a web design.  Stay true to it, but don't get carried away.

2.) You have no idea how happy it makes a developer/designer to receive files that are optimized, in the right format, and/or sliced correctly.   I worked on a site where I was given that were all set to simply be uploaded and plugged into the CSS and working on that site was an utter, utter joy!

3.) CSS sprites are terrific - especially in the case of a nav bar that is all images and includes a hover state.

4.) Flash sites are very cool and dynamic, but they are also snobs.  Like the group of kids at school who everyone wanted to be, but usually never got to hang out with.  Like the hot guy or girl who is totally out of your league, flash sites can be beautiful, fun and allow for effects that wow the user, but they can also be frustratingly inaccessible if you don't have the right tools to view them.  And I know that when I'm browsing the web, I get pretty irritated when a site requires that I download or install something in order to see their content.  In short, flash sites are high maintenance, both for the user and the maintainer - and are something to be indulged in with care.

• pros - dynamic, exciting, look cutting-edge. 
• cons - load time, user accessibility

5.)  Set parameters with a client on what work you'll do on their site, and for how long.  Projects can become hugely and unnecessarily time-consuming when neither you nor the client knows where to draw the line.  A website needs to a.) not be designed by committee and b.) have a deadline.
Even if the client is launching their first site - actually, especially if - having a clear view of what and how long your role in that process is will be helpful to them.  Much more helpful than you holding their hand and making every tiny change they ask for on the whim of every person who might possibly want input.

6.)  Don't use fixed size design if at all possible.  Different users will have different browser sizes and different viewing preferences.  Sites need to be flexible in response to changes in font-size preferences to be more user friendly and a window that scrolls side to side in a browser window, rather than resizing the content to fit, is simply a bad idea.  And on that note - make sure that your designs don't rely on an ability to fit content perfectly into a certain space based on font sizes.  Its a pain to set up, a pain to maintain, and will break if the user tries to view the site in a larger or smaller font.

7.)  Avoid using the phrase "click here."  This surprised me when I came across it, but it actually makes sense.  "Click here" doesn't add any meaning to the content in the site - and people click on everything that looks like a link these days.  So use something that is descriptive of the information that they'll receive if they click the link, and rely on the link styles and people's curiosity to do the rest.