nüregime (TM) Web Design - Branding - Graphics

We've all heard it time and time again: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail". Before we create any graphics, we make a wire frame or "white site" model. But before we even begin to work with our wire frame model, we sketch. We listen to your ideas, then we make a diagram of the pages you want in the site, draw simple boxes that represent each page and write the page's title inside, use lines to indicate how the sections of the site will link together and sketch simple ideas such as what do we want on the header, where to place the navigation menus or an action button, etc…

Many of our clients that live in the area of San Diego and have had the opportunity of coming to our studio have notice that on my desk, I keep an open metal case of traditional drafting pencils and some mechanical pencils as well. Yes we use pencil and paper before we even touch the keyboard.

Have you seen the pencil the hopper is holding in his left hand?

Well, that is the most basic instrument in the hands of a good designer, and we use it… for real. The goal is to provide a single-page overview of your site that will act as a guide to constructing the wire frame.

What is a wire frame?

Example: In the world of animation, a wire frame is a working model of a character without color, skin, clothing or hair. This way, the animators can easily test the model and make modifications to it before a great deal of money is spent in developing its finer points. This principle can also be very valuable when building a website.

Wire framing a website involves building a text-only version of the site, with working links, but without graphic detail. Within this working model of the website, the links can be followed through, which provides a real feel for how the information on your site connects and how the site flows. I find this technique extremely helpful in keeping me focused on the content first and foremost. Once I've worked that out, I can then begin to add to the wire frame the skin (i.e. the graphic content) that supports the content.

We have evolved in the way we construct sites.

Before content design was possible, we would design the layout first and then just add the content. With the coming of CSS, we are able to design content first; therefore it is important to have the content first, even before we start to design. The principle is that: “Design Adjusts to Content” and not the other way around. We first take your content and build the user experience integrating design as needed.

To make this step of the process easy for you to follow, we have developed visual charts with navigations where you can easily see the site structure and make changes such as making a page into a sub-page, rename top-level navigation and more.