Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
How do you design around the constraints of the digital medium? For your
audience to see your work in the optimal way, you need to figure out the pathways
through your work that will create a positive experience. Like many other stages in
the portfolio design process, planning and organization are key. As we work through
the stages of interface design below, remember that these steps are not separate from
the design. They are as much part of it as layout and graphics are.
Modularity
Designing a good portfolio is such a major project that it's hard to contemplate
doing it again. Eventually, you'll have to redesign, but it would be nice to put that
day off for a little while and just update. Unfortunately, many portfolio sites that
simply need updating don't get it, because doing so would be almost as much work as
recreating the original.
To avoid finding yourself among the group of people whose portfolios are never
current, try to approach every step of the interface design process with the word
“module” at the top of your mind. It's particularly important to think of modules
when designing a Flash site. If you are not yet an expert, you can fail to group inter-
face elements together in timeline layers, or make one-off objects instead of creating
reusable symbols. Your site may look great and run fine, but it's frozen—out of date
before its time because you can't add a new link to your main nav bar.
Stages are modules as well. They break a long and complicated event into dis-
crete pieces—maybe not bite-sized, but at least meal-sized. They are sequential, but
they are also iterative. That means you may get through a couple of them, discover
something you hadn't realized before, and have to return to an earlier stage and
rework it. That may seem awful when it happens, but in fact it's a good thing and you
should be glad you've caught the problem before you start production.
The interface design process can be summed up as four stages:
• Group
• ap
• Sche
atic
• Look and feel
These stages should be approached in order, because in good design the sche-
matic layout and the look-and-feel design are dependent on your earlier decisions. It's
impossible for a visual person to completely ignore visual considerations while work-
ing on the first two stages. (That's like being told not to think about pink elephants.)
But self-control will save you time and much reworking later.
