5. Design

Design is so much more than pretty graphics. Building upon all the great work we have done in the research, planning and content stages, now comes where things really start to take shape.

Wireframes

There is far more to a successful design than taking a wireframe and adding some images and colour to it. Wireframes are skeleton pages for clients to understand better how the pages would fit together and some light prototyping to explain in more detail than just text. The layout of the wireframes should be irrelevant to the completed design. As an Aberdeen web design team, we have built our fair share of wireframes.

Website theme

A big part of the design is building around a theme. Every design decision should be based on the theme that you have established in the previous planning stage. By theme, I mean a design style that is created. For instance, this site is built around "professionalism yet friendly".

This site's blue isn't just some random shot in the dark, blue is seen as a colour of trust. That's the reason why most banks' colours are blue. We want to show you can trust us, and the blue reinforces that. Media Surgery also wants to be seen as skilled yet easy to chat to, and good to work with and without the technical jargon. Whilst the message and theme can change in the future, the design has to fit the theme.

Real world project

House Of Mulben is built around the freedom of the outdoors. The feature on the home page with the 3D-like woodland and the picture of the forest gets the visitors to think of being and relaxing in the beautiful surroundings of Speyside. The strong rigid outdoor fonts and colours only help to reinforce the theme. There are a lot of elements to balance in a well-performing site, but the theme is an important underpinning of a successful website.