Designing for WordPress and Web Design: Bridging the Gap Between Design and Development

Designing for WordPress and Web Design:
Bridging the Gap between Design and Development

Presented by: Ngaire Ackerley
Graphic and Web Designer/Front-end Developer
Photograph © Ngaire Ackerley

About me
Ngaire Ackerley
(Confused? It’s a New Zealand name - pronounced ‘Nigh-ree’)

• Graphic and web designer, front-end developer for LBDesign
• First class Honours in Computer Graphic Design, New Zealand
• Working in the design and web industry for over 6 years in NZ and the UK
• Working with WordPress for 2 years now

LBDesign
• Small Communications Design agency with offices in the UK and US
• Work with small to medium businesses and charities
• LBDesign co-organises the Philly ‘blurbs WordPress Meetup

http://lbdesign.tv http://designack.com twitter @ngaireackerley
ngaire@lbdesign.tv ngaire@designack.com Linkedin Ngaire Ackerley

What we’ll be covering today
Designing for users

Design Principles
• Guide the eye / Hierarchy
• Unity / Consistency
• Balance
• Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

Using WordPress and Web design to
implement design principles


Designing for Users
How do users think?

A Typical Website User:
• Appreciates quality and credibility
• Doesn’t read, they scan
• Is impatient and insist on instant gratification
• Doesn’t make optimal choices
• Will follow their intuition
• Wants to have control

Based on:
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/


Designing for Users
How to help users

• Don’t make users think
• Manage to focus users’ attention
• Strive for feature exposure
• Strive for simplicity
• Don’t be afraid of the white space
• Communicate effectively with a “visible language”

Based on:
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/


Website Design Principles
Guide the eye / Hierarchy

• Consider goals of website - this should drive where on the page the
content is positioned

• Consider positioning - like a newspaper, where design elements are on
a webpage, impacts on what order they are seen in

• Important information should be easy to find. Whether this is contact
information, a feature, a call to action or a logo


Example of Design Principles used to create Hierarchy

Size and
contrast
Alignment
Colour


Hierarchy in WordPress and Web design
Slideshows
• Consider how text and images can be combined to be informative

Multiple featured images
• Handy and simple way to include more than one image in a focus area

Page.ly MultiEdit Plugin
• Allows you to separate out main body content into tabs in the admin
• Could be useful for customising unique parts to the site


Slideshow
with text

Multiple
featured
images


Hierarchy in WordPress and Web design
Custom post types
• Useful for slideshows or custom header content such as testimonials if
you don’t want to use plugins

Blogs or news items
• Could consider highlighting a special or latest post with space, increased
font size, background colour, custom excerpt length


Unity / Consistency

• Making website elements relate and work well together
• Written content/message should also be consistent

Inconsistencies in a design are like spelling mistakes in an email.
They lower the quality and professionalism of a company


Unity / Consistency: In WordPress and
Web design
Templates
• Ask yourself ‘Why does this page need a new template?’
• Consistent sidebars

Branding
• Front-end of site
• CMS and login pages

Example: happytables
A company that produces
websites for restaurants,
consistent branding across
all levels of sites.


Web design

Menus and Navigation
• Consistency in thought process from top level > 2nd level > 3rd level
• Keep navigation easy to locate and keep the styling consistent
Dynamic Menus in WordPress
wp_list_pages


Web design
Image Sizes
• Consider setting up specific featured image sizes
• Consider adjusting images sizes in the settings panel
• Suggest to your users ideal image sizes so they fit within the design

Related Logos of different formats
• Shrink them down to be the same height, so they sit nicely in a row
• Consider making logos greyscale

Too much copy
• Consider using headings, bullet points and simple styling such as bold


Web design
Moderation: Consider everything in moderation

Colours
• Consider tones and density
• One or two bold colours with
one or two sub colours work
well to guide the eye through
the hierarchy
• Let images bring more colour
into the site as needed

http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp http://colorschemedesigner.com/


Web design
Fonts and styles
• Pick 1-2 fonts and limit the weight/styles that you use

Consider the little things
• Breadcrumbs
• Pagination, arrows and ‘Read more »’ links
• Link states
• Style core tags like <h1>, <a> and in a way that they
default to the correct style across the site

Web design

http://www.virgin.com


Symmetrical Balance

Horizontal symmetry

For more information http://www.digital-web.com/articles/principles_of_design/


Asymmetrical Balance

Asymmetry

For more examples http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/10/asymmetrical-balance-in-web-design/


Colour Balance
• Large areas hold more weight than smaller areas
• Darker areas and saturated colours are heavier than lighter areas
and unsaturated colours
• Borders and stroke add weight
• Texture creates more weight the more dense it is


Balance: In WordPress and Web design
Grids
• Great starting point
• Can overlap columns/rows

Including various content into web pages
get_template_part; <?php wpe_excerpt(‘wpe_excerptlength_teaser’, ‘wpe_excerptmore’); ?>
//custom excerpt lengths
function wpe_excerptlength_teaser( $length ) {
get_pages(include = 39’); return 23;
}
function wpe_excerptmore($more) {
include(‘breadcrumbs.php); return ‘ ... <a href=”’. get_permalink() . ‘”>’ . __( ‘Read more »’, ‘twentyten’ ) . ‘</a>’;
}
Widgets function wpe_excerpt($length_callback=’’, $more_callback=’’) {
global $post;
if(function_exists($length_callback)){
add_filter(‘excerpt_length’, $length_callback);
}
if(function_exists($more_callback)){
add_filter(‘excerpt_more’, $more_callback);
}
$output = get_the_excerpt();
$output = apply_filters(‘wptexturize’, $output);
$output = apply_filters(‘convert_chars’, $output);
Example: Balance with custom $output = ‘’.$output.’’;
echo $output; }
excerpt lengths


Consider how copy is pulled into the page
• Does copy keep its paragraphs and spacing?
wpautop($var->post_content);

Posts
• Posts per page
• Pagination
• Avoid duplication if highlighting a post

Length of sidebar vs length of body copy
• Don’t have to match, but it can look silly if they are drastically out of
portion when it comes to content



Space
• Line height
• White space - empty/negative space
• Box model of margins and padding
• Consider scrolling and how much important content is above or
below the fold

w3c box model
Remember margin is outside of the element width, but padding and borders add to the element width


KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid

‘Minimalist design has been described as design at its
most basic, stripped of superfluous elements, colors,
shapes and textures.

Its purpose is to make the content stand out and be the
focal point. From a visual standpoint, minimalist design
is meant to be calming and to bring the mind down to
the basics.’

- Smashing Magazine


Minimize content

White Space

Simple Design - create limitations for yourself
• Limit colours
• Limit fonts
• Limit number of different sizes of fonts, margins, padding, line heights etc
• Limit extra styles ie. underline, borders, bold


Keep it Simple: In WordPress and
Web design

Themes
• Twentyten and Twentyeleven are good starting themes if you don’t like
developing from scratch every time - but still need work


Keep it Simple: In WordPress and
Web design

WordPress Functionality
• Thumbnails, image sizes, featured images
• Excerpts
• Widgets


Resources and Good Reads
‘Minimalist Design: When Less is More’
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/12/minimalist-web-design-when-less-is-more/

‘How Limitations Improve Design’
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/08/how-limitations-improve-design/

‘The Invisible Side of Design’ by Vitaly Friedman
https://speakerdeck.com/u/smashingmag/p/the-invisible-side-of-design

‘Understanding Visual Hierarchy in Web Design’
http://web design.tutsplus.com/articles/design-theory/understanding-visual-hierarchy-in-web-design/

Colour Scheme Tools
http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
http://kuler.adobe.com/


Photograph © Ngaire Ackerley

Thank you!

Any Questions?

Where can I be found?
LBDesign designack Twitter
http://lbdesign.tv http://designack.com @ngaireackerley
ngaire@lbdesign.tv ngaire@designack.com Linkedin
Ngaire Ackerley

Designing for WordPress and Web Design: Bridging the Gap Between Design and Development

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