Wireframes are an essential tool of communication that provide a rough guide to website structure. Their purpose is to give guidence to general layout, navigational elements, and content structure to designers, developers and clients. The stage of wireframing is achieved after the process of sitemaps has been approved. At this time, you should have in your hands a site structure in a hierarchical style. Here at Imulus, we take time at a wireframe stage in order to run the design and developing stage smoothly. Only an educated client will understand this process if explained. Sure, all clients would like to see their website redesigned in 24 hours…that would require a lot of java. We take time to explain to our clients why this stage is important to us and to them as well. They will understand.

Our designers will work through the wireframe stage to completion and then will sit down with our developers to discuss the many possibilities. This opens different perspectives which are always handy to get everything on track. For example, when it comes to talking about some special functionality feature for the site, it is a good thing that developers know this ahead of time and see what’s expected. They can see what problems they can run into and how to solve them ahead of time. It is too late if this got avoided when the design is already in development. As for the designers, it is easier to have a wireframe in hand. You get the idea where things are supposed to be, and start to visualize the design. Try to have some fun with wireframes. OK, sure, they can get boring sometimes especially when it comes to some revisions but that’s all because you’re anxious to start the designing and developing. Also, you don’t have to adhere strictly to what the wireframe is showing. We have run across many times where the wireframe was showing one thing, but in the design stage we have changed it. It’s all right to change the wireframe in the design stage as long as the purpose and direction is not lost. My advice is to spend whatever time necessary to complete the wireframing stage; it will make your job easier in the design stage, and will save headaches to developers, as well as to clients.

A book recommendation to follow on a wireframing stage: Web Redesign 2.0 | Workflow That Works by Kelly Goto & Emily Cotler

Fluid

Fluid, is an app for Mac that lets you grab a URL from pages you frequently visit, such as Google Docs, Facebook, and Gmail, and turn each one into a separate desktop application that you can add to your dock for easy access. The proces is supposed to help you deal with tabs and treat everything as your desktop application. I find this so far helpful because I haved added Google Docs where I write my thougths and blogs and I don’t have to worry about closing tabs in a browser and losing information.

Think

Think is an app also for Mac that helps you keep focus on a single applicaton by dimming out the rest. I find it that I do not use this application if I’m multitasking between emails, web browsing, and my calendars. But,when I am concentrating on just design, then I use Think and it really does help me with just concentrating on one thing at a time. Receiving emails can sometimes be distracting so I keep my Mail on my laptop screen and I design on the big screen.
Withouth Think, my head always turns the minute I realize that a new message popped into my mailbox. With Think, Mail app is illuminated on my laptop screen but gives me enough visibility so I can glance at times to see if I have receieved any messages from clients.

“To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.” - Paul Rand, author, graphic designer, teacher

Enjoy reading our articles that flow in at random times from our creative team of people at Imulus. In the meantime we will ramble about design and coding goodness and sip on caffeine to get our creative juices flowing. Please stay tuned or should I say blogged.

Looking for an easy way to instantly share files with family and clients? Now you can with BoxCloud. BoxCloud is a simple solution for sharing files cross platform without the wait of long upload times because your files stay local. Your contacts are notified by email of the files you want to share and they can open the source in the browser for a preview of the files to download.

ConceptShare seems like a great communicator tool between designers and their clients. Most designers prefer to meet with their clients in physical space when presenting visual designs, but there are times when that communication needs to happen over the phone or e-mail. This could lead to potential confusion and time loss. ConceptShare solves this problem by allowing designers to import multiple desings and chat with multiple clients at the same time. Each design sample can have multiple comments and drawings on top of visuals that are well organized.

ConceptShare works well not only for designers in their professional field, but also for students taking e-learning classes. Although you have to send your e-mail and wait for a registration request, it’s still worth the wait-time to try out this web application.

I found one a few days ago called Color Combos. When in the section called ComboTester, you can add columns and pick color combinations with the color picker, similar to the one in Photoshop. There is also a library of color combinations if you are too lazy to pick colors.

It would be nice if Color Combos added a login feature where you can pick your colors and save them in organized folders.