evolt.org - Visual Design

How Visual Design Can Impact your Bottom Line

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:35:55 -0500

How do you know if you should invest more time and money into creating a killer design? This case study examines how the look and feel of the site can impact your overall conversion rate which can provide justification for a little more investment. View the old site, compare it to the new site and review the conversion metrics that shows the before and after conversion rates.

2006 evolt.org Design Contest

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:25:22 -0500

Over the years, evolt.org has had a number of designs, produced and implemented by a small group of admin evolters. We've come a long way in developing the design in the 7 years we've been in existence, including this current iteration, which we've lived with for over 6 months since we replatformed the site last summer. In that time, we've progressively opened up the running of the community. But now we'd like to go a step further and open up the design too. Here's your opportunity to stamp your own creativity on evolt - we'd like you (yes, you) to redesign this site.

Navigation - our visitors' travel guide

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 05:53:43 -0500

Your site navigation is what helps the visitors to find your content. Don't make it a technical portfolio but a helper tool. This article shows how the simplicity of real life navigational helpers can be applied to the web.

Understanding Color and Accessibility

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:25:50 -0500

We all know that color can make or break a site. But beyond eye candy appeal, color choices also impact usability and accessibility. This can impact up to 1 in 12 people, roughly 8% of a site's potential audience. The solution is not to use only boring colors or do only simple designs. In contrast, by understanding better the relationship between color and accessibility, the designer can make inspired and creative choices for the multi-device Internet.

Governing Good Web Site Design

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 18:50:07 -0500

Looking for a means to judge the quality of web design? A good place to start is with the US Federal Government, which provides more than 175 research-based guidelines.

How Good Does Your Web Site Look on Paper?

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 11:18:49 -0500

Even in the digital age, pen and paper play a critical role in creating an effective web site.

A quick and dirty CSS hack: PNG backgrounds

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 14:34:54 -0500

With the expanding support for PNG in modern browsers, Internet Explorer's lack of support has become increasingly frustrating. Here is a way to try to bypass its limitation without javascript: PNG for recent browsers, GIF for the others.

Where/What Vision Theory, In Practice

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:16:58 -0600

In this second article about Margaret Livingstone's Where and What vision systems, theory is put into practice. A real world design problem is analyzed and resolved using an understanding of how these two distinct vision systems work.

Where / What Vision Systems and Visual Design

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 05:15:23 -0600

Neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone researches human vision systems and art. With a little understanding of her Where and What vision systems, you can learn how to punch up your designs and graphics, and get a handle on elusive design problems.

To PNG or not to PNG

Sat, 17 May 2003 05:11:38 -0500

PNG was designed to replace GIF as the standard image format for lossless compression on the internet. It claims better compression than GIF, full alpha transparency, and gamma correction. All common browsers today support PNG in at least a limited way, and is a recommendation of the W3C.Given that IE for Windows does support PNG in all other ways other Is it time to switch? I tested out all the various claims of PNGs superiority, with mixed results.

Super Ragged Floats

Mon, 16 Dec 2002 21:12:18 -0600

The popular way of wrapping text along the irregular outline of an image is to use sliced images and float them around. If you don't want image slices, here's a clean standards-compliant alternative.

Quick Color Class

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 05:15:40 -0600

Because it is often necessary to reproduce the colors in identity materials when building a web page, it helps to know what to expect from the displays that will actually see the page you create as well as account for those users who may not perceive color in the same way.

Separating an object from its background

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 03:26:46 -0500

Put that Magic Wand away! This tutorial shows how to separate an image from its background by using Adobe Photoshop's Freeform Pen tool.

The Digital Darkroom

Wed, 25 Sep 2002 03:57:23 -0500

How to use software to salvage those digital pictures that — had they been old-fashioned prints — would have been thrown in a dusty old shoe box, and pushed to the back of the wardrobe.

The Good, Bad and Downright Ugly of Flash Email

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 09:27:26 -0500

Send Rich Media, Streaming or Flash Email may be all the rage with Marketers and Advertisers alike. But is it as effective as all of the folks trying to sell you on it say it is? Read on for some tips concerning what you should know before you try to send Flash & other Rich Media Email.