OUGD504 STUDIO BRIEF FOUR - PARALLAX STUDIO TALK - DESIGNING FOR DIGITAL

Parallax are a digital design studio based in Leeds and London, who produce mainly digital work, but some print work as well.

Design process:

Clients -> Account / project manager -> Head of development / Head of Design -> Web developers / Designers

10 tips for designing for digital output

1) Wireframing

2) Responsive design - designing things using a grid, which makes it easier to shrink the design down or upscale it.

3) Fonts - A lot of fonts aren't web fonts - there are a limited availability of fonts for web. Paid fonts can get very expensive.

4) Organisation - photoshop layers being kept tidy to make it easy to pass on and be understood.

5) Research and inspiration

6) Retina / High DPI - Not everyones devices have the same pixel densities - designs have to work scaled up and down in density. Vector smart objects in Photoshop files are the easiest form of image for developers to work with.

7) Interactivity - Hover states, when you hover the mouse over elements on the web they change colour etc. Elements mocked up on After Effects to see how they work before given to the developer to create/code.

8) Understanding - Know designs are feasible. Talking to developers to find out whats easy and hard to make.

9) Consistency - create a style guide containing all elements for different fonts and sizes and colours to help developers produce the right things. Style extension from brand guidelines. Build framework which can be used to design other elements.

10) Compromise - Not abnormal for a client to say they hate your design.

Getting a job

They base work placements on portfolios rather than the grade you get in your degree.

Questions?

A lot of their placements turn into jobs.

They have a day a month to work on their own project unrelated to clients. This runs throughout the whole studio, not just a few individuals.

This talk with Parallax studio has been really useful to know more about digital design and the elements involved in it, and what things it is involved with, as it is quite different to design for print. This is good to know and to apply to studio brief four, where we are designing for web, as it is a different process to all our previous briefs, so it is beneficial to understand this process in the working world, for this to inform our own processes.