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My very good friend Lee Rickler of Point and Stare who specialises in web development, in particular WordPress development wrote the “A-to-Z of Web Development” which really demonstrates his expertise of all things web dev. Everything listed is a technique and/or tool that Lee and his web development company employ when working for their clients.

Some of Lee’s clients include Apple, Microsoft, Canon & Nokia – i’m not just name-dropping but that tells you how good this guy is at what he does. Lee has kindly allowed me to re-publish his article here for the Internet Marketing Highway readers and will be providing more articles for us as a guest author.

Point and Stare specialise in WordPress development in London and I highly recommend visiting their website to have a look at the rest of Lee’s work.

A – Accessibility
This needs to be built in from the off, giving functionality and benefit to as wide an audience as possible.

B – Brand guidelines
Adherence to these promotes good front-end structure and balance throughout.

C – CSS
A Cascading Style Sheet is used to enable the separation of document content from document presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts.

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I read a great blog on the WDL blog recently by Jacqueline Thomas about the design trends for web in 2010…

1. Oversized Logos/ Headers

Splash pages are so yesterday. To make an unforgettable impression on the visitor, the trend for 2010 will be oversized logos on an equally oversized header. These types of headers can take up the entire screen, but with one important note. Visitors will not need to click anything, just scroll down. Visitors often having a clicking phobia (due to years of poor navigation), so big headers do the job of a splash page without forcing your visitors to click anything.

Main Idea: Huge headers that make your visitors remember you.

2. Sketch/ Hand-drawn Design

Hand-drawn design is not exactly new on the horizon, but we all know that it is still on the fringes of web design. Many designers admire the style but are afraid to create their own sketches because of the “I can’t really draw” attitude. If you look at the most popular hand-drawn websites (and relative to other types of trends, there are only a few), you will notice that most of your fellow designers can’t draw. These designs are not exactly headed to an art museum, but they do convey a sense of whimsy, and blur the line between cold web and personal interaction– the ultimate goal of the internet. If you can doodle, you can sketch for web design.

Sketch in 2010 will become more elemental, and not as much the main focus of a web design. It will be used to personalize standard web copy in new and exciting ways.

Main Idea: Sketch becomes an elemental part of corporate design.

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