We're building a website: What makes good design?

When we last talked about design Toben had presented a preliminary set of concepts and we chose the 'magazine' style layout and "finding the way" as an overall design concept to lead specific elements of the design.

Based on our decisions, Toben delivered the following design ideas. 

They expanded our brand colour palette so we could choose more than pink, green and blue. Not only our website but all our marketing and designed collateral can shift from the existing modern, corporate qualities to a warmer experience (yay!)

 They suggested how the colours could harmonise. 

They suggested design elements based on "wayfinding" and tourism "brown signs". 

And they began to look at how these various elements would come together to display designed, aggregated modules-

And designed interactive features. For example, if the user rolls over a carousel/slideshow item the arrow pushes out with information on it. 

Last week, I asked what designers do in the website building process. Another question I've asked myself constantly in this process is what makes good design? 

Folded into Toben's visual response is research about our sector, about our audience (those we have and those we want to reach) and a clear understanding of our brand, and its potential to influence and engage the public. On top of this Toben needs to consider technical requirements, the user experience and information architecture.

Good design is doing all of the above and making it look easy. 

In the next blog, as we gear up to begin populating the site with your content, we'll take a look at the designed homepages and organisation profile pages.