My Design Philosophy: ch- ch- ch- changes.
The nature of web design is transitory. The way people browse the web has changed dramatically since I started doing design work.
Current trends are to make sites as fancy and complex as possible, loaded with bells and whistles. I can do this for clients who insist upon it, but it's not my preference. Some of the best sites I've seen are the ones which have very few graphics and simply easy to follow text which is clear and explanatory.
Pages that look fantastic on my laptop may look like a jumbled mess when you view then off of a Blackberry or an iPod touch. Style sheets that work great on my Mac may not look quite as nice on a PC running Internet Explorer.
Therefore, I've written scripts which determine the browser the end user is using and make adjustments accordingly. This site, for example, looks radically different on an iPod: There is no menu on the left, because that wastes valuable space. If you see an image of a raven in the lower left, you're not using a mobile device, and you're not using Internet Explorer.
Some sites included a greatly stripped down version for mobile devices: fewer words and more images, and simpler navigation. The effect you can get when you hover your mouse over something and it changes color is a really nice effect, but since you don't, for example, use a mouse to hover with an iPod, it seems like a waste of resources to give the machine instructions it will not use.
I'm always willing to revisit a site I've designed with a critical eye. Just as I can take a site someone else designed for you and make it cleaner, clearer and more eye-pleasing, I'm always happy to do the same with my own sites. This is not about pleasing me or making me happy. This is about meeting your needs in the best way possible.
Julie is the most responsive web developer I have ever had the pleasure of working with; she has consistently listened, responded and revised in exactly the ways I needed resulting in a much more effective product than I ever envisioned on my own. She understands how people process information and designs accordingly. She is skilled at using technology as a tool for teaching, communicating, and problem-solving. She understands how to program for results.
--Christina Manna
Child Development Division, State of Vermont
