My Designs Are Clean, Simple, and Elegant.
- Designs built around database driven content, such as shopping sites or user submitted data sites.
- Content-focused designs with lots of mixed writing and photos, such as a news site or blog. Today's most popular
web sites, Facebook and Wikipedia, are almost 100% content-focused designs.
- Simple, clean designs that load quickly. I'm a big fan of keeping things as lightweight and efficient as possible,
as is apparent in the sites listed on the right side of this page.
Keeping Your Audience In Mind
Web design today is different than it was five years ago. Or at least it should be since most modern web design practices are
definitely an improvement over the attempts of the past. There are lots of examples of sites online today that display a real effort
at meeting the needs of Web users.
Most people today are Internet veterans. We've seen it all: interesting designs, absorbing writing, great photos, flash
animations, banner ads, movies. We know what looks good and what doesn't; what content significantly adds to the
enjoyment and efficiency of getting our online information, and what content detracts from it. Anyone can tell a well
designed web site from a poorly designed one, just like we can with cars, watches, furniture, and houses.
But just like with cars, watches, furniture, and houses, web sites are best built by someone who has been doing it for a
while and who specializes in what a user needs.
Web Design Expertise and Philosophy
Web designers are just like car designers. Every designer has different strengths and specialities, and puts more
emphasis in their areas of talent, whether it be graphic art, animation, photography, writing, or web application
functionality. If you're looking for someone to build a photography web site for you, I would look for a designer who is
great at graphic art and knows their way around photo software, so that you'll end up with a web site that would make an
art buyer feel at home. If you're looking to build a site that features a rich environment for selling products and
services with a large number of features, a designer with strong web programming skills is probably needed so that the
site makes selling items an effortless and flawless experience.
Of course, I can attempt to build whatever site you have in mind. However, I specialize
in creating web designs based upon of a few design philosophies of mine:
- People use the Web to get the information they need. A complex design that compliments the information is an added
bonus, but is in actuality a low priority. If the information they want isn't on your site, they'll go somewhere else.
Make your content first, and your design second, and I mean this in terms of chronology as well as priority. Some of
the most popular pages on the Web are nothing more than black text on a white background.
- A design should use minimal resources. Server and client resources should be dedicated to the content. Animations
and music should most times be left out, and graphics should be optimized.
- Web design has very little to do with how much traffic a site gets, site popularity, or search engine rankings. Web site
usability does, however.
- A good web site design allows users to use a site with no guesswork and no instructions. Using a web site should be
absolutely effortless and addictive, if you will. If a user is struggling with it, it needs to be modified.
If these guidelines are followed, a web site can be a huge compliment to any business or organization, and it can even
help run the business.
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Email Me!
If you are looking for a quick, clean, low-cost design for your site, I am your man. I even have a knack for creating
logos! The Peltonweb.com logo is probably one of the most boring logos I've ever created, but it is highly readable and
is very printable on paper and t-shirts! Anyway, email me at pelton@peltonweb.com and let's talk designs.
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Web Design Portfolio
Commuting Bicycles - A business site for a bicycle
mechanic in Pocatello.
ISU Japanese Club - This is the Idaho
State University Japanese Club site that includes an integrated Google Picasa gallery, Google Documents form, and a
Google Calendar events page.
My Cycling Blog - Here's a good example of a blog/news
style site that features a lot of writing and photos. It is built on the WordPress blogging application and the
galleries and photo optimization was done with scripts that I wrote. Ask me about it!
Idaho State Linux Users Group - Here's another WordPress site that
has quite a tidy theme. I made the logo, arranged the content, and I do a lot of writing for the site.
Lurker Project - I made this simple design quite some
time ago. Isn't that alligator at the top cool? See, I do have some graphic art abilities. :-)
ShareCD Project - A sharp looking and colorful design
of mine.
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