Ever since I left school, I've stopped formalizing the entire information architecture procedure until recently whereby a client requested that a document outlining the information architecture of the site be a necessary deliverable at a certain phase in the project.

Information architecture is simply a blueprint for a web design / development project. It helps create the skeleton for your website and provides you with a direction to work in. Below I'm listing key sections defining my information architecture document. Do note that my process might differ from the others', I'm sure there are quite a few ways to get the same end result.

What do you want to achieve with this website?

Here, we are concerned about what the client aims to achieve with this project.

Is it to establish a stronger online presence for the company? To provide services for users? If so, what value does it add to the users?

Basically you want to know what are the goals for this project. 

Who are the target audience?

This is a question that I'm sure you are probably bored of seeing. But let me be quick and just say that we'll be needing detailed demographics about the target market as this will help in the next section.

Personas

Based on the target market and it's demographic information, I typically go on and create 3 to 5 profiles of fictional characters that match the information provided in the previous section. 

Use Cases

This is the fun part. Using the personas created, I'll go into storytelling mode and craft out scenarios of why and how my fictional characters will use the completed website. Be creative (and even absurd if you want).

Content Organization

After crafting out the use cases, I tend to get a clearer picture of what features will be required on site to help users achieve what they want. With these, I can move on to group related features and draw out a navigation scheme for the website. 

Sitemap

Now, we know what features are needed, how they are grouped as well as the navigation system to be provided, we can now draw up a list of pages and organize them in a hierarchy model ala a sitemap. 

Wireframes

The final part of my process is the creation of wireframes for pages identified in the sitemap. I don't use a software for these wireframes, just a normal ballpoint and my moleskine. 

Note that when I present my wireframes, I tend to go back to the use cases created in the earlier section to give my clients a clearer picture of my sketches. 

So this is how I approach developing an information architecture for a website. To clearer illustrate this process, I will throw up a fictional project in my next blog post. 

Cheers!

It's a little late but I would like to wish everyone a happy lunar new year!

It's been a hectic few days due to this festive period and sadly, I've only managed to perform some tweaks to my existing logo. 

I've adjusted the kerning a little and did some changes to the gradient effects on the "Z", felt that the previous gradients were a little dull. 

Whoa, it's been a pretty hectic but fruitful day. Still, I've set aside some time to continue on my quest to design something daily. 

Today, I've decided to work on my personal business card since I don't have one. My preference for minimalistic solutions has led me to keep all details on the card to an absolute minimum. 

Am thinking of using a reasonably thick paper (310gsm perhaps) with satin foil stamping. I'm gonna let the design sit for a few days and see if i'm gonna need a redesign or if it's ready for print. 

What do you think?

Despite being a relatively new player in the market, Standing Sushi Bar has fast established itself as a prime location for Japanese food in Singapore. In fact, their focus (or can i say obsession?) on quality over quantity has led to them being voted Best Sushi in Singapore.

I recently had the chance to redesign the Standing Sushi Bar website, and you can check out some screenshots below:

(download)

Click here to download:

web-design-standing-sushi-bar-JjfAiajbktyqGJireJbr.zip (1.28 MB)

I wanted to keep the UI clean and intuitive, sprucing it up with a little Javascript and other subtle details to help keep things interesting. The color scheme I've chosen is very much minimalistic as well, with soft woody colors forming the base, much like the wooden counters you would see at a SSB outlet. 

You can check out the live version of the site here.

Oh, and if you're a fan of Japanese food then you really ought to check them out. Even if you are not a fan, a visit to SSB might just change that. 

Have a great week people :)

I was recently approached by KS Packaging to help design and develop their website. 

They are a new entrant in the packaging industry and mainly deails with carton / paper bags printing. The only requirement they had was that their site has to be simplistic but yet modern. Other than that I was basically given creative freedom to implement my own ideas. 

And this is what I came up with: 

P.S. Note that all images used are meant to be placeholders. I do not mean to infringe on any copyright. 

Today is the first day that I'm embarking on my personal challenge - To design something daily for as many days as I can.

For today, I've decided to work on a logo for my name and put together a simple "coming soon" page for my portfolio. 

Ever since I graduated, all I ever wanted was to attain the same kind of success that Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Patzer and many others did with their web startups. I spent what amounted to be almost two years, chasing after my entrepreneurial dreams but regretably, I never made it far with my attempts. Financially, I was suffering as throughout this period, I never had any regular income but I was never really bothered as I kept believing that I built a remarkable product and soon I will be getting enormous amounts of users for my startup. 

As we all know right now, I was too naive back then. I went on to shut down my last startup and reality struck me hard. I felt like a loser. 

At 25 years old, with no stable job and practically zero savings, I knew I had to do something about the state of my life. But I was still feeling really stubborn and I didn't want to seek regular employment. I turned to taking on freelance web design and development work just to get some cashflow going, and perhaps I can go on and try starting up again once I get some dough to tide me through a few months. 

Design work was really a chore to me back then, I much preferred churning out lines of PHP and doing cool stuff with AJAX. But the turning point came when I was trying to design a nice logo for my name.

I looked to popular logo designers for inspiration but I was never able to replicate that kind of "feel" to my logo. Heck, I got pretty frustrated as this logo represents my name and of course I wanted it to look pretty darn good. 

I went on to learn about terms that were alien to me - kerning, tracking, x-heights and so on. Articles on logo design processes were simply amazing to me. This influx of information got me extremely interested in design. I kept having new ideas in my mind about what typeface to use, how can I incorporate a hidden message into my logomark, etc; all these kept me up several nights. I went on to get Moleskines, Pilot G-2s and despite being really horrible at art, I just sketched whatever appeared in my mind and tried to recreate my sketches in vector form. 

All these never felt like work and I began to enjoy plus appreciate design. I had a whole new perception towards design and even though I really love doing logo designs, I chose to develop my skills as a web designer for I think that identity design has a much steeper learning curve. Logo design, for now, will have to remain as a hobby. 

Right now, design to me is much like starting up; I get to implement my ideas. Seeing something conceptualize from idea to a finished product is something that I really love. Perhaps this is the reason why I'm so passionate about design now. 

What about you? How did you get started with web design, or even your web startup?