Day 2 - Toward a Visual Design
The one piece of this project I feel least qualified to do is the visual design. I’ve spent enough time working with good designers over the years to get a feel for general principles, so if I have to I can come up with a reasonably “clean” design on my own. But “clean” is a long way from “great” and I want the site to be visually appealing and look serious about what it’s doing. Moreover, I expect that a good design will involve creating some artwork (a logo, an icon, visual cues for the various sections and functions, etc.) and I’m definitely inept in that department.
So I plan to enlist a visual designer to do those pieces of the project. But before I get to that point, I need to be able to communicate to the designer what the heck it is am asking them to design. I plan to do this via the Web. Over at http://www.onlineprimary.us/designspec I’ll be building a design specification (”spec”, or “brief” as some call it). When it’s done, I’ll seek proposals from designers to create the design elements from that starting point. Today I get started on that.