Fixed or expanding width website – which method of website layout is best for your business?

When it comes to designing and building your website there are many choices to be made and one important early choice that needs to be made at design stage should be whether the website should be fixed or expanding width within the browser window.

At Truly Ace we work with you to design the ‘front end’ of your website (that is the graphics, layout and navigation that make up how your website appears visually to it’s visitors) …this is often described as ‘front end web design’.

When you take that design to your website builder (called a website developer) to be built in .html, we want to know that we have created a design that will work well with the build that you have in mind – whether that is fixed or expanding.

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You may have noticed if you have been here before, that the blog style is different. You may have also noticed you can’t post a comment because I’ve messed up the comment section in my attempts to pretend to be a web developer.

I’ve messaged my website developer asking them to bail me out asap….hopefully normal functions will be resumed soon!

Lesson learned: Stop being impatient and leave things that you don’t know barely anything about to the professionals

I was perusing istockphoto.com for photos today (very low cost stock agency extremely popular with graphic designers) and saw a nice swirling flower pattern and decided it might be useful to select a few good creative patterns from istockphoto and showcase them here.

Each image has a corresponding link to it’s page in the image stock library.

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Ha ha, I knew that would grab your attention! But they really are called T&A - Tabitha & Angus that is

Well the website for celebrity favourite pet accessories supplier Tabitha & Angus is nearly live. Blue Cube Media have nearly finished the build and it’s looking good. Well it should do, I designed it, lol….modesty modesty.

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I’m in a funk, a funk about the state of my house, and the state of the concept of ‘customer service’.

I don’t even know where to start.

I think the funk first began about two days ago after pouring through the pages of Ideal Home, when it became quickly apparent to me that my home is far from ideal.

Why?

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I could have titled this blog ‘Making Typography Interesting’ or even better ‘Creative Typography’ which is an improved way of saying it, but I didn’t want to potentially confuse any non-designers with the word typography.

Typography is the art of of working with type (text/fonts)…it’s arrangement, modification and for some designers this includes ‘creation’ of typefaces (fonts). Typography is used by graphic designers, typesetters, office administrators and more to arrange words to be aesthetically pleasing, easy to read, and convey the message.

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Illustrations and photography have been used extensively in marketing and sales for eons, and whilst one or the other have tended to dominate the commercial design world at times (in the 50’s for example, the use of illustration was profilic compared to today), both remain popular methods of visually communicating a brand message via advertising and marketing.

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I’m a supporter of the No Spec campaign and never under any circumstances work for free, and indeed without a deposit, however with the exception of registered charities.

A few weeks ago I was unduly flattered when I was approached by Cancer Research UK to design posters and more for their campaign in my local town, who advised they were looking for a creative designer (they probably asked everyone and I was probably the only half decent designer who said yes! ha ha).

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I thought I’d show you these designs for Simply Surrey, which is due to launch very soon. I love both designs and think both are striking in their own way.

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