What a year to say the least! We’ve been thrown some of the craziest conditions experienced by humans, possibly ever. Yet, here we are still plugging away and delivering some of our best work for our clients.
2020 Design Wrap Up
To say we’ve gone through some changes is an understatement, not only in what’s gone on in the world but what’s happened over the course of the year just for our design team. We’ve made some big moves as far as our processes and workflows go, which has allowed us to kick out really great work.
Figma
One of the biggest changes made this year is shifting our software stack for design to include and revolve around Figma! Prior to this move, we relied heavily on Adobe Photoshop to compile our designs and Invision to showcase them. While it was working perfectly fine, we saw an opportunity to improve upon our process even more – after evaluating so many different kinds of software, we found our match with Figma.
Figma is a website design and layout app, designed to be used by web designers – a big shift from Photoshop which is designed to be used primarily for photo editing. It has greatly improved our efficiency in development handoff and relaying specific information to our developers, thanks to well-thought-out style guide functions and a component library. Not only were we able to improve the design process and developer handoff, but we were also able to begin a foray into prototyping native to the software.
So while our software hunt began as something to aid only in developer handoff, we found much more value within the program, and we’re just getting started. We are now finishing up the year comfortably on Figma, having onboarded all of our team members!
Design Process
While we were exploring Figma, we decided it made sense to also evaluate our design process as a whole. So we found breaking the process down into more structured steps was helpful in hitting our allotted design time and creating a more on-point design.
We decided rather than jumping right into the build, it would be advantageous to make a mood board to encapsulate the desired look and feel of the website for our own internal use. This is a very quick exercise; however, it sets a great foundation for the rest of the build and eases the creative pressure of defining the look while laying out the homepage. We also added more touchpoints to review the site styles before the client presentation, allowing for more input and alleviate last-minute changes.
Websites We’ve Designed
We also came up with some really stand-out designs this year. While they haven’t yet landed in our portfolio, we are super proud of them all the same! We tapped into some of our trends identified in our previous blog, and they have really amplified the look and feel into something spectacular.
One of the sites where we really utilized flat illustrations, as well as the amorphous forms, is Speech Therapy Plans. This is a web app for speech-language pathologists to track their day-to-day therapy materials, student information, and so much more. We created something really spectacular for them with an illustrated walkthrough and well-thought-out dashboard design. Be on the lookout for our portfolio piece!
Work From Home
As much of the world has had to adapt, we too have had to make the shift to working from home. While this took some serious getting used to, we are working as efficiently as ever and have learned a lot from the experience.
For one, some of us had to invest in more comfortable desk chairs at home, while others are still getting used to their new coworkers who bark and meow a little more than our usual ones. But all in all, we have a strong team who thankfully adapted quickly to a difficult situation.
While we look forward to what 2021 has in store, we like to first take a look back and appreciate all that has been accomplished in 2020. New programs, overcoming challenges, and making things far more efficient overall, we hope to make the same strides in the next year and hope you follow along with us as we do!
Let us know in the comments below what you think about our 2020 Design Wrap Up post.
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