Everything is about Design!

May.20, 2009 in Great Websites, Internet Marketing, Thinking

A few months ago, during a business trip to Istanbul, I stayed in a 5 star airport hotel (will not say the name to protect the innocent) that offered everything that 5 star airport hotels offer.

I arrived late at night from Dubai and the following morning I was flying back to Amsterdam. I was quite tired so I went straight to bed. The following morning I woke up early and took a shower and something strange happened to me…

I took one of those beautiful amenity bottles from a very nice basket in the bathroom thinking that what I was grabing was hair conditioner but in reality it was body lotion!!!

Honestly you could not tell the difference between one and the other!

Now, normally I would have thought to myself “What and idiot I am” but in reality the idiots are those that use the exact bottle and very small letter font (I assume it was size 4) to write what the little bottles contain!

No matter how beautiful it looks, you have to make sure it is clear for whoever uses it don’t you think?

So, my point is the following:

Not because it is beautiful it is well designed!

I find it always amusing to have conversations with web designers that always try to sell you into “how beautiful” a site looks, what they ignore is how practical they need to be!

I’ve seen beautiful looking websites that do not make a penny and ugly looking ones that make a lot of money.

As in everything you need to find the balance I suppose.

The question is how do you now what is beautiful and what is practical?

Ok let me share with you a couple of sites i use for Inspiration on the “beautiful side”

1) Fubiz

2) Smashing Magazine

These sites are full of amazing videos, pictures, examples of what designers are doing. They are simply worth having a look!

In fact let me share with you one of the latest videos I’ve seen there:

Now on the practical side:

These are the sites I use to make sure that I have great looking websites that are also very easy to do and very practical.

1) Usexsitepro

This software is great to create nice looking and practical websites on the go