Jason Santa Maria: Design Your Way Out of a Paper Bag

• Little details add up to a big design

Discovery:

• Good environment. Inspiration. Sketchbook.
  
• Old printed materials (digital and paper).
  
• Keep iphoto bank of images/scans.

Research:

• Attend event/place of website content if possible (Attend Pub for Irish music/heritage website).
  
• Books (heirarchy, typography, etc) For A List Apart.

Process:

• Iterative Design: Revisions, staying close to original intent/design. Broad strokes.
• Sketch->Greybox->Photoshop. (Greybox comps: Illustrator, no color, default typefaces, content layout.)
  
• 2nd round: Clean up typefaces, spacing, header/copy relationship, etc.

Layout:

• Gridwork: Solid framework holding the site structure together. Column grids.
• Illustrator/Photoshop.
  
• White Space: Padding, line-height.
• Heirarchy and focal point:
• "Left to right, top to bottom, big and small." - Winter Sorbeck. Size, color, contrast. Use restraint.

Details:

• Sweat the small stuff. Black text on white...too much contrast.
• Typography interlude: REAL quote: “:

www.aiga.org

Brand vs logo: "A brand is a person's gut feeling about aq product, service, or company" - Brand Gap.

Brand Equity: UPS logo tweak. Keep the colors.

Books: The elements of Typographic Style", "Thinking with type", "Making and Breaking the Grid"