Diary of a Website: Decisions

One of the most exciting points in the website building process for me is the moment when we see the first mockup of the design. Here, Tom Hapgood has taken the elegant logo Jay Jaro made, the content I wrote, the photos the client sent, and input from conversations with the client, and come up with a marvelously elegant take on ungulate farming.

Looking at pictures of windmills and goats and seeing in them a sophisticated color scheme of sage, white, and champagne shades requires artistic talent. Playing textures off against one another in this way takes skill.

But after inspiration comes decision making. So Tom sent over initial mockups to get input on the navigation.


You can see here two possible approaches to the navigation for this site: the classic approach above and the more subtle one below.


Much as I like the subtle one, much as Tom values the clean look of the plain white background in it, we just had to go with the clearer navigation in the first one. Tom assured me that he knew I'd say that.

Sometimes these initial decisions are completely internal -- me figuring out how much of what the client said can go on the page and how much has to move to the blog. Sometimes they're entirely up to the client -- the logo, in this case, was Myra's choice among three options, with her own touches. Sometimes they require collaboration and discussion.

Attention to detail at each point results in an excellent final product.