Linked Hands is a small company launched in 2009. Their name, and the projects they have already undertaken, conjure up images of helping hands, that reach out and make connections.

Fonts can be very expressive, and are an easy way to get a feel for the style a client envisions.  I compiled an array of possibilities, and submitted them to the client. The letters and numbers surrounding the ‘table’ of font choices allowed us to speak specifically about the options. The client narrowed the selection to a handful of possibilities.

I took my cue from the name, and imagined the ways in which hands could be linked. There are already many logos that employ this motif, usually depicting hands holding one another.

Linked Hands’ first project is internet-based, so I began to think about technology. Their users are “plugged in.”

The above logos depict hands that are literally plugged in to each other. These designs use the most basic symbols, an upraised hand and simple outlines. The client appreciated the meaning, but electronic plugs were deemed too old-fashioned for a company operating online.

I then took photographs of my own hands and traced them to create more detailed, elegant hands. I connected these with a repeating rope, and experimented with a glow in the palm to symbolize the ‘plug’ point.

The orange and red color scheme was a hit, and was carried forward. The rope was not an obvious connector, so I took another try at a plug. This time I based the design off a CAT5 LAN cable, the sort of cable most users employ once graduating from dial-up.

By now it was clear that the graphics were overpowering the text. I enlarged the text to the point where it could now compete with the hands. The text made a natural bridge between the hands, with the lines of the font connecting them.

The finished product sybolizes Linked Hands’ giving nature and bright view of the future.

Building a website has multiple steps. The first step is information gathering, which will be discussed in another article. Here, I’m going to display the many revisions the design itself can go through.

The Recession Project is an internet start-up that will be based off a user community. They knew what they wanted to appear. They just weren’t sure how to display it.

I began by creating a mock-up, based on knowledge of the client’s preferences. The front page needed to immediately inform users what the site did. This lead to placing snippets of content on the front page.

On the left is a visual display, using clip-art, screenshots, and dummy text to simulate the look of a finished page. On the right is a “wireframe,” where the page is broken into defined areas and labeled.

After re-evaluating their timeline, the client asked to see a simpler layout that could be employed more quickly.This design was based on a paper mounted inside a black presentation folder. Again, the wireframe breaks down the elements shown in the mock-up.

Unsatisfied with this hastily put together design, I put some more thought into an idea that had been brewing in the back of my mind and produced this:

The client loved it, and this became the working model. The front page became a compilation of links designed to help users ‘dive in’ to the content, rather than trying to display all the content at once.

I then worked with the client to alter the color scheme. The grays and silvers above felt flat, so we tried adding color. Unfortunately, most colors clashed with the bright red of the new logo, or made it difficult to read. After much trial and error, we agreed that darker was better, and settled on a rich ink blue.

This final color scheme and layout was readable, pleasing to the eye, and unique. It requires few images to run, and is based almost solely on CSS coding, making it extremely flexible. The design is being adapted for the Drupal environment.