nYq Design Group

12 Seamless Construction Paper Backgrounds

Brett Nyquist — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:58:36 +0000

As we were putting together a few internal projects we built out some seamless construction paper backgrounds. It was pretty simple throwing together a few different colors and thought we would share them with everyone. If you’re interested in any other colors just give us a shout and we’d be more than happy to add them to the bunch. Stay tuned for more and more freebies.

10 Best Designed State Travel Sites

Brett Nyquist — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:35:28 +0000

Each new season seems to bring an amazing new design from the state of Tennessee. They have been creating very eye catching and interactive sites for a few years now. This got us looking into other states and how they go about branding their online travel or tourism sites. We looked over each state and hand picked 10 that we thought were well put together. There were a few others that could have made the list as well but I have a problem with even numbers.. and the top 14 state websites just doesn’t have the same sound to it. Anyways let us know what you think of the sites featured here, and if you agree or disagree with any.

Please note:
None of these sites belong to the nYq portfolio. We are merely highlighting other great examples of design and development.

Our process for putting together a successful website

Brett Nyquist — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:12:22 +0000

We aren’t proclaiming that our process is the easiest and most efficient. It just works for us and gets the results we and our clients expect. After each project we go back through and examine where we could speed things up, elaborate on certain areas, and continue to refine our process. Below you’ll find a very general path we take when starting out with a new project. Like with everything we do, we’d love to hear how others go about their projects and what works best. Again, this is just a basic summary of the process we take.

Gathering Company and Competitive Information

Every project needs to start off with some research. We put together a general profile of the client, what products or services they offer, their location, target market, and other objectives they wish to accomplish. From that we look over some local, regional, and national competitors to see how open the online market is. This phase helps us get a better understanding of the project, learning about the company, understanding their brand and also viewing their competition. We believe this phase is the key stage to any successful web project. It’s crucial to gather as much information as possible here. There isn’t anything about the client that you shouldn’t know to help get a better understanding of them.

Wire frames and Sketching

At this point we start wireframing out the relevant content for the site. We figure out which pages and categories will be needed. Plus we need to structure everything to make it quick and easy for the user to find. We put together some very basic wireframes to illustrate how the page will be laid out. These will include, navigation, headline blocks, divided content based on relevance, advertising sections, etc. After the wire frames are finalized we begin sketching out ideas for the actual look and design of the site. The sketches are more for internal use, and help our designers and developers work out logistics before actually beginning with the design phase. This entire phase is pretty quick, as we are just putting together some rough draft ideas, but really helps in speeding up the actual design portion of the project. We suggest printing out reams of the 960 Grid System PDFs for this phase.

Design and Revisions

Taking the sketches we put together, we start to throw everything into Photoshop. A lot of people think it’s as simple as adding a few drop shadows, applying a couple of filters, and make everything have a reflection. Although that might work for “some” people, we want to make sure the sites we create are unique, and don’t fall into the category of “ordinary.” Each site is crafted with pixel perfection, focused on content layout and ease of use. We usually put together a couple of versions for internal review before presenting anything to the client. This way we can usually get through most of the back and forth changes from the client and give them something that will hopefully have minimal revisions. There isn’t such a thing as a perfect design on the first try, so once the design is presented to the client we iron out the kinks. We understand that your website is a direct reflection of your company.

Code Development

The design is finalized. Now we toss the design over to our code monkeys to slice up and piece together using Matrix like code. Each site is built with standard XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This will help the site run faster, perform better, and be more accessible to a wider range of users. Usually at this point we put everything together into a WordPress theme. WordPress is a great tool to use for content management. It makes it much easier for us to maintain and update after the site has launched, and we can also hand it off to the client and be confident that the overall structure and design won’t be compromised. With all of the plugins and continued support we have just found that WordPress works best for the projects we work on. There are plenty of other great content management systems out there, but we’re just most comfortable working with WordPress.

Just as we’re about the wrap up with the final coding touches, we begin to put the site through a series of usability testing. We put the site in front of a remote group of users and have them accomplish certain tasks. These testing scenarios will help us better adapt the site to a common user and help fix any kinks that might be lingering.

Beyond Site Launch

Once the coding is in place and everything is ticking and tocking like it should, we continue to guide the site. There’s a lot to be done after all of the coding and the final launch of the site. There needs to be steady additions to the site, building up links and a reputation, cleaning up keyword phrases, submitting sitemaps, combing through new questions and comments, etc. Just because you have this shiny brand new site, doesn’t mean people are just going to show up, there needs to be continued growth and lasting attention to your site to help it achieve it’s overall potential.

So that is our brief process. If you’d like some more details about any area please contact us. We always love the fan mail.

Wood Wallpaper

Brett Nyquist — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:17:34 +0000

This is our first freebie. It’s a repeating wood background to be used with any web project. It seamlessly repeats vertically and horizontally. We will be releasing many other free resources like this, so please be on the look out for more to come. If you have a specific freebie that you’d like us to offer, please contact us. We’ll try our best to make it happen. Download includes two shades of the pattern, faded and dark brown.

Finally the launch has happened

Brett Nyquist — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:53:39 +0000

It’s been a long long time coming but the new nYq Design Group site has finally launched. It’s been a battle to get everything in place, clearing off some client work and setting aside enough time to wrap this up. We have added a bunch of new areas to the site, expanded on the portfolio section, added a “Work With Us” page that has a quick quote for prospective work.

The entire site has been built on WordPress. Surprise surprise, right? It’s always a pleasure working with WordPress, and knowing that updating or changing anything in the future will be a breeze. We are going to be releasing a few WordPress templates here in the next few months, so definitely keep an eye out for those. Plus we will be dropping new free resources once a week.. we’ve started off with a great repeating wood background (lil trendy, we know.)

We are also going to be expanding our Vimeo library, our Flickr photos and keeping everyone updated on Twitter so check us out on all of those outlets. Right now we have a video up on Vimeo that gives a quick tour of a local co-working space.

Alright well enough of this space cadet posting, time to get crunching on some worthy content. Keep checking back as we iron out the site and start delivering some tutorials, articles and free resources.

RMS Building Services

Brett Nyquist — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:00:44 +0000

Family owned and operated cleaning company. RMS Building Services has over 25 years of experience. Our goal was to detail their most requested services and make it easy for the customer to quickly get in touch. We created detailed pages about their services, some with video explanations. We hope to continue building out their site with more rich content: video, blog posts, updates, and much more. We also put together a simple Google Adwords campaign in the local Syracuse area, helping generate more leads.

Corless & Zinober

Brett Nyquist — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:55:29 +0000

Corless Associates represents individuals and families along with small and large companies. They came to nYq to help with establishing their stylish and simple approach. They were looking for a site that was sleek, simple to navigate, and gave enough details to help guide people through the legal process. We also put together an iPhone companion site that mirrors the same look and feel.

Joe Cleaners

Brett Nyquist — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:49:34 +0000

Joe Cleaners is a collection of cleaning companies. It was built to start indexing area cleaning companies, making it easier for customers to quickly find a related service provider. Searching by local zip codes, the user is presented with a list of companies that provide their desired service. The site is still a work in progress but will hopefully be fully-functional by the Fall of 2009. As of right now, the design template has been built.

Smoothpiece

Brett Nyquist — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:18:35 +0000

Smoothpiece started out as a personal blog to keep in touch with friends and family. It quickly turned into the local water cooler for political banter and otherwise useless rants. The site is built completely on WordPress and has multiple authors who contribute to its content. Smoothpiece will be under-going a complete re-design in the near future. Once the re-design is finished we plan on release the current theme as a free WordPress download. If you’re interested in theme, please contact us to be the first to know of its release.

Coverup Tents

Brett Nyquist — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 04:11:02 +0000

Coverup Tents is a local Syracuse, NY tent rental service. They offer several tents to accommodate weddings, birthdays, corporate events, or any party occasion. We are in the process of building out a unique ordering system, that will allow customers to setup their party on the site itself and then get an instant quote. Phase one of their site will be a simple brochure site, then building into the web application to accept online orders. Check back soon to see the progress.

nYq Design Group

12 Seamless Construction Paper Backgrounds

10 Best Designed State Travel Sites

California

Colorado

Hawaii

Idaho

Maine

Missouri

Montana

North Carolina

Tennessee

Texas