Application: Florida Country Tile

As I explained briefly in the section called “The Design Process,” much of what I do when I design a new web site or print item is subconscious. I can usually tell you on a choice-by-choice basis why I made specific decisions, but it doesn’t come naturally to verbalize the procedures I follow. So, for me to explain how I applied graphic design principles to create a layout for a new web site, for example, is a little difficult unless I have an example to help me break the process into steps.

Enter: Florida Country Tile, a real company and a real client. Florida Country Tile is a small, Florida-based tile and stone installation company whose owners have agreed to let me use the web site design project on which I worked with them as an example here. Currently, the company doesn’t have an online presence; the only real identity collateral it has is the logo you see on the business card in Figure 1.31.

Figure 1.31: The business card of “Ed” from Florida Country Tile

I’ve altered the company contact information on the business card above, but that’s all—other than that, this card is identical to the cards the business uses. As you can tell, this scenario isn’t all that different from the one I introduced at the beginning of this chapter: the organization hasn’t established a very strong visual identity.

Usually, clients have specific ideas about what the site should look like. Depending on the client, these preconceptions can either help or hinder the design process—more often, the latter. However, on this project, I’ve been given free rein to make all design decisions, and I plan to design the site using the principles we’ll cover in each chapter of this book. Hopefully, “Ed the Client” will be happy with the results, and “You the Reader” will get a clearer picture of the design process I described so vaguely earlier in this chapter.