The Lowdown

A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

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Material Design: Google’s Beautiful New Design Language

Just over a month ago, Google announced Material Design – a triumph of striking interface design and programming acumen. Yesterday, Google’s logo received it’s first real update in 16 years. So what’s it all in aid of? And where does design come in?

The idea behind Material Design is to create a range of interface rules – rather similar to brand guidelines, for anyone familiar – that will dictate the look and feel of all Google’s applications, websites and other designed literature. Where complex, convoluted or inconsistent pages may have been before, Material Design replaces them all with a simpler and more attractive user experience.

If you’re not familiar with user interface design, if you own a computer, tablet or smartphone, you’ve been exposed to a user interface of some sort. That instantly-recognisable grid of apps on your iPhone? The result of a comprehensive user interface design process. Everything on your device’s screen has been designed by someone, from the keyboard layout to where the battery indicator is positioned.

Interface design isn’t just for apps… your website will benefit from a consistent and clear design language, too. It doesn’t need to be complex – quite the opposite. Something as simple as making sure the links on the website are the same colour gives a clear hint to the user: this colour can be clicked to see more. Using a variant font for headings: this text is important, read it first.

If you’re looking to enhance or improve the usability of your website, app or software interface, contact us and we’d be happy to discuss how we can help. If you’re interested to learn more about the specifics of the Google Material Design language, visit the Google Design website.

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Tools of the Trade

Techy post ahoy! If you’re interested in how the technical team take a web design and turn it into a living, breathing website, read on. For a long time, building website was reserve of a cerebral minority. Until the last few years, front-end development (the art of building what a visitor sees when they visit a website, out of nothing...

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Being mobile-ready is now more important than ever

By the end of 2014, 51% of website visitors were using their mobile phones to access the internet. This paradigm shift has been a long time coming and it’s a shift that has big repercussions for business everywhere. With so many visitors now using small screens for Internet browsing, it’s important that your website is designed with this in mind....

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Micro Bit… or Raspberry Pi?

Some would argue that the British software industry (especially video games) can be traced back almost entirely to the bedroom coders of the 80s. The affordability of machines like the ZX Spectrum and Acorn Electron gave school children across the country the tools they needed to turn their ideas into reality, and give them skills that would eventually lead to...

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