Blog « iKraft Software

We have been creating some real cool stuff with drupal CMS and django since January 2007. That is why most of our clients come back to us when they have to get a second(or third or forth) project done

Drop us an email at info (at) ikraftsoft (dot) com to know more about what kind of work we have accomplished and what our clients say about our work.

Visit http://ikraftsoft.com if you prefer, but most of the stuff about our knowledge is here ;).

Team
Posts tagged "ikraft"
Today, due to sudden rush of adrenaline and energy powered by lots of caffeine, I decided to sit down and redesigned our web site ikraftsoft.com, which I have been intending of doing for quite some time now, but procrastinating for one reason or the other. And I am quite satisfied with the result. I know already that when my team will see the new design, I will have to answer a thousand questions, especially from Irfan(THE CEO). To avoid lot of discussions about my design decisions, I will try to defend my design designs right before they are attacked. DISCLAIMER: Although, I have always wanted to be a skilled designer, but I am not. I cannot use image manipulation programs for anything more than basic editing like croping, scaling and some retouching of images. So please do not expect any miracles. Design Goals Let me first start by describing what I wanted to accomplish and what my goals were. DON’T WASTE ANYONE’S TIME; HIGHLIGHT THE POINT This was the most important thing, that I wanted to reflect in the final design. Basically, what I wanted to accomplish is(or should be) what a company’s website is expected to accomplish. ‘Provide the necessary information about a company with as less text as possible’. I wanted that as soon as a visitor is on our website, what we do should jump on to visitor’s eyes immediately, preferably without reading each and every written word. Right from the start, I knew exactly, towards what I wanted to draw the attention of visitors of my site. That is why I made certain things very prominent. Like the main banner that says “we are passionate about web & we enjoy creating great web applications”. This one sentence speaks of our heart. In this one sentence, I tried to make a statement about our passion as a company and what we enjoy. Secondly, you will notice that words DRUPAL and DJANGO strongly highlighted. Now, when a new visitor comes to our website he immediately knows that we are doing something with Drupal & Django. And if the visitor is someone who is looking for hiring the Drupal or Django devs, BINGO! We have made ourselves know immediately. CLEAN IS COOL Another thing that I wanted is cleanliness and readability. I strongly hold the opinion that cool photoshop/gimp techniques are not the only way to spice up your website. Unfortunately, most of the designers give a second seat to the typography, which should be the primary concern for the designer. Graphics and images should be made to compliment the typography, not the other way round. That is the reason, I choose a text heavy design, with only two images, one for the logo and other for the arrows for list styles. I user the font stacks that I talked about in my blog post about my favourite font-stacks PROVIDE AN EXPLICIT EXIT LOCATION Now that we have made clear what we do, provide exit locations to the visitors form where they can find more information about us. For that reason, Link to our blog and the email is provided. Address, phone number etc are provided in the footer. Although, I have layout out my rationale behind design decisions, there is still a room for some unanswered questions. I will try to answer few of those questions and end this looooong post after that. Why did not I put up a work portfolio? I definitely will do that, it just I could not envision best way to do so right. So, I decided to give myself a bit of time to think about it and discuss it with my team. May be we will simply publish a portfolio page that describe our major projects. Personally, I am bordering on the idea of having portfolio related posts(properly tagged) in our blog and linking to that page from the main site. But right now, this is an open ended problem. Why are Django and Drupal not defined? Let first clarify how we get work. More that 70% of our work comes from client referrals and not from website. One client referring us to another, who in turn refers us to another client. Almost all of our clients are techies who understand the technology very well and have come to us with very specific needs and most of them are already aware of Drupal/Django and related technologies. So, we do not need to say anything about drupal and/or django. Even if some visitor is not aware of drupal/django, both have been duly linked to their respective websites as those sites do a much better job of defining themselves. Visitor can go there and get enlightened. Why pages like vision/mission/about missing I wanted people to know about us in the simplest and most concise way. I could not think of better words than “we develop web apps using drupal and django” Rest of the answer has already been explained in previous paras. That was brief of the rationale behind my design decisions. I would love to hear more from you and my team. Let’s take the discussion forward from this point.

Today, due to sudden rush of adrenaline and energy powered by lots of caffeine, I decided to sit down and redesigned our web site ikraftsoft.com, which I have been intending of doing for quite some time now, but procrastinating for one reason or the other. And I am quite satisfied with the result.

I know already that when my team will see the new design, I will have to answer a thousand questions, especially from Irfan(THE CEO). To avoid lot of discussions about my design decisions, I will try to defend my design designs right before they are attacked.

DISCLAIMER: Although, I have always wanted to be a skilled designer, but I am not. I cannot use image manipulation programs for anything more than basic editing like croping, scaling and some retouching of images. So please do not expect any miracles.

Design Goals

Let me first start by describing what I wanted to accomplish and what my goals were.

  1. DON’T WASTE ANYONE’S TIME; HIGHLIGHT THE POINT
    This was the most important thing, that I wanted to reflect in the final design. Basically, what I wanted to accomplish is(or should be) what a company’s website is expected to accomplish. ‘Provide the necessary information about a company with as less text as possible’. I wanted that as soon as a visitor is on our website, what we do should jump on to visitor’s eyes immediately, preferably without reading each and every written word.
    Right from the start, I knew exactly, towards what I wanted to draw the attention of visitors of my site. That is why I made certain things very prominent. Like the main banner that says “we are passionate about web & we enjoy creating great web applications”. This one sentence speaks of our heart. In this one sentence, I tried to make a statement about our passion as a company and what we enjoy.
    Secondly, you will notice that words DRUPAL and DJANGO strongly highlighted. Now, when a new visitor comes to our website he immediately knows that we are doing something with Drupal & Django. And if the visitor is someone who is looking for hiring the Drupal or Django devs, BINGO! We have made ourselves know immediately.

  2. CLEAN IS COOL
    Another thing that I wanted is cleanliness and readability. I strongly hold the opinion that cool photoshop/gimp techniques are not the only way to spice up your website. Unfortunately, most of the designers give a second seat to the typography, which should be the primary concern for the designer. Graphics and images should be made to compliment the typography, not the other way round. That is the reason, I choose a text heavy design, with only two images, one for the logo and other for the arrows for list styles. I user the font stacks that I talked about in my blog post about my favourite font-stacks

  3. PROVIDE AN EXPLICIT EXIT LOCATION
    Now that we have made clear what we do, provide exit locations to the visitors form where they can find more information about us. For that reason, Link to our blog and the email is provided. Address, phone number etc are provided in the footer.

Although, I have layout out my rationale behind design decisions, there is still a room for some unanswered questions. I will try to answer few of those questions and end this looooong post after that.

Why did not I put up a work portfolio?
I definitely will do that, it just I could not envision best way to do so right. So, I decided to give myself a bit of time to think about it and discuss it with my team. May be we will simply publish a portfolio page that describe our major projects. Personally, I am bordering on the idea of having portfolio related posts(properly tagged) in our blog and linking to that page from the main site. But right now, this is an open ended problem.

Why are Django and Drupal not defined?
Let first clarify how we get work.

  • More that 70% of our work comes from client referrals and not from website. One client referring us to another, who in turn refers us to another client.

  • Almost all of our clients are techies who understand the technology very well and have come to us with very specific needs and most of them are already aware of Drupal/Django and related technologies.

So, we do not need to say anything about drupal and/or django. Even if some visitor is not aware of drupal/django, both have been duly linked to their respective websites as those sites do a much better job of defining themselves. Visitor can go there and get enlightened.

Why pages like vision/mission/about missing
I wanted people to know about us in the simplest and most concise way. I could not think of better words than “we develop web apps using drupal and django” Rest of the answer has already been explained in previous paras.

That was brief of the rationale behind my design decisions. I would love to hear more from you and my team. Let’s take the discussion forward from this point.

Photo
We are having a Barcamp Kashmir on March 14th, 2009. YIPEEEEEEEEEEEE! iKraft started Barcamps in Kashmir when we had first Barcamp in Feb 2008. We are among the main organisers this time as well. We are also sponsoring the part of the event expenditure. Thanks to other sponsors as well. We would love to have your presence there. Do come and take a look at the great stuff we Kashmiris are doing despite countless number of problems. Visit Barcamp Kashmir event site and subscribe to the mailing list

We are having a Barcamp Kashmir on March 14th, 2009. YIPEEEEEEEEEEEE!

iKraft started Barcamps in Kashmir when we had first Barcamp in Feb 2008. We are among the main organisers this time as well. We are also sponsoring the part of the event expenditure. Thanks to other sponsors as well.

We would love to have your presence there. Do come and take a look at the great stuff we Kashmiris are doing despite countless number of problems.

Visit Barcamp Kashmir event site and subscribe to the mailing list

Photo
Single A Theme :: By Business Bullpen