Early in 1999, I was a member of a small group of entrepreneurs who realized that there might be an opportunity to create a successful career site. With the rise of generalist job sites like Monster.com, it seemed obvious to us that major niches were being overlooked.
After extensive analysis, we envisioned a specialist career site for professionals in the fields of accounting and finance. Our first choice had been the IT field, since that was what we were most familiar with. But the IT field already had several niche players with a good head start. The accounting field was wide open and our group also had some expertise in this area, so that's what we went after.
We came to the conclusion that this new business, which we called CareerBank.com, should be positioned as a vertical portal.
While the site would offer the job search and resume posting features typical of other career sites, it would also offer a wide array of content tailored for its audience, including career articles, accounting articles, contests, reviews and news. The site would also support advertising.
By mid-1999, we had a coherent vision for CareerBank.com, a business plan and funding from an angel investor. We also had 75% of the basic development completed.
But we didn't know yet what the site was going to look like.
Developing a solid and effective graphic design for a web site takes work, but most of that work is never seen by the outsiders. A good design is the end result of an iterative process, one in which numerous designs are created, evaluated and refined.
In this article, I'm going to lift the corporate veil and show how we developed the graphic design for CareerBank.com.
The PreliminariesBefore you get to the graphic design phase, though, you need to develop an understanding of the audience for the site. That understanding will drive many of the decisions made when evaluating competing designs.
We started by going back to the basics, answering questions like:
Audience: What group of people will be using the web site? Goals: What should the site accomplish for its users? And for CareerBank.com? Aesthetics: What look is the audience likely to appreciate? Is that the same look that CareerBank.com executives will like? Impression: What impression should the site convey to users? Zany? Cool? Informative? What impression should users take with them after they've used the site?
Developing solid answers to these questions was a vital part of the design process.
Graphic Design IterationsAfter the preliminaries, we began working with a graphic designer whom we had used on other projects. Our graphic designer created a series of design concepts based on our requirements. The goal at first was to create a number of different design ideas for initial evaluation.
The design evaluation team, made up of both technical staff members and the entrepreneurs, then identified design elements, colors and themes that they liked. From there, a refinement process began, with more designs being created based on the evaluation input. Finally, a design was achieved that met the approval of the entire evaluation team.
Most of the CareerBank.com designs are available as part of this article, with detailed commentary about each one.
| Concept 1 | The first design, with a play on the "bank" theme. | | Concept 2 | Sometimes you try an experiemental design. | | Concept 3 | A variation in response to early comments on the design. | | Concept 4 | A departure in a new direction, and a new logo. | | Concept 5 | A major step in the right direction. | | Concept 6 | Refining the design some more. | | Concept 7 | More refinements. Used to announce impending launch. | | Concept 8 | Closing in on the final look. All the elements are in place. | | Concept 9 | Maroon makes a striking impression as a color choice. | | Final | A screenshot of the final look which was approved. |
All of the designs were stepping stones to the final design that CareerBank.com ultimately adopted.
I hope this exploration of the design process has provided some insight into the development of a relatively large commercial site like CareerBank.com.
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