It’s funny to think that web design as a profession has been with us for over 25 years. It still seems like an emerging industry, but in many ways it has matured and become mainstream. A business that has seen many of these changes and has adapted to meet the challenges is BA Creative Brisbane – the team responsible for the design, build and maintenance of this very website.

Web Design In Brisbane – How The Challenges Have Been Met

When BA Creative opened its web design studio in Brisbane (Woolloongabba to be precise) the ways in which websites were built were very different to how they are put together now. Good web design firms have had to adapt and stay ahead of the game to make best use of emerging technology and to meet the demands of customers. Here are some of the changes and challenges that have come along in the last 25 years.

• Content Management Systems
  A Content Management System (CMS) is a platform that a website site is built on that allows users to log in and update the content. Now days just about every web design is built with a CMS but previously websites were made of static individual pages that were simply linked together – oh the simplicity!Using a CMS is obviously a major advantage and BA Creative always recommends one but there is a massive increase in complexity as soon as you introduce one. Suddenly you have to deal with databases, users, permissions, taxonomies not to mention security.
• Mobile Friendliness
  When BA Creative started the iPhone had not been released – what a different world that was! The advent of smartphones has completely changed the way people use the internet and it has been very important for web designers to adapt quickly to this and to make sure that their web designs work on on all devices. From a phone to a large monitor.At BA Creative they were very quick to adapt and were one of the first web design firms in Brisbane, indeed Australia, to adopt the responsive web design method of creating web designs that adapt to the device being used to view it. It’s hard to be precise but BA Creative believe they produced Australia’s first ever responsive online store web design when they launched the Folio Books website (www.foliobooks.com.au) back in 2011.
• Web 2.0 and Post Web 2.0
  The term Web 2.0 was first widely used in 2004 and it was used to describe how the web had evolved and matured into a much more complex beast. No longer was it just a collection of interconnected static pages (see Content Management Systems above) but now it was interactive, dynamic and much more powerful.This transition to a more powerful web brought technical challenges as web design firms grabbled with making websites make full use of the latest technologies. It also brought along a certain design language. Web 2.0 was full of complex graphics and detail upon detail. Do you remember the glitz and glamour of websites from the mid-noughties?As with all design trends the wheel inexorable turns and a new fashion arrives. Post Web 2.0 brought a much needed shift to simplicity, minimalism and understated design. Gone were the drop shadows and gradients, in came solid colours, line drawings and calmness.
• Offshoring
  Another web design industry trend that has less to do with design than economics is the trend toward sending web design and web development work offshore. The economic advantages are obvious when countries with lower wage rates are sought out to offshore to, but there is a hidden cost. At BA Creative they bucked this trend and when everyone else was reducing head count and sending work overseas they increased the size of their Brisbane based team and built upon a reputation of local knowledge and teamwork.BA Creative acknowledge the fact that in a high tech industry such as web design you can be millions of miles away from you client. Email, Skype and chat allow for instant communication. But there is something more important than this constant connectivity and that is local knowledge and good old fashioned face-to-face meetings. BA Creative believes that the traditional ways of running a business with great customer service and a willingness to having regular meetings are as applicable to the web design industry as any other.There is a design element to this policy of being close to customers too. Each country and each region has a spin on culture, style, fashion and trends. So it stands to reason that a web design created in another country would not necessarily be appropriate for the Australian or, more specifically, Brisbane market.

In conclusion we can say that the web design industry has become more mature, more complex and there is now much more choice when it comes to choosing a company to work with. It is important that you find a company that works well with you. If you need a strong collaborative feel, great Brisbane-centric design nous and second to none customer service BA Creative might be a good fit.

For more information visit BA Creative’s Web Design site at www.bacreative.com.au

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