Redtail Design

Philosophy

Our design philosophy is heavily influenced by the Japanese concept of Kibouni — function is beauty.

You won't find lots of clunky "neato" effects in our designs. Our pages are designed to load quickly, and to be consistent and functional no matter what the platform or browser.

We support web standards. That is, we do our best to develop webpages whose code is valid and semantic according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

On its face, this doesn't usually mean a lot to new clients. But web standards, just as standards for electrical equipment, chemicals, and heavy equipment, are a way to ensure that everyone is following the same "rulebook." Web Standards tell web developers how to code webpages, and they also tell user agents like web browsers how to interpret and display that code in a meaningful way to the user.

Developing using web standards has real benefits to clients: improved accessibility, faster page loads, easier maintenance, greater compatibility across platforms and browsers, and extensibility. Occasionally...okay, usually...we inherit projects that are neither...so we incrementally update those sites, slowly working through the whole site or redesigning. With new projects, we prefer to design with standards in mind from the start.

We do understand the importance of projecting a consistent image, so if you already have a design concept in place, we'll happily work with your design team to ensure that your company's transition to the web integrates well with your existing collateral. That doesn't mean your website can or should be identical to a print ad, for instance, but it does mean that your website design should naturally flow from your existing graphic identity.