“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” – Joe Sparano

I have had the good fortune to work with some very talented designers in my career. They have taught me about the difference between good design and great design. The good is something that when you look at it makes you say wow. The great is when you don’t even realize that it was designed well; when something is so intuitive that you instantly know how to find what you are looking for or know how it works. As a web developer it was my job to translate the vision of the designer into SharePoint and make sure that what is great in PhotoShop is great in SharePoint. It is that pixel perfect philosophy that I bring to my work integrating design into SharePoint.

I know that design is generally not the first thing you think about when you think SharePoint. In fact, design is generally the last thing you think about when you think of SharePoint. You think document management, team collaboration, intranets, you think ugly and unusable. By creating a user centric information architecture and implementing compelling visual design SharePoint can be transformed. I am a SharePoint architect at BlueMetal Architects. I have been using SharePoint as a platform for web content management and extranets since 2005. I specialize in applying custom design and brand to SharePoint. I work with clients to architect complex SharePoint solutions from a user perspective.

This blog is about handy development tricks that I use on a regular basis as well as topics of user experience, SharePoint design, and information architecture. At the end of the day I want visitors to the sites I build to say “Wow, that is SharePoint?”