In the kitchen the food sizzles. The clink of silverware and the chatter of conversation fill the dining room. This place is hopping. From the floorplan to the the menu, the owners have put tons of thought into the details of this physical space.

Email offers us a personal, yet scalable and effective way to connect with our audience members. Because you can only send emails to people who signed up to get them, you’re sending your content to people who actually want it. And that means better open and clickthrough rates, and a more engaged audience.

Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site.Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.

While it can be a tough balance to achieve, creating a functional, streamlined and well designed website is well worth the effort.

As we look forward to 2017 — a year that hopefully won’t be plagued by the passing of so many of the world’s greatest artists and performers — the big question on every designer’s mind has to be: what will define design in 2017?

The beginning of any new design project is exciting. It's hard not to get caught up in the buzz of possibility. Brainstorming and the exchange of ideas strike sparks that light the fuse of creativity.