I love photography, I love the process of working on photos, images. Lately, mostly due to work demands, I am doing more web related work. I spent the last few weeks making a serious effort to get a good understanding of the new tools involved in web design to figure out what I need to learn first. In web design, there isn’t really a firm line between design and development. If you want to do more than just program PHP and work on the functionality of website you will need to learn design. If you want get that snazzy PSD turned into HTML and converted into a real working theme for a CMS.. better start learning development.
I’ve been using Photoshop forever.. and Illustrator more often. I have always needed to use HTML and CSS at one time or another. I’m starting to want to do more.. to be able to offer the complete solution.. from the ground up. I’m going to start with design.. making great looking themes.. primarily for WordPress. This is comprised of HTML/HTML5 and CSS/CSS3 and I’ll use some javascript.. but probably keep it to just jquery form now. There are some modern tools that help with properly rendering a site like Modernizr. But for now I will stay away from Sass, Compass and a few other higher language tools, compilers and frameworks. I have to admit I’m tempted to use LESS CSS because it solve many of my frustrations about CSS code.. but I want to get to the point were I can write CSS in my sleep and know what it will do in a variety of browsers before I trust another tool to generate it for me.. except for Modernizr., maybe others. I can’t be consistent because nothing else in web design is. Even if your code is perfect and it can pass every test you through at it.. it will still render different in every browser.
You want a consistent user experience? Make your home page a giant JPEG. It will look the same in every browser. oh, except for IE.. you need to make sure if it re-sizes, that you tell IE to use bicubic interpolation when scaling. Oh, well.
If there is anything I have learned about web design, it’s this.. It’s turning in to web development, because it has to. A growing numbers of individuals and businesses want new or improved websites. It’s an exciting time to be a web developer, because web developers are constantly discovering new ways of doing amazing thing with tools that they created last month.. and then figuring out what the hell to do with IE.. 6(almost gone) 7 and 8.
And seriously.. LESS CSS(Ruby compiler and less.js),LESS.app, LESS Framework, LESS PHP, dotnet.less I may have missed a few. All great work, wonderful ideas and tool. Unless you are under the same project or in a different field (like ‘less’ program for Unix) please select a unique name. Please? I need less ‘less’.
This was a lot of fun to work on. Should have been doing other things though. I blame Merlin for my procrastination.
“Already invited? We’ve temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon.”
It’s not like being kept out of a party or nightclub because your not cool enough. It’s like being kept out of the mall. In a subtle way it’s more depressing. What’s more depressing than being kept out of an exclusive group? Being kept out of a group that requires you to have the physical ability to fog a mirror.
I’m finding myself doing more web design. So it’s time I made myself a new theme. After poking around a bit I decided to try designing with Whiteboard framework. It should be fun.
Gettin’ my grub on!
Sorry, at my age that just sounds silly.
At the Saturday Market with my family. Fantastic day out. I needed a break to get some perspective.
I made a mistake yesterday on a project I was working on for a client. One of the important things I learned about from other freelancers is when you make a mistake, tell your client and the work on fixing it. My mistake is I didn’t ask for something at the start that would have kept me from going down the wrong path. Now I have extra work ahead of me. Unpaid. I don’t ask my client to pay extra time for my mistakes. I am also lucky that the deadline for this project will not need to be adjusted.
When your business lives and dies on you reputation, it’s not about appearing to be perfect, it’s about doing the right thing. That includes keeping your client in the loop when things go wrong.
Most paid creative work is the creation of artwork that fits the the purpose of the customer. A thoughtful design that accomplishes a goal. This requires work and going through a design process. Getting a simple set of instructions from a customer and just making one piece of artwork is not going to produce the best possible result.
I can understand a person shopping around for a cheap t-shirt and finding something for a few dollars. It’s a shirt that will do for the moment. But a few months down the road you realize it’s just not your style. Never was. and it’s just a cheap shirt. No bit deal. It’s just a shirt. You have lots of them.
Why would you treat a logo the same way? Why would you expect to pay the same for a custom Logo design as a t-shirt? I have seen so many posts for jobs that say something like “I want a Logo, should be easy, $10″. Really? how much time and effort do you think you are going to get for that? You are going to get the first thing that pops into someone’s head that they can crank out in Illustrator. That’s not a design process!
You know you have a designer when they ask who your competitors are. They will want to talk to others at your company and find out what kind of style and emotion is behind what you do. Is it a party supply company? ..or a law firm?
In the end what you want is something unique and of quality that really represents your company. Something that wont bug you in a month. Something that is probably going to cost more to produce than a t-shirt.
My son in playing with his Lego pirates.
Alex “they are curvy pirates!”
Me “it’s scurvy. They are scurvy pirates. Scurvy is..”
Me “yup, curvy pirates!”
I had an art instructor once who was far from home when he had an opportunity for some freelance work. He just needed to bring in his portfolio. He asked what they were interested in seeing. He then proceeded to purchase a few art supplies, went back to his hotel and created a new portfolio from scratch. He got the job of course. Because he was good and could “ship”.
I’m realizing I need to do the same thing. As I put my portfolio together, I realize I have no idea where some of my older.. but more interesting work is. So I’m digging in to Illustrator and seeing what I can make from scratch. Time to build my portfolio. I was thinking of trying the field of Logo/icon creation. I see lots of work out there.. and the people posting the jobs are trying to buy logos the way others might buy t-shirts, and for about the same price. “I just want a small logo, it should be easy and quick.” That’s kind of reductive. It dismisses the entire design process. So do many of the people they hire. And how do those logos work out? It’s a symbol of your company! It’s not supposed to be some transient artwork. It’s about branding and identity. Well.. I’m working on a plan to help these poor people out. Rescue them from the $20 logo. I’ll be offering my design service at a reasonable price that has nothing to do with their budget, and everything to do with the work that goes into it. Enough for now.. back to work!