Posted On March 3rd, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Design, 2
If you are a web designer or work with web designers, you know that content is a real challenge when it comes to producing a quality website. Mainly because content is of critical importance, after all, that is why users are there in the first place. However, many web teams ignore content until the very end of a web project. Why?
In my experience with print design, I often had finished, client-approved copy before I was even briefed on the design. When it came time for layout, everything I was using for content was real, and I would get annoyed if any last minute copy changes came in after I spent hours kerning and massaging my lovely blocks of text.
With the web however, most of us have gotten used to the lack of finality with our designs. A website is never truly finished, unlike print, where the piece, sooner or later get’s printed—and then it’s done and I’m on to a new project. I think because of this inherent flexibility in the medium of the web, it has caused website owners to neglect copy, because they know it can always be done and added later, usually in a content management system.
In a perfect world, content should be available to a designer before he ever begins designing, just like the good old days of print. Would you agree?
But let’s get real
I have to say, while I generally would prefer this, I know that 99% of the time, it’s never going to happen. Time is money, and as long as I am waiting around for a client to write content, or even have a professional writer get copy written and approved by the client, I am wasting precious time that could be spent developing a look and feel for the website, or constructing the back-end.
Also, there are times where it actually doesn’t make sense to have all the copy written. Sure, things like calls-to-action, headlines and home page copy is great to have well in advance, but often it can be easier and more freeing to design content once it’s in place and on the page. Especially user-generated content cannot possibly be written in advance of the website design, so lorum ipsum will do just fine. And of course, in many other situations, content is not made up of words at all; It may be in the form of video or images, in which case, placeholders will have to make do.
Impossible to design without?
There have been strong comments made by very established web professionals who decry that good design can only be created with content already developed. That content is king and design is what the king is dressed in. And while I wholeheartedly agree, I also believe the being able to design a quality website can be done before every piece of copy is written. If you know the business (or non-business) goals of the website, who it’s target is, the site-map and information architecture already established, and you know what kind of copy will eventually be in place, then who is to say an effective solution can’t be designed?
Do you agree with me, or think I’m out to lunch? Let me know in the comments below.
Posted On December 24th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Design, Business, 32
So recently, a rather bold individual walked into our offices and proclaimed how 99designs has made our jobs obsolete, and now any company can get top-quality designs at bargain basement pricing. How true is his claim?
For those who don’t know, 99designs works this way:
- You the client have a project. You upload your brief and your budget to 99designs (your budget may not even be enough to rent a motel room for a night)
- Thousands of designers can compete, uploading designs for you to review
- You choose from a bunch of entries, maybe even hundreds, possibly thousands, and provide feedback
- You pick whichever one you like best, and pay the designer
Sounds great doesn’t it? Finally, a way to avoid shelling out thousands of dollars to a designer or firm, and a way to get exactly what you want.
Why it’s bad for designers
For ethical and sustainability reasons, spec work is bad for the design industry. Designers do not sell products, they sell their time creating products. In other words, the service of designing. This is similar to how lawyers do not sell successfully won cases, they sell their time preparing and consulting with their client with the hopes of winning said case.
To ask a designer, who would normally charge money by the hour or by the project, to give away free design work “competing” to win a project is like asking a carpenter to build you a chair with the hopes of getting paid if you like it. Would you pull 8 hours of shift work with the hopes that you would get paid if your employer is pleased with your performance?
99designs is bad for the design industry as a whole because it cheapens the profession, literally and figuratively. It perpetrates the notion that graphic design (web design etc.) is easy, and all you need is the right software and a ‘good eye’ to be able to do it effectively. The fact of the matter is, good design is not easy. More than just making nice-looking graphics, it requires problem solving ability, strategic thinking, knowledge of business, communication skills, knowledge of art history and popular culture to name a few skills. Good designers require years of training and work-experience to hone their craft and be able to deliver strong, effective design.
Therefore, to poison a clients’ mind with the idea that it is simply a matter of splashing digital paint on a computer screen and letting them decide which option they want to pay for destroys the credibility and profitability of our profession. By the way, did I mention that the budgets on 99designs are horrendously low? If a professional designer were to actually take the proper amount of time to work on any given project, at these prices, they would make more money flipping burgers.
You may ask why so many designers even bother if there is no money in it. I will explain that next.
Why it’s bad for clients
One might say that it is the designers’ choice whether or not he wants to take part in a design competition website like 99designs, and so you can hardly fault the clients for wanting cheap work if there is a professional designer out there willing to give it away.
Let me explain this with a question; What would your initial feeling be if you were to walk in a pawn shop and see what appears to be a high-quality item priced for less than 1% of what it would cost in a store? If you said you would think it’s stolen or counterfeit, then my point has been made.
So who are these people out there giving away their services for free in the hopes of getting paid, and how can they afford to feed themselves canned chick peas, let alone enjoy a comfortable living? I would put them in the following categories, and keep in mind, the term ‘designer’ is used loosely:
1) The Kid
A whiz with Photoshop and Corel Draw, this mid-pubescent designer works in the safe comfort of his parents basement and uses the competitions as a way to kill time between rounds of Unreal Tournament, and hone his understanding of lens flare effects. He’s using the 99designs projects in his portfolio to apply for design college where he will actually learn about graphic design. Is this who you want designing your corporate identity?
2) The Mass Producer
This designer believes it’s all a numbers game. She has built up such a massive library of design templates over the years, that to submit for a competition is like pulling out 2 year old Halloween candy from a barrel and dumping a handful into a new treat bag. There is no strategy, uniqueness or customized problem solving here. Just stock icons, textures and illustrations with “YOUR NAME HERE” replaced with… your actual company name. So much for “the best possible design to meet your needs”, as stated on the 99designs website.
3) The Hack
This designer just plain sucks. Having a slight understanding of design software but no understanding of design, this guy makes countless amateur mistakes like squished-type or vertically stacked words, and overused 3-D effects like drop shadows, reflections and lens flare. To him, typography is a study of maps, kerning has something to do with corn on the cob, and Paul Rand makes a brand of guitars or something. This designer needs 99designs because frankly, he couldn’t get a job designing popsicle-stand signs for the neighborhood kids even if he was paid in frozen Kool-aid. The children would just point and mock.
4) The Thief
This designer knows what good design is, but just doesn’t have the skill or patience to actually do it himself. So he finds good examples of design and rips it off. From awards galleries to Wordpress Themes, no lovely design is safe from his money-grubbing hands. What you think is an amazing design for your company brand is actually already in use by someone else, maybe even your competitor. You may not find out right away, but your customers sure will. You’ve just paid for counterfeit goods.
Okay, while I’ve clearly had too much fun writing these description, I think the point should be clearly evident; Just because in your opinion, the designs look professional on 99designs, it does not mean it is. Anyone who told you that 99designs is the same as hiring a design company or professional freelancer is simply wrong.
Professionals take time to understand your business problem. They research, they brainstorm, they get inspired, they concept and sketch before they even open Photoshop. Their finished work is not just attractive - it is original, it’s customized for you, and it strategically communicates your message to your target audience in a way that will make them remember you and buy from you. They may actually create work that you do not personally like, but unbeknown to you is precisely on target and will be effective. In fact, a professional designer could, and should challenge your perception of what good is.
Closing arguments
In many ways, I don’t envy clients. When shopping for design, they are being asked to spend money before they’ve seen a finished piece. They are buying in faith that the finished product will be good. Sure 99designs is tempting because it gives you multiple design options quickly and cheaply. Don’t be fooled. You’re better off going to a local design school (community or private college) and at least giving the students some experience. The results will probably even be better.
Especially if you are a company with a proper amount of marketing money, don’t be cheap. Hire a reputable designer or firm who will work with you. Pay them for their work. Remember that most successful companies—from Fortune 500’s to locally-owned private companies—have used good design to get to where they are. Rest assured, they did not use 99designs.
Posted On October 16th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Design, Marketing, 9
Many business owners think of graphic design as just eye-candy. They’ll use terms like, ‘I need you (the designer) to pretty it up.’ Or, ‘I’ve got the basic layout done, I just need you to make it look good.’
Of course we know that true graphic design is about communication, and to be a good designer, you need to be a good problem solver. Even more true with the web, design is about looking great, for sure, but also being usable, accessible, converting users, etc. But sometimes we forget about how good web design can influence search engines.
You may say that I’m mad. That google bots can’t possibly crawl my web page and tell whether or not it looks good. Indeed, some of the ugliest websites can rank #1 for a particular topic. In fact, my latest search on Google for good web design brought up this page as #1 in the organic results. Hardly eye-candy. (Funny enough, the author is Robin Williams)
However, I’m going to show you a prime example of how good design can affect search engine results. There is a web marketing agency in the US called Viget Labs who does great work, and have 4 teams, or “labs” that corner every area of the web, design, marketing, user-experience/strategy and development. Each of these labs have their own blog off of the main company website with an entirely different look and feel.
Company Website
User Experience Blog
Development Blog
Marketing Blog
Design Blog
Many of us in the web design world were impressed when Viget came out with their 4 sub brands, and even more so when we saw the quality of the content for the most part, and the consistency with which each blog was updated.
However, despite the fact that all the micro-sites are well designed, have the same quality of content, and the same team coding them and optimizing them for search engines, which one ranks better when searching for the term “Viget” in Google, other than the company site? The design blog. Why? The design blog simply has a more impressive design. Sure, the other blogs look great, but the design blog, with it’s water-colour background (which has since become a web design trend) has a certain mood and feel that the others can’t compete with. And when all of the other design blogs and ‘best-of’ lists came out, most of them included the Viget design blog over the others. And of course, the more quality in-bound links a website has, the higher it’s search-engine ranking will climb.
In short, create something that people enjoy using, because of it’s great content and design, and most likely, users will stay on the site, come back to it, link to it and search for it. Good design really has a complete impact on the entire strategy of your website.
And it looks pretty.
Posted On September 6th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Design, 5
For years, web designers have not gotten the respect of print or interior designers in the greater design community. Need proof? Take a look at any design annual or magazine such as Communication Arts, AIGA, or any of the design competitions or award shows. Web is always it’s own category, and simple, well-designed sites are rarely considered for web awards, with most judges favoring big-budget Flash sites featuring embedded video and gimmicky games.
With this stigma attached to web design, many designers coming out of school are turned off by designing for the web, thinking of it as a limiting platform for design. After all, with print you aren’t limited by available fonts, screen resolutions or bandwidth. The world is your oyster with print, at least in their minds, while web is the unfortunate necessity you have no choice but to design for. But I thought I’d outline reasons why designing for the web can be more fun than designing a print piece. Some might say that some of these reasons are actually more in print’s favor, but I disagree, as you’ll see:
1. People use the web
Sure, people use print too, such as in the case of newspapers, magazines or catalogs. But generally speaking, users visit a website, sometimes daily, in order to find information. Print is easily discarded, while a user will return to a website time and again to buy products, view editorial content, or interact with a social community. (There’s a reason the newspaper industry is hurting, and many publishing companies are scrambling to switch their advertisers over to the web.)
It is this general nature of websites that make it more fun to design for—you have to always be thinking about usability, unlike print where you are mostly thinking about visual interest first. The left/right brain mentality of always designing with the user in mind is what makes the web so fun to design for.
2. Users can contribute to a website
The idea of readers of media contributing their thoughts and opinions is not new. For a long time people have been interested in submitting ‘letters to the editor’ in order to get their rantings published. The beauty of the web is that it’s so much easier, and without as much of the screening process of traditional editorial—users ideas, intelligent or not, can get out there for people to see.
This presents an interesting design challenge. How can you visually allow for content that will grow, expand and change long after you’ve designed the website? That challenge, to create a flexible information scheme that will allow for change, is fascinating to be faced with as a web designer.
3. You don’t know which device your audience will be using
Print is so easy in some respects. When you design an 8 page brochure, you know exactly how big it will be, how close people will be viewing it, what material it will be printed on and so on.
With the web, there is an endless variety of ways users can see a site or application. Some of your users may be viewing it on an outdated 800 x 600 screen resolution, so the site will appear big and bulky with little white space, while others may be on a massive 30” flat panel, resulting in the website appearing tiny taking up little of the screen.
Other users still might be on a mobile device, be it an iPhone, a Blackberry or a Razr, people use the web very differently on these devices than when using a desktop PC. Let’s not even get started on browsers; Firefox, Internet Explorer 6-8, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Camino, there are so many browsers out there and many do not interpret HTML and CSS the same way which can have disasterous effects on your design.
The challenge of designing for so many unknowns presents a difficult, yet satisfying challenge when your end product is accessible, and enjoyable to use on a variety of browsers and devices.
4. Separation of content and design makes your website design easy to update
Sure, the print world has Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress, both of which offer style sheets and master pages which allow for templating pages and easy updating of text. But how often are print designs done in Photoshop or Illustrator? In these applications, it can be time consuming and difficult to update your designs.
The beauty of modern web design is that structure (XHTML) is separate from data (Database), which is separate from behavior (Javascript and server-side code) which is separate from aesthetics (CSS). WIth this separation of all of the elements means it is generally painless to update one without touching the other. Want to style a comment form that sits on hundreds of existing blog posts? No need to go by through one-by-one, just edit the style sheet, and presto! Every form across the whole website is updated to reflect your design choices.
That sure beats suffering through Photoshop layers.
5. You can’t animate print design
Maybe with the exception of pop-up books or flip-books, print material does not animate. And while we are comparing apples and oranges, the fun of designing an interface is that animation presents a whole other box of tools in your design arsenal.
While Flash animations of the web 1.0 era has left a bad taste in many mouths, the fact is, being able to show/hide panels of information, and fade or slide in images can add a lot to the user-experience. Even when appropriate, being able to embed video or animate text and images in Flash can be entertaining for the end-user. The ability to add sound, motion and video to a web interface, if done with good taste, gives you so much more to experiment with as a creative professional.
6. A client can update their content
This is often seen as a bad thing, especially when designing with a particular CMS in mind. But once you get used to the idea, letting clients manage their content creates a strange kind of therapeutic notion of letting your little baby bird fly away, not know what kind of adventures will come it’s way.
Okay, that’s a bit over the top, but it’s true that, while it can be disheartening to see a client with poor taste and little self control mangle your beautiful design with bad content, it can also be exhilarating to come back to visit a site you designed six months ago, and see that the client has kept it up-to-date with engaging content.
7. Visually impaired users can still enjoy your website’s content
When you think about it, a website is kind of like a print-piece that has Braille automatically built in. In other words, if you design and build your site to standards, with clean, semantic mark-up, add properly described alt attributes to images to name a few things, your website can be enjoyed by disabled users using a screen reader.
This doesn’t necessarily make it fun to design for, but it is something the modern web designer is always thinking about as he or she designs. Which is partially why, as an example, web designers use unordered lists styled with CSS image replacement instead of a table of images. The visual result is the same, but done the proper way, visually impaired users can still use your site’s navigation. The feeling of knowing that you’re building something accessible to all is satisfying, even fun in itself, isn’t it?
8. Users can always print out your website—not the other way around.
While the notion of a paperless office is an ideal worth striving for, the fact is, most users who want to read long articles would prefer to print out a web page instead of reading on the screen. With CSS, you can even specify a unique style sheet for the website when it’s printed, allowing for things like hiding interface elements, search bars, and colours that drain ink usage, and providing a simple, attractive black and white text layout that makes use of the paper space, which will make users much happier to read when they print it out.
While creating a print style sheet isn’t exactly fun in itself, knowing users can print the website content and comfortable read it adds to the overall user experience.
9. No nasty print errors
Print designers know that dreaded phone call all too well. The printer has an issue with your InDesign files, or worse, the client has received the printed copies and all of the images printed low res, or there’s a typo, or there was mis-registration of the colours. You know the drill. Just knowing there are the potential with those kinds of errors can cause undue anxiety on a designer.
Of course, when designing for the web, you need to be cognizant of errors, and we all know that things will go wrong, especially when viewing the site using Internet Explorer. But here’s the difference—when something goes wrong on the web, you fix it. You don’t need to start from scratch and re-develop the website. Having that safety net makes the web more fun to design for.
Those are my thoughts. If you have any more, please leave them in the comments below, or if you are an enraged print designer, please leave your opinion below as well.
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