Web Designers, graphic designers, and all designers are face with Design Challenges. Let's dive into the world of web design, graphic design, usability, information technology, and look at life and the work place. Come back often to see what I see. View my world and the Design Challenges that I'm face with
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Designers are not necesarily Techies
Just a reminder to some folks out there, just because we know how to use a computer and design does not make us MIS. I dabble in a lot of technology and used to work as part of an MIS department, but this does not mean that every designer did.
Designers have a creative side, not necessarily a techie side (although some do). Stop asking us to troubleshoot your PCs, hire a consultant to do this or take your virus infected computer to the local computer store, for an arm and a leg they will fix it. If your computer is that messed up, buy a new one, it's probably cheaper.
If you need to have clear and nice designs then contact me, I will make sure to please your every need.
I was working out at the gym, when I run into an expupil. He tells me he is looking to move to Texas, for reasons too complicated to explain and lack of relevance to this blog. He is however having a hard time finding a job to justify the relocation.
At this point, I should informed you that he is a graphic designer working for a large corporation in CT. The problem is that he has 10 years of experience and yet can seem to get an offer out of the upper 20's in Texas, while he is making on the average 50K in CT. He further tells me that in speaking with a headhunter, his fears have been confirmed, upper 20's is what a graphic designer makes everywhere else but New England where it is the market that has the highest demands for Graphic Designers.
So there you have it, if you are a graphic designer looking to make more than average ducks you have better relocate yourself to New England.
P.S. the title of this blog is a reference that if you have friends in your field then you are likely to get a better job as they have the inside scoop into the industry and they would most likely recommend a friend over a stranger no matter what the resume says as far as experience.
Many designers don't realize, or have ever heard of an include file. I find myself teaching this stuff to all newbies all the time. So here it goes, short and sweet, if you need to repeat any part of your design onto more than one page, then use an include file.
So what is this include file, you ask? Simple, it is the html code you would normally use on your Web page, cut and pasted onto a stand alone file, saved as nameoffile.inc
Couldn't be any simpler. What does this include file do for you? Well among many things, it saves you time when you need to update this part of the file. Include files are great for navegation units or footers. These are things that tend to appear on every page on your Web site, and is usually a tidious process if you need to update even a simple link.
So how do you use it? you simple make a reference to it in your HTML code like this:
couldn't be any easier, try it, it will save you a lot of time and Web coding when creating/designing your page.
P.S.> One last tip, keep track of your tables, I recommend you don't break up your tables inside an include. In other words, start and end your tables inside the code of your include, or the inc files could potentially become a nightmare to track.
Today wasn't a bad day after all, these weather forecasters, they just can't get it right. They predicted a cloudy rainy day for the Jersey shore. We risked it and decided to visit family down there. It turn out to be a wonderful day at the beach, sunny, not too hot, and the reminants of Irene helped to provide some great waves.
So what does this have to do with design, well absolutely nothing, except while at the beach, I saw some planes flying and dragging some banners across. I'm sure you all seen these, Some where very nice and some weren't.
I been told over and over again how yellow and red are great colors by marketers, but I haven't jumped on that bandwagon yet. Today, their point was further disproved as some of these banners were yellow and red. Because of the sun, these colors were really hard to read and quite unclear.
The point to this is that you must design with all these in mind. I can't tell you enough how important it is to keep your audience and your design environment in mind whenever you are creating some graphical element or marketing effort. The audience is your target, not the marketers, let the audience be the one to guide you in your way.
I can't tell you enough. Never start a project without a wireframe. This will help you not only on defining your intial layout, but also in getting the right dimensions for your graphical interface.
I am currently working on a million dollar deal right now. The client wanted to see different layouts, after several emails, I decided to show them wireframes. I explained that a wireframe is more efficient as it allows them to see and decide on a layout without worrying about graphics.
Graphical elements are more precise and required more decisions, but having a wireframe allows the client to envision what their site will look like.
Think about it, you wouldn't go ahead and built a house without a blue print. The same applies to a Web site, consider a wireframe to be the blue print of your site.
I used to use a site call colormatch in the past when I found myself at a lost for color creativity. Recently, I was pointed out that this tool had an upgrade; it is now known as Color Blender.
Color blender is a pretty nifty tool. It allows you to select a shade of color and it will suggest a six color palette to match. One major improvement from its predecessor is the ability to type in RGB values instead of using the sliders.
Speaking of sliders, it is pretty interesting to find where colors change. The color paletter changes when you cross from one small value to the next, either by changing an RGB value by one increment or using the slider. While a minute change in RGB value will maintain, or slightly change your original color, the color palette changes drastically. This raises the question, how efficient are these colors?
In my opinion, this tool is merely a way to gather a color palette when you can't seem to find the right colors for your design. As designers, we know that although one color sits well with another, there are also variations that would do the same job. Although other colors can match just as well, it all boils down to the intended goal and what emotions you are trying to achieve.
For example, yellow and red sit well together, but so do yellow and blue. Eventhough both combinations sit well together, both combinations yield very different emotions. Red is a strong color, it signifies anger, rage. Blue on the other hand draws on soothness, calmness, clarity and order.
Always keep your final goal in mind and use this tool accordingly. Blend On!!!
As a Designer you might be pulled in to speak with a client, this requires that you be quick and most importantly professional. The first thing to remember is that the client is the one paying your salary, therefore you must give them your undivided attention.
Today, I was asked to speak with some heavy hitters and I was forced to not only explained my design, but I had to tell them how to design for our space. You might see this as an easy task, but when you have someone bombarding you with unexpected questions you have better be quick on your feet and always provide a great answer that showcases your design. In addition, you must sound confident and prove that you are the greatest designer that ever was.
If you follow these two key items, you will be a successful designer.
The world has become very lazy. We live in the world of automation, but lets remember someone has to do the automating. Last I checked I'm not the only worker bee. It is pretty interesting to see bees work together to gather the honey. The go out in a group just like a team does and perform the work together. Why is it that people are forgetting this crucial thing?
If we are to survive as a human race we must work together. As a designer/team player, it is your duty to help your fellow designers out, but there is a fine line between helping others design and doing the work for them. You may show a person how to do something, but how many times can you show them the same thing over and over again?
I'm tire of telling people how to do something, watch them write it down to then ask me again the next day. Read, please read your notes!
This weekend I was celebrating my Birthday, well the day is today, but celebrations began on Friday, and as part of my gift, my lady took me up to tour the Vanderbilt Mansion in Newport, RI. This was a fascinating experience and gave me a fresh look to learn from the old.
You see, when designing we must look at the past to design for the present and give the future something to learn from. This mansion cost an approximate 100 million dollars of today's money, there was bound to be something exciting to see.
As I expected I saw some beautiful designs, not just on the tapestry and interior decor, but more in the architecture. I was a civil engineer student in my distant past, but I lost interest mostly in part because I was studying the subject for the wrong reasons, deep down I should have studied architecture, the intricacies in the designs really intrigued me. Fascinating wall treatments, columns, and molding, simply glorious!
Remember to enjoy your surroundings and you too will become a better designer.
I usually Design in Photoshop and Develop in Dreamweaver, but that's now. There was a time when I was developing in Notepad. I just like clean code.
I was converted to Dreamweaver during the time I expend getting my MS. Given that, I never really got into the design mode features. Every now and then I switch to design view and get to enjoy a new feature.
For years, I have complaint that sometimes you can't zoom in to take a closer look. Well, today i found out that Dreamweaver does offer this option, well somewhat. If you have your items in a table, you can switch to Expanded view via the Layout toolbar. Dreamweaver does give you a warning that during this view items may, and will, look different than the regular view, daaa, you are zoom in, of course is going to look different, but it's a nice feature.
I have been using css layers for a while now. They come in pretty handy, they allow you to place them anywhere on your page allowing for important text to be place on the top of your HTML code, and display anywhere you wish.
The only problem I have encountered is that they display slightly different accross all browsers. That is, until today!
Turns out that if you do not reset your margins and padding your layers get thrown out of whack. You see, I usually, like most Web designers cater to IE, and Firefox second. Turns out that Firefox was displaying them correctly, but because of this margin business IE would not, but all the while, hearing how IE is so forgiving I thought Firefox was the PITA .
Researching and trying things, I come to find out that all you have to do is add the following code to the top of your CSS page and you are good to start layering away my friend.
I just opened Dreamweaver to see that they have changed the splash text on the welcome screen, where it used to say "join our seminars", now says "introducing Dreamweaver 8."
Two things here, first, I didn't realize that Macromedia connected to the Web to download this "ad" into my welcome screen. What else are they downloading or uploading for that matter, clearly a violation of some rule(s) here.
On the other hand, this got me curious enough to click and find out that they are moving towards an even better product. They are introducing features that will allow you to edit and integrate XML into your Web page seamlessly with options to preview your CSS in designer's mode. The other new features, as well, look very promising and are making me very excited about this new release.
Now all they have to tell me is that they have fix the bug that freezes Dreamweaver everything I first launch it and I'll be a very happy Web Designer.
Today I went for some advertising training. I woke up an hour earlier than usual so I could catch a train. I did this eventhough I am definetely not a morning person, I did it because I respect other peoples time and I would expect the same.
Needless to say, I arrive 10 minutes before class was suppose to start to find out that not only was I the first person there, but to be notified that the instructor would be late. I sat in the training room alone for the next ten minutes when the first set of fellow leaners showed up.
The instructor wasn't as late as expected, but was very disorganized and I believe it was cause due to his delay in getting there. The rest of the day didn't get any better as he could not get his thoughts together. Maybe he was just a bad teacher...
The moral of the story here is, be on time or suffer the consequences of being late. The repercusions to this delay for the teacher was to be thrown off track, not only by his lateness, but by the lateness of fellow seminar attendees.
Oh yes, this problem continued in the afternoon as a couple of attendees were also about 15 minutes late in coming back from lunch. What is wrong with people today!
Yes, I know, everyone is a newbie once. Have you any idea how frustating it is to teach someone everything you know when they have no comprehension of what that is? It is one thing to show someone the roadmap, but at what point do you tell the boss that they made the wrong choice.
As a designer, you must help your fellow designers, there the reason for so many forum sites. A lot of these forums are a big waste of time, but some are really good. Stop asking me questions, here is a list of the good ones (READ!!!!!!)
I was just watching Hotel Rwanda, excellent movie. It draws a lot of emotion from the viewers. It got me thinking, how did they achieve this, simple, they designed the scenery with purpose. They incorporated a very moving soundtrack to go specifically with each scene.
In Web design, however, a visual is all you have for the most part, unless you are designing a moving image/animation. So how do you draw the right emotion. The answer is not as difficult as it might seem, you use your creativity.
Picking the right photograph or combination of photographs is all that you need. Think about all those calendars you see around your office, most of them are a simple photo. But what do you do when you are asked to designed more specifically? Then you must be carefull to pick the right colors to obtain the right emotion. For example, light blue is a soothing color, think about how you react when you see a light blue sky. How about a sunrise versus a sunset, use this kind of visuals when you are designing for the space; think about what emotions you want to achieve from your viewers before you actually open Photoshop aqnd start playing away.
I think many have forgotten that to be a succesfull Web designer means that you have to take the copy into consideration. That is, you need to know what space you are designing for. Many people today don't realize that a Web designer is more than just a person who can use photoshop to create graphics for the Web.
A designer's job has become more of a one stop shop for marketing to provide copy and the Web designer to build and develop the pages. The designer must now create the pretty picture, slice it and place it onto the livespace, unlike the early days before the dotcom burst.
To be successfull, the Designer also needs to take into account the wording use and ask their copywriter to be careful in the terminology use in order to properly fit it in the provided space. Now that we live in the world of search engines, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has taken over and the designer needs to also take this factor into their designs.
As I was saying earlier, design is best when kept simple and to the point. The same can be said about life. I been looking for a cheap car for the past month with no luck. Now myself being a Web person felt that the best place to look for this vehicle would be online.
I set out to look on the typical places, eBay, AutoTrader, Edmunds, KBB, etc... Luck would have it, I found what appeared to be the perfect vehicle on eBay, I began the bidding war (you fellow ebayers know what I'm talking about), to be defeated time and time again. Finally, I struck lucky and won what was described as a vehicle in excellen condition. I drove four hours to pick up this car to find a junker. I left the place very dissapointed and with all hope lost, that was my saturday. Sunday, I spent all day driving the local roads (going back to basics), this is where it gets simple. After locating a slew of local possibilities, I went to the movies (The Wedding Crashers - excellent comedy btw) and in my way home found a car for sale, about 1/2 mile from my place. I purchased it last night.
Moral of the story, just like your designs, look for the simple answer.
With the aid of some css, it's pretty simple to create a menu with rollovers. I wanted to create a menu for one of my company's show sites and didn't want to rely on yet another javascript/dhtml menu, so I decided to look into CSS.
It is pretty simple, all you have to do is establish your text color, font size, and add some onMouseOver, onMouseOut code to you td's and you are all set. Below the example:
Hello World
A few copy and paste of the cell and it just doesn't get any easier and simpler. That's it for now, until next time when the CSS code comes to your town!
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