You see, at some early point in your designer career, you are going to hit the code wall, and some other issues that are going to make your short list of professional problems a bit more complicated. You will find yourself worrying about the next evolution of visual code language, the new web standard, and putting in the time to study the latest vector software - instead of concentrating on design and usability.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for working in a creative job that demands a constantly evolving set of skills and the need to study.
But you know what? Out there in the real world, the not-so-sad truth is that your client doesn't care about any of your technicalities. The client, who paid you to design a user-friendly, original website, blog, social profile, banner, etc, doesn't care about any of that. Your clients really couldn’t care less about: • Specialized skills • Changing Web Standards • The costs of design tools and knowledge • The trend dictatorship • Diversity and management of web presence
Your clients want a user-friendly satisfying experience for their customers, and they want it now! You and your client have no time, money or patience to start learning new code or software.
On the other hand we can see that today, most big companies and a rapidly growing number of small businesses need a proper website with user-friendly design. For you, it simply means more work and more competition. Being a small company or business, you, like your client, need to keep costs down, and the best way to achieve that is to face the problems we all share as web designers once in a while.
Tools & Troubles
• Specialized skills
With an increasing & varied range of skills in the web design marketplace, you are still expected to have all the different skill sets in that category. Try explaining to your customer that you also need to pay for a code programmer or a vector application to get things done, and you will face a familiar complication almost all freelance web designers, and even web design companies must encounter from time to time. There are times when you will reach some specialized skill limit, and you will have to outsource part of the work, or decline it completely. You can push yourself hard and learn the missing knowledge, but don’t take it hard when the new code comes to town.
• Changing Web Standards
Did you know that you are caught between two media conglomerates that are trying to force on you their own version of web standards, and that you can do nothing about it? Or that they have been doing it for most of your adult life in one form or another? Should your customer care about that or about which Html is better for him? Or should he hope that like in most cases, it will turn out ok, and your work that he paid good money for, will be understood �" by 'most' of the browsers out there? Like most web designers, you can only try to differentiate between Valid XHTML know how and design & usability requirements. The only good news is that with time, you can get pretty good in debugging your work code.
• The costs of design tools and knowledge.
The high cost and time consumption of design tools and education, is not just about the price of your latest apple hardware, or how much time and money it costs you to study basic web design in college. you should concentrate your worries on the long term problems, like where do you find the time and money to study the next technology, or how do you find a freelance flash programmer that can give you a good deal with a time guaranteed result - while you're working around the clock to finish the job you've already committed to, as well as trying to invest some much needed time on your own business marketing content �" that has to include examples of the latest visual technology, that you still haven't learnt. There is one other cost to consider, and that is work tension - that leads to depression, and in the end �" an artistic suicide. So learn to drink a lot of alcohol like the rest of us.
• The trend dictatorship �"
The web-design trends currently in vogue have definitely moved on since last year, and from the year before that, and from the year before that one….and the Web 2.0 design is not as trendy as it was. Again!
If you were a "potter" in the old days, did you have to worry about the constantly changing color textures of your vase design? Did you have to worry - what on earth will the next month bring about, what graphic trend will your customer hear about and want? Or which trendy new tool do you have to own? The most you worried about was selling your colored vases and about the plague. Right?
Wrong! Today like in the days of yore, your customer may suddenly want the clean and simple style, or the grimy and unconventional grunge design. You can use muted Colors, or prefer the glittering neon ones, but as long as Graphic design and usability play an important part in the wed design field, you are going to keep on serving the trend dictatorship, and your paying customer's whims, and his children's love of cute vector characters with cuter sounds…
The simple truth you must face is that you are going to spend too much time and money on some skill or software today, that you will not need in the coming future. So Consol yourself with the fact that every trend becomes a standard after a while, but your work may live forever.
• Diversity and management of web presence �"
A long and needlessly complicated phrase for a very simple problem. As graphic designers, we have too many tools and media services, in too many different places and formats. Videos- here, photos-there, slideshows in this, music with that. And I have to remember and manage all my passwords, the differences between the user interfaces and command shortcuts, while my varied media components wait in different places and formats. Waiting for me to merge them into one user-friendly, interactive and animated experience - to then be published again into their finale place of rest & format. And that’s just the post production stage. After your design is filled with the content it was meant to hold, you publish it on the web, and from now on, its update time. After you have finished the first design, you may think that your customer can easily take care of the content maintenance with some easy software, and you may be right. Just don’t forget that sometimes, the form is the idea, and your customer will need the new widget or rss icon or whatever, to match the rest of his original design and he will need it in a hurry.
What we want and need as graphic web-designers is a simple and professional solution to the problems mentioned above, and the countless others that are waiting in the wind.
We certainly don’t want to reach a point where we have to explain to our customer about: Specialized skills, Changing Web Standards, The costs of design tools and knowledge, the trend dictatorship and about Diversity and management of web presence.
The only problem is how we define what we want, while not sounding too lazy or out of touch with the real world - The online one and the other one as well. How do we dare to ask just a couple of small things that will enable us to concentrate on the graphic aspect of web design?
Well, the good news is that we can always define what we want in general terms, publish it in an article or blog, and let the market take care of the solutions. The better news is that parts of the solutions are already here.
But first, let's try and define what we need:
What does a humble web-designer need?
• Free- except for premium- Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail and editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine explains best about the rise of "freeconomics" and How the essential technologies that power the Web all point to the - free except for premium - platform. Free except for premium In our: web hosting, domain name, documents management, Bandwidth and all the personal, business and social services like Google Docs, MySpace, Gmail, the Twitters, Facebooks, LinkedIns, you tubes etc.
• No programming or specialized skills needed- if we must add animation or vector characters, or whatever else requested from us to design, it would be nice if we could simply: choose it, mold it, point it in the right direction and tell it what to do. We can handle the rest of the actual design in the web-design playground by ourselves. When we talk about not needing to learn code - we’re also talking about not needing a professional to do the job at all, no need to pay for another person's specialized skills, just so you could finish "your" work at all. Saving some money for a rainy day. For us as well as for our returning clientele.
• One place to rule them all- not just to be able to look at all my web nodes and all the media that I've accumulated throughout the years, but to be able to customize each and every object, text and layer i want to change. And not just for me, but for my client as well when I hand him the keys, and he steps into his friendly web manager to change a few things in his business class website. Clearly, it’s important for you as well as for your customer's enterprise to have a broad and positive web presence. That is way we will need a "one format place" to manage the look and usability of our different web nodes. We want to be able to easily change, from a single place, the look of our website, blog, banner, social profile …to add or erase any form of media we use, and while I'm at it,( sorry �" we) would appreciate some customized search, mark & link capabilities. Why? Because toady we can!
• Continuous accumulation and diversification of styles, objects, effects, layers, videos, characters, backgrounds …by everyone freely uploading their own material to the collective platform, while being able to use whatever media object they covet, by either grazing in the Royalty free content pool, or by paying directly and cost-effectively to the designer/creator himself.
It's not clear if a "humble" web-designer can get all of the above, in one simple and professional place, or even if the solutions we defined can actually heal the rift between web-design and graphic web-design, but for a graphic web designer like me, there is still some hope in the market trends.
Today, elements of the solutions to the web designer's problem are already online. Some in part and some in beta. Some of these online applications or platforms are based on some of the solutions, but none of them has it all.
There are the free design flash platforms like
www.Wix.com and www.Pagii.com that are still in beta, but already offer many functions for web design in one place.
There are others like www.Weebly.com and www.Freewebs.com that offer simple and functioning design usability for everyone.
There are the e-bays for web design components like www.flashloaded.com and www.istockphoto.com, and the obvious ready-made template sites like www.templatemonster.com and www.flash-template-design.com
Until the time when these promising sites and services mature & converge, the only thing left for you to do is take advantage of what's in beta today, and revel in the fact that you don’t have to become something other than a designer. So go and design something…
