It’s important to consider how designers like Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, and Paul Rand went about their work.

Here is a blog post talking about Paul Rand working with Steve Jobs:
http://davetrott.campaignlive.co.uk/2012/01/03/whats-wanted-v-whats-needed/

Basically it says that instead of providing “a few options,” Paul Rand provided “the best option.” The blog post mentions that Paul caught Steve Jobs off guard when he said this. However Steve Jobs stepped back and allowed Paul to do his thing. In this situation, getting quality design work was largely about developing a mutual respect for one another.

That said, while working with clients, it’s important to establish a relationship where mutual respect is involved. Clients working in a certain niche, may know that niche well. Designers should show respect to their clients by becoming genuinely interested in how they can use their clients knowledge to improve their designs.

Designers on the other hand know design. Design is what they’ve studied for many years and the best continue to study design every day. That is why it makes little sense for a designer to allow a client to freely control the design preferences on a project.

When designers find their clients telling them that they need to use the color blue, ask them, “why?” Don’t be afraid to get to the heart of their choices and tell them whether or not you agree. Designers are experts in design, and that is what they’re being paid for.

If a client has a strong opinion about some aspect of design, discuss it with them and if necessary, guide them gently toward decisions that make more visual sense?

Clients hire designers for their skills, including their knowledge from all their years of study and hard work. Even if your client is acting stubborn, if you simply give into their demands, most often, you are not providing them good design services.

It’s important for designers to be professional and take some inspiration from the great designers of our time. Respect your client, respect the service you’ve been asked to perform, and respect yourself.

Basically:

• It’s a 1000 pixel wide grid that helps when designing in programs like Photoshop.
• In the browser, your pixels become percentages. (example: 490px in your design equals 49% in the browser, 150 px equals 15%, etc.
• His example ads 2% padding for the gutter width.
• The design of the grid is set at 90% of the width of the viewport so it expands as well as contracts.

The last one I mention here is especially interesting. Being flexible to go larger means that it takes into consideration not only large monitors, but the newer TV’s that allow people to surf the web while sitting on the couch. Hmmm, will this re-define channel surfing as we know it?

One thing I do know is that this grids simple solution makes me really want to try it! Bravo and thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks for coming up with the idea.

Just want to add a quick note to this post. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, as they say. One of the problems with websites like 99-designs is the amount of fraud. This blog post from the logo factory about covers it.

99designs.com offers design competitions where you open your project to a community of designers who all try and compete to get the best design for you. As the client, you pledge an amount, say $300.00 and several designers will strive to get you a cool design.

I entered a logo competition for a company called Monkeypants Software. At this point, the jury’s still out on who the winner is. The holder of the contest has a week to choose a design from the submissions once the contest has ended. Sometimes there are well over 100 designs. In the case of Monkeypants Software, there were 70 total designs. Here’s my favorite from the ones I did:

So, how do the 99designs competitions compare with the traditional way of working with a designer? Both are different and there are advantages to each.

“When you hire one designer you’re stuck with their aesthetic and their concept. With 99designs, you get ideas from many different people.” Says Valerie Johnson on a testimonial on the 99designs site.

On the other hand, when I work with clients, there is typically a lot of communication between them and I that doesn’t happen in a contest. After the design brief, Typically for example, the client chooses a direction from say, 3 initial mockups. We then move forward in 1 direction continuing to refine the logo until it’s finished.

I will also sometimes have specific questions for the client about the product or service that will allow me to be more in touch with the creation of the logo. It was a bit frustrateing that I couldn’t ask the client about certain things. Since it was a contest and not a client, I just made up my own answers.

One thing that I see a problem with in the 99designs competitions is that many designers are using a lot of shiny effects and gradients to make logo’s “pop”. Embellishments such as this, often don’t translate when your logo has to go onto a variety of mediums. That said, Gradients and shines sure look good on the web, which is where the contest is held. In reality, it’s far more important to make a logo “read” than “pop”.

Depending on your own individual preferences, it may be best to take both routes. Hold a competition at a site like 99designs and then have an individual designer refine your final choice if necessary. This way you get the most choices, as well as a refining process where you can get your logo exactly the way you like.

On the other hand, if you know exactly what you want, it will save you time and money to work with a single designer. When you buy my design package for example, I include a basic branding and usage guide with my service, as well as grayscale and sometimes single color versions of the logo, depending on your individual needs.

So anyway, that about raps it up. I’m thinking about holding a lawn mowing competition because the grass is looking a bit shabby. Every week I’ll have a different person mow my lawn and I’ll pay the one person who did the best job at the end of the year. Hmm, not really the same thing now is it?

1) Blogging brings traffic and new potential customers.

In addition to having your own blog, you should consider guest-blogging and article writing for other sites. This is an excellent way to create connections to your own site and become known as an expert in your field. When this happens, others will link to you.

It’s no secret that when other sites link to you, it boosts your rankings in the search engines. Creating more content through blog posts means more opportunities to be listed in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

You can also post links to your blog posts in facebook, twitter and other social media. People with whom you’re connected are likely to visit your site when you can get their attention with an interesting headline.

2) Blogging helps keep you in touch with your existing customers.

Do you find that your customers are asking the same questions about your product? That’s an excellent reason to do a blog post because there’s interest in that area. Often times, good blogging means keeping people informed.

3) A blog establishes your credibility and marks you as an authority.

It’s good to have a regular blogging schedule that keeps you active and searching for that next post. The need for this forces you to remain up to date with the topics you’re blogging about. Staying current is good news because it puts you ahead of your competitors.

When done well, blogging can make you seem like an expert. Don’t be surprised when people start asking you questions about what you’re writing about. If your products provide solutions for these people, all the better.

4) Blogging builds an archive of information for new and existing customers.

Soon after you start blogging, people will find your posts on the search engines. The traffic will be small at first, but it can build over time, especially when others are linking to you. If your blog posts are helpful, every new person that visits your site can become a customer.

Both new and existing customers can search your blog with a handy search feature provided by WordPress. People can search your blog for past archives to get information on things they need.

5) You become a better writer.

Being a better writer means you’re a better communicator. That’s important for online business. When it comes to writing, blogging forces you to utilize the one essential ingredient to improvement: practice.

6) A blog helps you understand the technical features of a cutting-edge website.

The websites I create for you at democracy designs are equipped with the newest and latest blogging features. Getting in touch with this technology can allow you to learn new ways of marketing that you may not have thought about on your own.

7) Blogging is fun!

That’s right, you’ll probably enjoy blogging. If you don’t, give it some time and maybe an interest will form. If not, at least you tried. Aside from fun, the commitment it takes to blog regularly can be a great tool for keeping you and your customers motivated about your company.

Those are some of the best reasons I found to have a blog on your site. Chris Garrett came up with 13 more reasons your business needs a blog. This is a good article and goes a little more in depth than I do here. Hopefully these two articles will be enough to convince you to give blogging a try.

I will mention that if you purchase one of my packages, you don’t have to have a blog if you don’t want one. I can set you up with one of my standard web packages and disable the blog feature until you feel you’re ready to start blogging. Check out my services page for more ideas on what I can do for you.

Even if a project has direction in the beginning, the vision gets muddy when multiple people start influencing the design. Before you know it, you wind up with a design that stinks.

There’s a saying abound: “a camel is a horse designed by committee.” There’s nothing wrong with the camel, but when you’re going for a horse, well…

It’s a difficult thing to be a leader in the professional world. It takes a lot of assets: guts, determination, connections, education, and more often than not, a magic carpet. Mainly however, the quality I want to emphasize for good leadership is experience.

I’ve been a graphic designer working since 1996. In that time, I’ve worked as a freelancer and for companies, both small and large. The time I’ve spent as a designer has given me a lot of valuable experience; experience that I hope to pass on to you, the client. (Sorry, sometimes self-promotion is a necessity, like good design).

Thing is, I want to make it known that I’ve worked in a lot of environments. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t in terms of creating solid, well designed projects.

I’ve spent enough time in “design by committee environments,” that I can instantly spot the stinky design it creates. That’s why I laughed the other day when I saw a brochure from American Express in my mailbox.

Let me dare explain the back-story of this piece: a designer is given a concept, usually with some vague direction like “Were doing a new promo for our membership rewards program and it’s got to have something flashy, like a bike, on the cover.”

The designer goes to work, selects a nice blue sky with a red road bike. As a graphic artist, he’s looking at things like colors, composition and how to direct the eye to get the message across visually. He ends up with a piece like this:

Decent Design

It’s a nice looking brochure and it gets the point across. Presumably it makes the prospect, in this case me, say, “cool bike, I want to know more.” It almost worked, but there was a problem, the brochure didn’t come to me looking like this.

I imagine the scenario behind this piece, and I can see the committee getting involved. Someone (probably in marketing) says something like, “I don’t think this brochure is going to reach our demographic, there’s something missing.”

Then someone (probably an executive) says, “Why don’t we have a photo of a guy who represents our target market, looking in at the bike like he’s window shopping.”

“Yeah, that’s great,” says another marketer trying to get a word in. Everyone seems to agree except of course the designer, who makes a suggestion, “simplicity is what I was going for, I think it’s stronger with just the bike.”

The marketers stare at him blankly and the sudden stillness in the room gets the attention of the creative director. The creative director, instead of taking a leadership role on good design, decides to keep the majority of his co-workers happy by saying, “yes, and we can put the target market guy right here at the bottom.”

The designer feels he has no choice but to adhere to the bad design requests. He ends up hopelessly lost in the desert with a beast like this:

Stinky Design

Yes, it’s bad, I know it stinks, so let me plug your nose while I calmly whisper in your ear, “that dark and blurry image of the guy looking at the bike is not a mirage, it’s real.” I did a quick Photoshop job on the brochure (top version) above so you could see how much better the piece looks without the “target market” guy cluttering it up.

Although the above events are imagined, I’ve had enough experience to know “design by committee” when I see it. It happens a lot in the professional world, where the goal is to please everybody.

That way of thinking brings to mind another idiom, “when you try to please everyone, no one wins.” I like this article at Smashing Magazine: Why design by committee should die. Included in the article is a funny list of excuses people use to open up their designs to a committee.

Considering all you’ve just read, I’d just like to say that I take pride in my experience. I like to maintain a leadership role while getting you the quality product you want. All I ask is that you let me hold the reigns and guide you through the design process. This may also involve marketing and writing to some degree, but have no fear, I will lead you to water eventually.

As for American Express, their bad design work has rousted me into action. As a prospect, I’m going to opt out of their mailing list, so I won’t receive any more junk mail from them. Thanks anyway American Express, but my mailbox is reserved for horses—weee-he-he-he-he-he!

Like this post? Didn’t like this post? Have any design by committee horror stories? Go ahead and leave a comment.

When you’re a web designer working for a company, the process of web design is commonly divided into three areas:

Designers/UI (User Interface Designers) – Often referred to as “web designers,” these people design the website’s look and feel: layout, colors, fonts, etc. They are also responsible for the website’s usability; In other words, optimizing the site for ease of use.

Front-end coders – Typically called “web designers/developers,” front-end coders take the designs that the UI designers create and translate them for the web using HTML and CSS code. Front end coders often work with Javascript (Jquery) and other programming languages. The in-depth programming however, usually requires the expertise of the back-end people.

Back-end coders — Commonly called “web developers,” these people work with the database and write the code that connects the database with the rest of the site. They typically use languages such as SQL or MySQL and a server language such as PHP or ASP.

I like to further break web specialization down into two areas: technical and human. I’m a right brain, big picture thinker, most of the time; hopefully you relate to my simplified breakdown as well. If you’re designing pages and processes for the end user, you’re on the human side. If you’re designing systems for code to work with other code, you’re designing for the technical side. A good web designer or developer needs to specialize in the technical or human side, but also keep both sides in mind.

So what does this all mean to you? It means a lot if you’re thinking about trusting me to deliver you an awesome website. Basically, I’m a web designer who designs for humans. I keep the technical side in mind, but most of the serious coding I leave to the specialists.

My favorite coders are the people who develop for WordPress. Thanks to WordPress, I’m able to deliver you an incredibly functional website in very little time. In addition to WordPress, I’m also using the Genesis Framework from StudioPress. Genesis works flawlessly with WordPress to add additional functionality to your site. I suppose you could say that WordPress and Genesis are my web design team.

Teams aside, I strive to be a web designer you can trust. I do my best to stay on the leading edge of web progression because I see that as a major part of my role as a web designer. WordPress, Genesis, and a number of other people/websites help me stay progressive: Brian Clark at Copyblogger, Darren Rouse at Problogger, Collis and Cyan Ta’eed at Envato, Jon Morrow at Kissmetrics, Jeffery Zeldman at AListApart to name just a few.

Let me wrap this up by saying if you want a web designer you can trust, it’s a good idea to find out what sort of web designer they are. Are they human or technical? What do they specialize in? Are they working alone or with a team? Are they keeping up with the latest web technologies? Are they keeping up with design and usability? Those questions will give you a solid start toward getting to know if you can trust your web designer.

Want a cool, state of the art website that you’ll love for years to come? Get started at my services page!

Do you have good ideas but never quite get around to doing anything about them?

It’s natural and everybody procrastinates from time to time. But procrastination slows down the creative process and can even lead to stagnation. Luckily there’s a cure for it!

One way I’ve learned to overcome procrastination when building websites is to do tasks that I enjoy doing. That’s right, I put the less interesting tasks off until I feel inspired to do them. This sounds like procrastination, but the way I see it, as long as I’m working on something, I’m not procrastinating. I find that this approach often allows me to build the momentum I need to get a project completed.

1. A Mantra for Procrastination

If you’re procrastinating because you’re feeling overwhelmed, here’s a mantra for you. You can use it like “stop, drop, and roll,” only this situation is far less critical:

“Stop, breath, and do more of what you love.”

Try saying that mantra in your head the next time you feel stressed out about creating your web content. Heck, say it out loud if you want, just make sure you listen to yourself!

2. Do What You Love

If you’re like me, you like doing different things at different times. For example I love to write, but not all the time. Sometimes I love photography but don’t have the inspiration to do it every day. How about making a video? I love that, but wow—there’s quite a learning curve to getting up to speed with the latest software.

In my experience, I’ve learned that the best way to build a website is one piece at a time. Keep that in mind and choose whatever piece is going to be the most FUN at a given time.

Do you feel like writing? Write. Do you feel like learning? Learn. Do you feel like reading? Read, especially if it’s something that will allow you to create better web content.

Maybe you feel like doing something besides sitting at a computer. Great, why not go outside and take some photos? Don’t know what pictures to take?

Try taking pictures of ROUND things!

Then, work your way back to taking the photos you want to use for your website. Sometimes you just need a specific concept to get you going.

3. Have Some Fun

Building a website can be fun if you allow it to be. It’s important to have fun because your content tends to get better.

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather come across inspired video, writing, photos, etc. than stuff that the author didn’t enjoy doing. Inspired content just has that extra kick to it.

So that’s my advice, have fun and do what you love. Work on things when you feel like doing them and complete each piece of the website puzzle when you have the inspiration to do so. It’s one way to take charge of procrastination. Move forward one step at a time and before long you will have a website that rocks!

Looking at things from the end users perspective allowed me to see how people actually use the products I’ve designed — shifting my perspective from theory to practice.

One thing that surprised me was the amount of people who scroll when using the site. Not as many as I thought! Several of my co-workers noticed this as well.

Often times, if the user didn’t see what they were looking for right in front of them, they left. That’s right, they seemed more likely to click off the page than scroll to look for something.

Scroll bars have been around before the early days of the web so most people know how to use them. The reality is that many people don’t bother to use them. That’s why I’m a firm believer that the goal for any given page, should be conveyed when the page loads.

I had this notion before, but after working with hundreds of people in person — hundreds who were using a website that I designed — I’ve become a firm believer that the most important content should be above the fold as they say.

Thanks to Google’s handy tool, it’s pretty easy to understand what the majority of users will see when they visit your site. Pay them a visit and enter your url in the text box. Adjust the opacity if you like and this tool will give you a pretty good idea, how many users will see your content without having to scroll.

So all things considered, I would say that in many cases, scrolling is not as common a behavior as one might think.

If you’re interested in looking at some data on web behavior stats, check it out. Hey, I saw that yawn! But if you’re serious about doing web design, it’s probably worth a glance.

In conclusion, when designing a website, just know that the most important content should be placed above the fold and don’t assume that all your visitors will scroll. Take care and happy web designing!