Zoe Zombie

Web Design: 16 ways to piss me off.

// October 6th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // humour, web design

Monday started off like any other – I get to work and the first thing I do is check my google reader. The only thing that was different is this – for the first time in two years I felt like I was going to burst out in a rage. Why is that? All of the titles I saw looked something like this:

15 high quality premium-like wordpress themes
370+ Free photoshop actions for everyone part 1
33 beautiful border and corner brush sets
5 beautiful penstyle fonts
16 web based handy web designer tools
10 useful articles about database design
6 vector food tutorials
25 refreshingly blue website designs
50 more amazing 3d typography works
11 free and helpful web based tools that every designer may want to know
30 beautifully blue website designs
22 free fonts from myfont
45 rules for creating a great logo design
103 really cool advertisements
35 essential jQuery tutorials, code chunks and plugins for designers
35 photoshop tutorials inspired by apple

Let me ask you something. Did you read all of those? If yes, then you were like me about a year ago. Keen on reading and learning everything I could about my trade. If you said no, then you are me today – tired and frustrated with the endless crap that is put out there on the interwebs.

Lists are something that get people interested because they present an easy alternative to reading a whole block of text that people get turned off by. It is an ongoing trend that should have seen the light of day yesterday – yes I want to read things now and if I want to learn something I want to learn it now. I want to read things that people really have to say, their advice – not in a list. I want to be able to get in depth information on it because if I want to learn something, I will read whatever is there so I do.

Sometimes I question the integrity of those who do write lists – their posts are mostly unoriginal. It is unoriginal information or screen shots that have been seen all over. I think it’s great that many will love a design or technique but is there a need to regurgitate something that’s already been seen many times before?

I have been guilty of writing lists but realized straight away it is a gimmick. It’s not natural to write an article in such a way unless you’re writing a step by step or a plan. They’re just cheap shots at getting some undeserved traffic – believing that compiling huge ridiculous lists will get them the visits they want from people who don’t know any better.

I hope in the very near future this fad will die out and people will start writing articles like they used to – with integrity and originality. Really offering something to their visitors other than just regurgitated crap. Is tomorrow too soon?

Web Design Lesson #2512: If a client likes the way they design…

// March 21st, 2008 // Comments Off // web design

At my previous job as a web designer in a small business, I was exposed to a lot of things that I often found amusing. Most of these were contributed to our clients. Some of them were because we made up humourous name for each project – looking to liken a word in a client name to a swear word or something that just sounded plain wrong. But it was always the customers who came up with the most unimaginable senario possible.

As a web designer, most of the time the client leaves the job in our hands. The colours, the navigation – whatever. They usually cannot be bothered or do not even care how we go about it as long as it presents their business well. But there was one client in particular who just flat out made me laugh. I also learned that if a client tells you they like the way they had done their previous website or a mockup of a website, there is no point in deviating from it too much because they will always go back to what they designed.

This client was French. There is no real reason to point that out, but it proved hilarious in overhearing conversations between her and a co-worker, simply because there was an obvious communication break down. And she always used to bring in phonebook sized notes with her which was not only amazing but also fucking annoying. And since I worked right next to my co-worker, to hear this client yammering on for hours was off putting. But it also meant money for us.

She had provided an idea for a website that she had built herself in word. I was quite interested because she had gone to all the trouble of making up a sort of dummy website about what she wanted. We were all excited because it meant that it was going to be an easy job. So it seemed. That was until after designing a site for her for almost a week, she rang me up to say she didn’t like it. We tried to make the changes she told us over the phone, but after a while she must have been frustrated and started to meet with us – with her phonebook sized notes.

Eventually, we got the website done. But in the end, it looked exactly like the one she had done herself in word which made us wonder why was she even wasting her money on us when she could have done it herself? I guess it didn’t really matter but like I say – I learned that if a client says they like the way they did something – they always want it that way. It’s like a child to them – something personal. It’s fucking ridiculous.