Thoughts On Web Design
Design is a great creative field to work in and every job presents new challenges that you have to use your artistic skills to solve. But, creating for clients and actually using your creativity to its full potential are often two different things. So it is my opinion that the best designers still find a way to let all their skills show in a design to the benefit of the project.
And it’s not just the knowledge aspects – being able to produce a “good” design, knowing color theory and layout, knowing how the eye travels on a page, etc. – it’s looking at a problem in a whole different way. When a client shows you a website and says, “I’d like to do a site like that”, anyone with Photoshop skills can make a reasonable facsimile. However, a good designer has to take it a few steps further – capture the essence of what it is about the design the client likes and one-up it in a big way.
Most people who hire us do so because they’ve seen our work and every project we do is different. I’ve always said, unique is valuable, and it rings true in design. Especially on the web, many viewer’s first impressions of you or your company come from finding your website. If your website is not up to date, is not professionally designed, is broken, or looks like a thousand other websites, think about the impression that makes on people. Even if viewers are not looking at a design critically, such as I would, they are still making judgements based on what they see and how the site performs.
Since I started this business back in ’95 I’ve always felt that if people were going to pay me to do a project, they were going to get the best I could produce. Over the years I’ve stuck with that and with the fact that everything we do is unique and original to the particular project.
One of These Things is Definitely Like the Other …
Last week I got a sales call (we get a lot of those) from a guy who, even though I’ve basically said our need in this particular area is filled and we’re not interested, keeps calling every now and then. Whatever. He’s trying to make sales because that’s his business. But what bothered me is during his pitch he happened to ask me how many of our website jobs are under $2000.00. My first thought was, well, that’s none of your business. He continued to tell me all about how his company offers hundreds of free website templates and that we should be using those for jobs under that amount because (and I’m paraphrasing here), “That just makes good business sense”.
Honestly, it actually made me angry that he was suggesting that we basically lie to our clients that they’re getting custom design when really they’re getting a free template with some changes to it to match their business. Appalling. I said, “We DO NOT use templates in our design – we offer custom design for EVERY project.” He chuckled and said, “Ha, well you can lead a horse to water …”
I ended the call abruptly then thought for the rest of the day how many companies out there calling themselves a design company are really just a front? If all you are doing is taking pre-made templates and “customizing” (and I use that word loosely because putting in a logo, changing text on navigation tabs and possibly adding in a few images is not custom at all) then you are not offering design that’s worth twenty bucks let alone two thousand dollars. Yes, that’s my opinion, but honestly, what sort of skill goes into that? Not a lot.
Most individuals that opt for purchasing a cheap ready-made website template (or getting one for free) are the type that do not want to pay for professional design anyway. That is perfectly fine with us, because obviously we would not be trying to win those types over as clients. Educate them, maybe, but if they are not willing to pay for our talent and expertise, then they would not be good clients for us. That is what I think makes good business sense.
That said, if you want awesome, custom work done from a misfit band of design rock stars, you hit us up!
About the Author
Sherry Holub is the Creative Director and a certified design rock star at JV Media Design.
About the author
Sherry is the Creative Director at JVM Design. Choosing design as a profession was easy with a heavy background in creative pursuits and an art degree, but Sherry's also been a writer for many years and has had works published in print as well as online. Besides art and design, Sherry also likes comic books, owls, kitsch, muscle cars, sci-fi, archaeology, photography, natural health and many other fun things.
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