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Each Web designer follows his own rythm and has his own norms. What is good for me is uselles for you. However, I ‘ve noticed that when I do two things before a new design everything goes better. So I need to:
Disconnect form the Internet
Put myself in a customer’s shoes
Close the Internet outside
There is such a plain notion behind it that we sometimes forget it: It is very difficult to concentrate when new e-mails arrive or when dozens of new feeds knock your door. Well, someone could say: “Why don’t you just turn off the e-mail client and the feed reader?”
Because you don’t need the Internet during this phase. When I surf while designing something new (in paper or Illustrator) is to visit template galleries or awarded websites.
At that moment something horrible happens: Your very own moment of creativity is being ruined. Your intuit and originality are being replaced by others’ ideas. Which they might be good but this is not enough because they don’t work for you.
All in all you don’t need new ideas. You have numerous ideas which need a bit of time in order to become results. You must trust yourself and provide him space.
This is for me the #1 reason to fail.
Become the client
Try to understand for whom you design. Who is this guy? What is his background? What does he want to achieve with this website? Of course you need some data to know him better. I have also realized that when I become the client I care most about him. It is a logical consequence.
I know it is difficult. You need to leave out of the field all the negative feelings you might have about him. You also need to forget that all this needs to be done in certain time with certain budget. Most of the times both the time and the budget are not enough. It doesn’t matter, you need to forget such things.
What about the rest?
I could have written a lot more about all the factors which affect a design. I won’t because I need to keep this post small in order not to forget what I have already written. It may happens only to me, it may not. We are talking about mind games and self-discipline not technical capabilities or speed or something else.
OK. Next. I am going to turn the Internet on. Oh, I forgot I never disconnected. Who am I? Me or the customer? I think I need 2-3 extra sessions doc…
The “design is” is a concept created by J. Hicks as a wallpaper. I doubt this is a real message, it is mostly a humorous approach to design. However it soon became a trend and many designers made their own wallpapers with their own messages.
There were so many that a public group was created in Flickr under the name Designer Wallpaper. It is a group for geeks mostly, but anyone can use these wallpapers.
It came to me intuitively and I created my very own versions. You can find them in the group or download them by clicking on them right here. They are of fine resolution and dimensions of 1900x1200 px.
Web Standards Creativity was written by 10 gurus of modern Web design. Some of them are M. Boulton, A. Clarke, S. Collison, J. Croft, R. Weyhchert.
Well the truth is that anyone of them could write such a book alone (some of them have already done it) and we would have a great result. What happens when an all star team does it? We have a book way appealing.
Each paritcipant writes about a specific issue e.g. typography or technique e.g. grid design applied before in real projects. In other words this book consists of a 10 chapter tutorial given by the best ones.
This book can be read by a Web designer of any level. New ones or amateurs will find a resource of high quality for their own projects. Experienced ones can certainly learn more and keep this book open by the beginning of a new design.
Of course everything written goes hand in hand with Web Standards. An extra is the technical review made by M. Holzschlag and the introduction made by A. Budd.
I can’t say if a chapter is better than another but I need to point out the fact each chapter guides a designer from abstract ideas to an applied work. This is a characteristic which makes the book special.
What I didn’t like was the colored backgrounds of the pages which make reading difficult. There are pages which are so tiring that you want to leave them to go forward.
Overall, this is a book which should be in every Web designer’s desk. Need I say more?
I have met a decent amount of people who run a company, a store or an institute and they talk about their need to prove they don’t ignore the Web. So they are eager to put some money, not much money most of the times, in it. This is good but certainly not enough.
OK, we agree, you need a website. What comes next is a common mistake: these people think that a single website can bring a significant change and they are going to become famous or rich. At the same time most of them they think they know what it takes before, during and after the real development of their website.
In reality a new website is nothing but a tiny portion of what we call the Web. A metaphor: does anyone consider how many times takes to see a commercial spot on TV in order to learn about a product, be convinced and finally buy it? Numerous. (Suppose that the commercial is technically elegant, passes an intelligent message, talks about a product in supply which can be easily found.) Similar things happen in the Web.
Comparing the media
The previously mentioned scenario requires the cooperation of different factors. A customer must make a research for a good advertising company, the people in there would seek for technicians elsewhere which would make similar research in a different area etc. Then someone would decide where, when and how often this spot should be broadcasted. I leave out all the crucial small details that define the final result which should be “selling the product”.
A website targets to different scope and can pass a series of messages. We are talking about different media.
A company who cares for its product would never do all these alone, so why should they leave their website in non trusted hands? I am a realist, I know well that most websites are being developed by sons or nephews or someone “who knows”. However I hope and I do believe that things are going to change. I wish I knew when.
What is different between TV and the Web is the fact that a website can be dramatically cheaper and more profitable in a given, not so short, period of time. A website stays, while a TV commercial comes and go. A website targets to different scope and can pass a series of messages. We are talking about different media. A lot of people seem to understand the difference but how many really do?
The road to hell
I have already written about the false impression that a website is enough. Let’s see an example. I plan summer vacations to the island X. The first thing I do next is to look for a place to stay. A hotel. I google it and I find some hotels there. So far so good.
Most of the websites of the hotels in my dream island X look the same. At least there are some websites. Most of the pictures are not of fine quality. OK, at least there are some pictures. I can’t find more info though. I look for people who have gone there for some advice. Anyway I select the hotel Y. It would be good to reserve a room via my credit card, but since the website looks awkward I don’t trust the system. I also need to know if there are rooms the period I want to go there. So I have to call them. If everything goes well I will need to go a bank and pay an amount in advance.
So far I have done several things I shouldn’t need to do (phone calls, go to bank etc.). Furthermore I am not sure at all of what i am going to find this hotel. When I go I discover things which looked completely different online and most of the times what I pay is far more of what I supposed to.
What comes next? I leave the island highly disappointed and I try to warn everyone not to visit the same hotel. I can also write about their services in my blog and probably complain about the whole island as well. Why should I destroy my summer vacations because some people are amateurs?
The need for good services
A website cannot solve all problems, but it is our home. If the materials are good, the house will be robust. If the owners are hospitable, people will come in. If the people who live in are sincere they will be trusted.
As I consumer I don’t easily trust people who own such websites. They might offer excellent services but how am I going to discover it?
There are several ways to promote one’s services or products without having to cheat. It may be a hotel room, a light bulb or a chair. A decent website which informs a visitor, tells the truth and remains active will be rewarded in the end. It doesn’t matter whether the room is in Four Seasons or in an unknown cheap hotel. All people need a hotel during their vacations no matter how rich they are. The same way, all people need light bulbs and chairs.
People who own a company, a shop or provide services need to take a turn and change their business culture when it comes to the Web. They need to take it seriously, make researches, find the professionals who will develop it, trust them and invest on them.
When I see websites who haven’t updated their news section for months I conclude they don’t need such a section. When it is difficult to find the Contact link in there I conclude that a nephew must have built this website. When I see text made for a newspaper presented in the Web I conclude that nobody took care of the content and the context. I am not talking about technical issues, I am talking about obvious faults.
As I consumer I don’t easily trust people who own such websites. They might offer excellent services but how am I going to discover it? Since they know they need a website it is about time they should care for a decent one.
When I first wrote about my MacBook I said that working with it would help me become better. I couldn’t explain it very well, but I was sure of it. Now I know and I can explain it.
The short answer: This white slick box is an absolutely professional tool.
The quite longer answer: All these months I ‘ve been working with my MacBook I never met bad surprises. Everything works perfectly. It is fast, it is robust, it is powerful. Last but not least, it is beautiful, very beautiful. This is not a detail, it is important.
When your environment is neat and elegant you become better. You can absorb new ideas, you can change the way you see things, your performance becomes better. It is self-explainable, I don’t need to add anything more.
Practically, I work faster, I work better and I provide better results. Most of all every day I am changing in the way I treat Web design. And if all this sounds too theoretical, here it is a relevant metaphor: Windows (Vista please) is like a Flash website which is made just to look sophisticated while it isn’t. MacOS is like a Web standards built website which solves certain problems and remains aesthetically stylish.
I also believe work should be entertainment too. Not in a cheap way which makes it disappear soon, but in a way which pleases your mind and your senses. The Mac environment is entertaining this way. The ones who love their work and know what a Mac is I am pretty sure they are nodding now. No?
PS. Obviously I haven’t learnt yet how to take a good photo of it :o)
People who read this website should know by now that I care a lot for typography. I recently wrote a relevant series: “Applying good typography to the Web”. The 3rd part of it touches sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) but it doesn’t go far enough. It is about time to erase this gap.
Where it started from
It is widely known that in Web design there is a rule which doesn’t exist in graphic design: you are limited to use a small number of fonts in a website. Typography is crucial in any website. If content is the king, typography is the king’s clothes.
As a result a Web designer can practically use only 5-6 fonts. I am leaving out of this conversation clumsy fonts such as Comics Sans. We had to find a way to use more.
What is widely used is text replacement by an image. It is a technique which works well because when editing images a designer is free to use any font. Bt it can be applied only for small portions of text or else the page will start becoming something else, not a webpage. It will be too slow when downloading as well.
The idea behind sIFR
sIFR can be used for any text no matter how long it will be, without sacrificing accessibility. It a great technique without any fault.
sIFR was introduced by S. Inman and it is supported by a number of decent Web designers. It works thanks to the smooth coordination of Flash, JavaScript, CSS and of course (X)HTML and it produces result of high value.
The “trick” begins from Flash. A designer can use in Flash any font he wants to. An .swf is exported from Flash and it is imported by the use of JavaScript. JavaScript is also responsible for the specific tag in which will be applied, e.g. the <h3>. Then via CSS the “new” text can be red or green, big or small, you name it.
I won’t say more on this because there are excellent instructions out there. However I need to mention that, while sIFR is more difficult to be applied in a page than the image replacement techique, this has to do only with the first time. Once it works well, using it again is a work in the park.
Advantages
I have talked about the advantages before, but if I had to gather all in a list, I would say:
It permits the use of any type in any place in a website.
It doesn’t hurt accessibility. Screen readers don’t care about it. They read the text just like in any other case.
It doesn’t hurt accessibility even a user doesn’t have installed the Flash plugin and/or has CSS and JavaScript disabled.
It is fast. At least faster than using images instead of plain text.
It can be easily applied after the first time. It can be reused anytime.
For this website I applied sIFR for all the headings with the blue letters above the black background. Go ahead, right click on them and ‘ll see there are no images.
Some years ago, an afternoon in late December I was in Athens like every year. It was just about Christmas. I was heading home and the traffic was intolerable. I still remember the exact moment when the radio played a new song from Passengers aka U2 about the war in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
The voice of Bono was smooth and I remember myself trying to understand the lyrics. At a moment Pavarotti started singing in italian. The way he performed made me start trembling. Suddenly everything was gone. The traffic, the cars, the holidays, time, everything. I remained still trying to realize what had happened.
When I returned to Thessaloniki I searched the Web about Miss Sarajevo. I couldn’t find many things but most of all I couldn’t find the English translation of the Italian lyrics. So I decided to learn Italian. I did all I could in order to understand these lyrics.
When I learned the basics I searched my dictionaries for the missing words. In the end I made to put everything together. I listened to the song once more I chilled to the bone. All these meant to change my life and helped become a better man.
Today I heard (again in the radio) Pavarotti died. I remember him as a smiling man and as someone who didn’t act like a typical tenor. They said a lot of bad things about his life. What I do know is that thanks to him I listened to opera and when I hear his warm voice I think he ‘s performing only for me.
So here they are these lyrics. The translation in English made by me.
Dici che il fiume
Trova la via al mare
E come il fiume
Giungerai a me
Oltre i confini
E le terre assetate
Dici che come fiume
Come fiume
L’amore giungerà
L’amore
E non so più pregare
E nell’amore non so più sperare
E quell’amore non so più aspettare
They say that like the river
Finds its way to the sea
And like the river
You ‘ll come to me
Beyond the borders
And the dry land
They say that like the river
Like the river
The love will come
The love
And I can’t pray anymore
And I can’t hope for this love anymore
and I can’t wait for this love anymore
(I don’t particularly like YouTube, but this time it worths the visit: Miss Sarajevo)
The most important Greek IT magazine, RAM, this month includes an article about this site and my participation in ILG (International Liaison Group).
I have written severaltimes about ILG. In a few words it is a group consisted by Web professionals who aim to promote standards to ensure an equitable Web.
The article is written (in Greek) by Ms Irini Voutskoglou (aka diVa). Irini approached me very politely and very professionally. Her interest is real and the way she treated the whole thing is great.
Unfortunately, the magazine is in Greek so there are not many things you can do in order to read it in case you wanted to.
Anyway, I ‘d like to thank Ms Voutskoglou for everything she did for me. Irini, thanks a lot.
Web Standards Creativity was written by 10 gurus of modern Web design. Some of them are M. Boulton, A. Clarke, S. Collison, J. Croft, R. Weyhchert. 
When your environment is neat and elegant you become better. You can absorb new ideas, you can change the way you see things, your performance becomes better. It is self-explainable, I don’t need to add anything more.
The voice of Bono was smooth and I remember myself trying to understand the lyrics. At a moment Pavarotti started singing in italian. The way he performed made me start trembling. Suddenly everything was gone. The traffic, the cars, the holidays, time, everything. I remained still trying to realize what had happened.
The most important Greek IT magazine, RAM, this month includes an article about this site and my participation in 