Expression Engine: a CMS for designers.

I first met and start to play with Expression Engine 3 years ago. I was about to launch a great website and I was wondering whether I should build it with it. After some geek talking between me and my partner we decided to turn to WordPress. Just for the record that website was never released. I never regretted I dived into the sea of WordPress, a powerful blog engine which can be used as a CMS as well.

Through the years I ‘ve learned WordPress inside out. I designed my own themes, I even built my own plugins (just for personal use) and I am glad I spent so much time for such a worthy system. When I created this website there was no question about the way it would be fueled: WordPress was my only choice. Drupal, Movable Type, Textpattern and the rest were pretty solid engines but not quite well as WordPress. In the meanwhile I felt there was a debt to Expression Engine.

There came a moment where I said that the next version of this website would be powered by Expression Engine.

Pros and cons

Expression Engine in my mind has two disadvantages:

• It’s not free
• It has a quite steep learning curve

I never really cared about the first one since I knew that if there ‘s something which worths the money, who cares about it? The second thing is not so simple. It requires effort. Anyway.

What makes Expression Engine great is the fact it is made for designers. You can create anything in EE pretty the same way you do it in plain HTML. The famous template system of EE is unbeatable. At the same WordPress makes you feel you need to work all the time in two different modes: the design mode and the development mode. This bothers me. I need to keep my mind clean when I design.

Another attractive characteristic of EE is that it doesn’t focus to blogging. It can be a blog pretty easily but it is better when working for projects such as company websites, small e-shops or websites for conferences. At the same time, I do better SEO work, I can add or remove pages at once and I can have better support by the moment I buy it.

If I had to describe the main differences between Expression Engine and WordPress in a few words I would say that EE is a professional tool optimized for projects you do more often while Wordpress is an excellent blogging platform which can also do more if you need so.

The crazy artist who held Photoshop instead of brushes

I don’t particularly like to refer to incidents with clients because it is easy to accuse them since they can’t defend themselves. However, contacting clients can be fruitful and teaches you a lot of interesting things. So here it is my story.

A while ago I finished a project which went well. During the whole procedure, me and the client developed a decent level of communication. Nevertheless, I many times was told “you are an artist, I care about the practical part”.

It’s an honor to be treated like I was Dali, even if it happens for some moments only. Instead of brushes I hold Photoshop. Cool. But then again, no. No, my friend I am no Dali and I never tried to disguise. I care about the practical part the same as you. You know why? Because design isn’t art.

Think of a very beautiful table with legs of different length. You see it in a magazine, you want to buy it. It is a bit expensive. “What the hell”, you say, “I’ ll buy it”. You take it home and you feel great. Soon you get hungry and you are going to use your new table. You put on a glass, but it slips. After moving in an extraordinary orbit, the glass leaves the table and crashes onto the floor. You fool - you bought a useless table.

What I am trying to say here is that design isn’t only about communication (what I see, how I feel about it). It is about usage too. I could talk for hours about websites which sell design and a visitor finally feels like the one who bought this table and had all his glasses broken. I want your glasses to remain intact, so when I design I at least care to make the legs of the same height.

It is very difficult to transform two abstract words like “communication” and “usage” into words when you are talking about your work. Still, we need to do it, even if it requires to write clumsy examples with tables and broken glasses.

The difference between design and art is that design should follow some rules. Breaking the rules causes bad things. You pay me to know the rules and follow them. You also pay me to make your website, logo etc. beautiful too. You ‘ve got to trust me. I may not be Dali but I still hold Photoshop.

Apple changes the present…

Yesterday, Steve Jobs, the ultimate king of Apple, went on one step further and announced in the MacWorld 08 the thinnest notebook of all times, called MacBook Air. At same time he introduced to us movies rentals via iTunes and significant updates of iPhone. OK, I know many people have noticed it before but let me say it again: this doesn’t have to do with computing, music, movies or phones, it has to do with our lives.

Apple kicked off the game in MacWorld 07 where changed its identity to a simple Apple Inc. Future drastically changes thanks to Apple, not because we saw for the first time what music, movies or phones are about. It changes because all this transaction comes smoothly, like we have been waiting for it since years. It is clear to me just about now, but it’s all right. People who have entered the world of Apple wonder how can the rest live out of it. We adore the products of Apple because their are beautiful, work perfectly well and they are simple.

I get excited in the idea of a new event held by Apple, I see again and again Job’s keynotes and I want to buy each new product enters the market. It is easy to say that marketing has captured one more. It may be true, it maybe has to do with this mainstream and at the same time special culture Apple spreads.

A year ago I used to say that I need an iPhone. One year later the fact that it isn’t available in Greece makes me feel I live in space or in a place where civilization can’t reach. Now I say I want this Air thing. I don’t need it, but at the same time I don’t want future slip off my hands. OK Apple, you won again.

Wise words

In praise of lazy

Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.

From 37signals

Stealing design

Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.

From the wise Zeldman

People don’t truly care about privacy

Most people don’t care about privacy, not at all. If they did, they wouldn’t have credit cards. What people care about is being surprised.

Από τον Seth Gothin

Blame

When bad things happen because you just act normally, don’t stop behaving like a normal folk.

If I’ve learned anything from hanging out with the Eastern European dissident crowd, it’s “make no decision out of fear”.

Quote by Bruce Sterling from the website of Jeremy Keith

Telling our stories through our websites

A website may be a presentation of who you are or what you do. However it can also be a whole new experience like building a house and live in there. It doesn’t have to do with the tools one uses but with the way he approaches this experience.

Think of a house, any house. It has rooms for different activities e.g. the kitchen which must be practical or the living room which must be cozy. Each house has also a different style e.g. classic with heavy, old-fashioned decoration or modern with vivid colors etc. We do want people to pass by unless we feel ashamed of it. The same happens to our website. Let’s make a metaphor. I am not talking about designing a website which looks like a house. I am talking about the context.

I like websites that say a lot about the people who own them. I like to see who are these people, what they do and what they have to say to me. The way you smell the taste of a host in real life you do in a website. “I like this sofa, I feel very comfortable in here” or “Oh what a kitsch kitchen… imagine the bathroom”. Aren’t you familiar with such thoughts? We make them all the time and the same happens in the Web.

Bringing down the myths

We do visits websites for the people who own them. (The same happens for houses by the way.) We have learned to create a certain type of icon of a person and we stick to it. Do scientists tell dirty jokes in their bedroom? Do poets read silly magazines at their front yard? Do businessmen cry in their kitchen after a bad deal? You bet.

I ‘d love to share such moments on the Web. Don’t get me wrong, I ‘m never intrigued by the secrets of others. I do respect the personal part of our life. What I am talking about is the human part of our every day routine. Someone who selects to share some of his life, a part he decides to share, remains respectful. A mature person who isn’t afraid of letting others come around him is someone who deserves even more respect and probably my money, if I need him in the future. But, watch out, I will buy your story only if it is a true one. Fake profiles are easily distinguishable.

Web tools and limits

The links we all have in our websites is an equivalent of talking about our friends. And it is only the beginning. Do you listen to music? Show it. Do you take photos? Again, show it. There are a lot of tools out there which can help us tell a story. Take a look at Last.fm, at Flickr or at Twitter. There are lots more. You see I love a good story. Just a story, not being isolated, not becoming a Web whore. You put the limits.

The Internet is useful and dangerous. The same is the nuclear power. It should take some thought before you press the “Submit” button and some more before you turn on your computer. It’s up to you. So give me a story, a good one. Tell it form your virtual home the way you tell it when you invite me home. You ‘ll become my everlasting hero.

Design Is This

Web design & development

What is Design is this? Is it one more weblog or a really different one? We believe it's the latter. And it's a pity this website publishes content currently in Greek only. Soon this will change, but until then let's take a quick look at it. Design Is This aims to bring beautiful items and design concepts in your everyday routine. We took the project aiming to create something as good as its content.

For one more time we designed from the content out and this was great. Our design work should reflect class without missing the main concept of the website: it is and it should act like a weblog. After submitting the first design iteration we kept fine-tuning things and elements on the page until the moment both we and the client felt the design was speaking for itself. At the same time Helen Gizi, created the excellent logo and icons which obviously enhance the look and feel of the website.

Another part of our work had to do with the development of the project. We wrote XHTML 1.0 Strict code and we created CSS2.1 & CSS3 files. CSS3 code made the website look fine without the use of extra images. At the same time we managed to reduce the download times which is crucial for mobile devices.

Design is This has already enough content and in the future there will be a lot more. So it was critical to help visitors find their way in there easily. There are categories, tags, pagination, simple and extended search and an area with popular items. All these mechanisms enhance usability and the usability tests we made brought to us some excellent results. Expression Engine, the platform which fuels the website played an important role in all this.

All in all we're pretty happy from this project. And we need to mention that working with Mr. Rekopoulos and his team, the people behind Design Is This was fantastic.