The Busy Pixel

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  How to live happily with a great designer

  04:17:02 pm on August 16, 2006 | # | 1
  

  Seth’s Blog: How to live happily with a great designer

  This is probably the one article I would like my clients to read before we start talking about design. My favorite line is #8 “You don’t know a lot about accounting so you don’t backseat drive your accountant. You hired a great designer, please don’t backseat drive here, either.”

  Not saying that I’m the greatest designer to ever walk the planet but I’ve made my fair share of websites that get traffic and convert that traffic and make their owners happy.

  
  I’m not really sure why web designers/developers are still look at by other professional industries as a low skill level industry. Maybe its because I work with lawyers and they tend to be more, um, courageous, with their knowledge of everything. I just find it amusing that everyone is a critic, and that somehow because they can use their eyes, they are automatically qualified to make a judgement as to what is good/bad about a design, or a style for that matter.

  When I was going to college, there were a lot of art projects that I either saw as part of an appreciation class, or that I did for class credit. One of the things Damien and I still talk about is how some of these artists that came to class pretty much were the only ones that understood what they were doing. This one lady spent many nights using oil pastels and was trying to recreate the porn she saw on the cable channel. Of course the porn was that kind of porn you see (talking to charley small here) when you don’t actually subscribe to the channel, but it gets kinda of clear enough between the fuzzies for you to make out that yes, that is a naked person. So this lady was describing the process and all I could think was, how is that art?

  Sorry that was a bit of a tangent.

Comments

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  Frosty Goodness 11:48 am on August 17, 2006 | #

  “#13: Get very stressed about user interface and product design. And your packaging.”

  I’m not a strict designer or anything, but my company’s complete disregard for #13 drives me absolutely batty. Two weeks before we are supposed to launch the product, they hire a UI person to review it. Bah… 4 weeks till PO dies…1200 lines of javascript and counting.

  (this is kermit by the way. Changed my name because I’m going slightly insane)