Akatombo Web Log
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Working with Web Designers - Part I - Preparation
I have been on both sides of the "hiring a designer" experience. Before I started working as a web guy I was a marketing guy, and during that time I had occasion to hire web designers for various projects I was involved in. That experience was absolutely NOT what made me go into this line of work. It was, in fact, an extremely frustrating experience for me, and in hindsight I'm sure it was just as frustrating for the designers. Now that I am on the other side of the equation I realize that many of the things that drive me crazy about clients today are things that I used to do to the designers I was working with. If I had known of a way to make the process go more smoothly I would have, but I was doing the best that I knew how. In this series of articles, I hope to illuminate some things to consider and some best practices that will make working with a web designer go more smoothly, efficiently, and ultimately more fruitfully. Many of the tips in this article will probably apply to the experience of hiring a staff web designer as well, but the primary focus is hiring a web design firm or freelancer to handle a specific project. There is a lot of ground to cover so this article will be broken into sections. The first section, which I present to you now is about the preparation prior to getting in touch with the designer.Goals
The first thing you should consider, and you should actually put it down on paper and use it as a guiding principle for the project, is your goal for the project. I discussed this in more detail in "What Are Your Goals?", but basically you should think about what would have to happen for you to consider the project a success. Formulate your conclusions into a sentence or paragraph giving a measurable standard of success. Thinking this out ahead of time will help to guide your own decisions through the planning process and beyond. It will also give the designer a very clear and succinct idea of what it is you are trying to achieve. It will help the designer to give you advice about the best way to take your web project where you want it to go, and to get a quick start on formulating their proposal for doing so.Background Materials
The next thing you'll want to do is prepare some background material on your organization, brand, and product—modify these categories to match what it is you do of course, but you get the idea—for the designer. The more information he or she has about who you are, the more effectively the designer can come up with a design concept consistent with your image and branding. If you have any marketing or branding guidelines or standards (such as colors to be used in company releases) it would be good to have these ready for the designer as well. The more background information readily available to the designer, the better job they can do for you. If you have a set of images or other media that you plan to use in the design it would be a good idea to get those together as well. This way, if there is any problem with what you have, maybe the image is of too low a quality or of the wrong format to use as you imagined, the designer can let you know with plenty of time to find a replacement or alternative solution.Until Next Time...
Well that's all for this installation. I hope it helps you to get yourself set to contact a designer and get the ball rolling. Being prepared before making the contact puts you at an advantage, because you have a fairly good idea of what it is you want already, and you'll be more able to communicate that to your designer of choice. We look forward to hearing your thoughts. This article is still in progress, and may be added to as the other sections are completed, so if there is something not in here that you think should be, comment and let us know about it below!A change in focus
I was looking back over the articles we have put up on this site, and realized that most of them are targeted at other web professionals. Writing for that target is fine, but this section was originally created to cater to the people we can most help (clients/potential clients). I have decided to guide this section back to it's original concept: providing information on web related topics to non-web professionals needing to do something with the web. We will likely cover topics related to web marketing, usability, accessibility, best practices for effective information architecture, business cases for the use of web standards, search engine optimization, and tips for working with designers (I throw this last topic in especially because it is the article currently on my writing table). Don't worry if you don't understand some of the terms above, all we be explained in easy to understand language. I'll try to speak to each topic from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't do this stuff everyday. I'll stop here for now, I just wanted to put down a placeholder to mark my commitment to writing more for this section's target.Monday, October 25, 2004
Server Upgrade
Our server will be down for a few minutes (knock on wood) later today for an upgrade.
UPDATE: All went smoothly, and the server is back up and running like a charm. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
AWS Zone
Nice little site for people using the new version of Amazon's "AWS."via Daring Fireball Linked List