I design websites professionally. I don’t claim to be born for design, but 50 to 60 hours a week in the design groove gives me an understanding for it, and I have a good sense of what’s contemporary, and can therefore tend to output work that is right for now.
It’s accepted wisdom that those who design, and those who do business, don’t always see eye-to-eye. One may want X, the other Y. Whether the designer gets his/her X or Y by project’s end usually depends on how strong the designer is; how committed to his/her creation he/she is, OR, how much carte blanche the businessperson has committed to giving; how much the businessperson trusts the designer, or how little the businessperson trusts their own sense of taste (rare!).
(I once worked on a project where a senior director gave us his colour opinions, which varied quite a lot from the palette preferred by the designers. But as he was a director, we moved towards his colour choice, and up a cul-de-sac… only to learn afterwards that the director in question was colourblind.)
So, I had such a clash of designer v business this week, and the finished product isn’t to anyone’s liking. I proposed my design, it was rejected, and another proffered by client, which I initially rejected, but… because I’m not the paymaster, I felt I had to accept and produce (my bad!). So, though I’ve had a good week on the whole, in terms of new business, getting through backlog, and producing some nice stuff, this has left my week tarnished, as I sit here on this Friday evening, blogging about it all. (Yes, I’m going out for a few beers later!)
But I now sense a change. That change manifested itself at about 7pm on Thursday evening, when in pitching a new project to an existing client, I stipulated along with such mainstays as: client provides text, client responsible for staff photographs etc; the new, never-before-seen in any pitch I’ve issued stipulation: that I be given artistic autonomy, that I be allowed to make the call on what’s right and wrong. Sure, if I’m making such a fuck-up that it’s irreparable later, do tell me; but if it’s about the density of the background shading in the 10 pixel square area behind the letter P, then you’re micromanaging the work, I’m being paid as a monkey-do, and you’re forgetting to manage your own day-to-day.
This was a departure. It was also a bloody relief. Now, my client has yet to respond, I may be told to PFO given that they’re about to spend X thousand on this venture, with my design fronting the whole thing, but here’s hoping they don’t, and that for me this is a new dawn.
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I like the simple design on this one — business appropriate yet noticeable.
Pretty, slightly pimpish but oh so pretty.
A little bulky, but it’s appeal is no one can get in your way when your wielding this big boy.
