these issues with clients before haha...

http://onwired.com/blog/why-the-disparity-between-our-own-site-and-the-work-in-our-portfolio/

3/24/2009 3:21:58 PM

Hey, I used to work for those dudes. Cool.

3/24/2009 3:27:25 PM

yeah these sound pretty familiar

3/24/2009 3:29:08 PM

^^you know Tony and Brett?

3/24/2009 3:29:40 PM

It was only Tony, Jon, and Nathan when I worked there. This was like 2 years ago. Jon is a pretty damn good design guy.

3/24/2009 3:35:15 PM

yeah I read that blog awhile ago.

they seem like a good group, albeit a bit overpriced. But hey if people are willing to pay for it, more power to them.

3/24/2009 4:31:58 PM

I've only done a few small time design type gigs--and this article couldn't be more true lol. I had one guy who wanted me to literally scan in his brochure and make a webpage out of that. Literally just one big picture was each page and a couple of shitty looking buttons on the left to go through pages.

I sent him a copy of what something similar would look like (with all the text actually being text and pictures actually being pictures, etc) that had the exact same context and layout--everybody I showed it to said it looked 100x better. I got a 3 page response back about how shitty it looked and to never send him anything that poorly done ever again or I'd be fired.

I hate people.

3/24/2009 4:34:34 PM

Quote :

"yeah I read that blog awhile ago. "

I assume you don't mean that specific blog entry unless by 'awhile ago' you mean earlier today

3/24/2009 4:43:41 PM

I agreed to redesign a high school friend's dad's website a couple years ago. His dad is the owner of a patented composting process that he basically contracts and licenses to big farms. He had a website made up in the 90's by a friend, and it hasn't been updated since. His son (my friend) has been begging him to update the site for years, but his dad is just not interested in paying for any changes, because he thinks it looks "just fine". The only way he agreed to make the changes was when my friend said he would pay half of the cost. I agreed to do it, and as a "friend rate" and because I knew my friend would be paying half of the cost for his dad's website, I told him I'd do a basic site for just $250.

Anyway - here is the site that he wanted changed. I have blacked out the name of his company, mostly because i'm about to be ruthless in my critique of what he wanted and I'm still friends with the son (although he is fully on my side and thinks his dad is being idiotic about it):



..... yeah
really. That's his business's site.

So I talked to his dad a few times and tried to get a dialog going about what kind of design he wanted, what his goals were, etc. Here were his main points:
1) he liked the background
2) he liked the white text on the green background
3) overall, he liked the website as it was anyway, and was just doing this because his son wanted him to (a very helpful attitude.....)
4) he liked the "logo" (the pencil drawing of the man shoveling manure out of a wagon), and wanted to keep it
5) he thought the navigation was fine, and didn't think any new categorization or pagination was needed

and, get this:

6) if he could think of any one thing to change, he would really like to animate the logo so that the wagon would move across the top of the screen, and the man in the back would shovel shit onto the ground behind him.
Seriously.

I said that I would do what I could to try to modernize the site a bit but keep some of the elements he liked. So, I worked up a basic Wordpress Template that I thought was a 1000% improvement already. It was still a rough-draft - just a first run-though, but most of the major problems were already eliminated. I even managed to keep the god-awful pencil-drawing logo and made it look half-way decent. Here is what I showed him after a couple days:



That went over like a lead balloon. He basically didn't like any of it - he still wanted the logo animated, he didn't like the tiny bit of color I added with the blue sky (he still wanted all green), he liked the old font, etc.

After that, I basically took my dolly and went home - i told him nope, sorry, can't work with you.
He still has the original site up, and my prototype is still sitting in a wordpress folder on his server.


-------


Here's another example where I allowed a client to have too much creative input, but this time I just gave in and went along with her request. She says she loves it, and all the friends she shows it to love it, so whatever - i don't really care.

She's a bereavement therapist, so she wanted a smooth, soothing site. She sent me a jpeg of water and sky she wanted as a background. It wouldn't have worked (not big enough, bad colors, etc), so I found one that I thought was ok, but not great. I put it as the site background, and she liked it.

Then, she wanted the same picture as the background for the header. I was like, "so.... you want the same picture as the background for your header and the site? really? don't you think that's too much blue, and a bit repetitive?"
She insisted, I relented, and she loved the outcome. I was hoping she would say "oh, you're right - that is too much blue. let's try something else." But nope, she liked it, so I just said "ok, it's all yours then"

3/24/2009 5:06:30 PM

Quote :

"I got a 3 page response back about how shitty it looked and to never send him anything that poorly done ever again or I'd be fired."

That's when you pony up and make sure that they know that they've hired YOU to do a job that they don't know how to do.


There's a reason people hire creative consultants - and it's generally because their expertise has reached its limits. Note that it's NOT because they know how to do whatever needs doing. They might be the greatest shit-shoveler in the world, but if they need help to represent their shit-shoveling in a market that they've got no experience in, then you have the upper hand.

It's frustrating, but you should never let a client piss all over you like that. There are plenty of tactful ways to make sure they know YOU are the professional source that they need to keep up in their market.

3/24/2009 5:51:56 PM

^^^ yes I mean i've read the blog before.

my fav is when some guy ripped off their new site design right after they put it up and didn't even have the wherewithal to do things like change the names of the stylesheets to remove "onwired"

[Edited on March 24, 2009 at 6:41 PM. Reason : ,]

3/24/2009 6:37:38 PM

frighteningly true at times.

they're pretty cool guys too, tony is one of the main reasons i have my current job. i interviewed with onwired a little while back and they decided not to hire (i've always assumed for $ reasons) for that position, but tony passed my information on and i had a full time job within about a week and a half.

3/24/2009 7:20:41 PM

I think they're talking about this site: http://cals.ncsu.edu/poultry/index.php

3/24/2009 7:28:48 PM

^that site was done by onwired.

3/24/2009 7:34:11 PM

Quote :

"Then, she wanted the same picture as the background for the header. I was like, "so.... you want the same picture as the background for your header and the site? really? don't you think that's too much blue, and a bit repetitive?" She insisted, I relented, and she loved the outcome. I was hoping she would say "oh, you're right - that is too much blue. let's try something else." But nope, she liked it, so I just said "ok, it's all yours then" "

To be fair, it actually doesn't look bad. It's pretty good looking for what it is, and certainly is a calming visual treatment.

^^that site is really nicely done

3/24/2009 7:45:46 PM

^ yeah, well honestly, it grew on me.
But still.... i wonder what someone with real design sense would or could have done with it

3/24/2009 8:19:15 PM

The typography on that Poultry site leaves quite a bit to be desired, but visually it's not too bad

[Edited on March 24, 2009 at 10:03 PM. Reason : fonts all over the place]

3/24/2009 10:01:34 PM

^ i didn't even bother to comment on that one. for 250 bucks, thats fucking amazing work. I don't think I could even get a wordpress template customized and online for a 250 dollar contract.

3/25/2009 12:14:15 AM

He was talking about the Poultry Science Department site, not the shit shoveling site.

And, yeah, there are like 35 different fonts on the site. Clean, simple design, though.

3/25/2009 12:20:17 AM

the chicken website is really busy but i do like the pictures and colors.

3/25/2009 8:24:28 AM