Again with the Mac vs. PC

Recently I have had the opportunity to again have the Mac vs. PC discussion. Even after all these years we still have issues dealing with these two platforms. It is like a racial problem, with discrimination, segregation and bigotry. Really... it is.

We use PCs here at Optiem to do our design work. At our sister company Adcom, they use Macs. And in all honesty, it makes very little difference in what we do. We hand files back and forth over the same servers, edit and save each other's files, and have been coexisting in the same office space without any outwardly obvious prejudice toward each other for some time. Sometimes we have font issues. But those are usually easily solved.

This most recent discussion came up during a capabilities meeting with a client, but it was really a previous event that got under my skin with this issue.

Not too long ago we tried to hire a nicely qualified candidate as a designer. This person accepted the job and was in the process of getting all of their information to our human resources person when the discussion on Mac and PC reared its ugly head... again.

The entire thing broke down when this young, and I feel misinformed, designer insisted that we purchase them a brand new Macintosh computer and all of the associated software. We had a brand new, perfectly capable PC machine available with all of the software needed sitting ready. We weren't going to buy the new person a Mac, and all the expensive software we use. Not to mention that we don't have the people of resources to support Macs on our network directly. So the offer was rejected by the candidate and we didn't hire this person.. simply over the platform of his workstation.

Today, the software is all the same. Put me at a Mac in Photoshop and I am just as good (or bad) as I am on a PC. The same is true about inDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, and all the other software we use to do our jobs. In fact, the whole hiring situation with this particular person made me question whether they were actually wanting the Mac to help do their job better or just to have some of the bells and whistles that the Mac excels at.

Listen, I had a Mac Plus... with the 9" black and white monitor years before this designer was even born. I had the Apple sticker on my car and all. I was a card carrying Mac evangelist before most of the kids demanding new Macs at their new jobs were even coloring with a crayon. I don't need to be sold on the Mac. I have ALWAYS loved it. Still do.

But the plain and simple fact is... I don't need to have one to do my job. I do exactly the same work on this Dell laptop I am writing on right now. My design ability is not based on a platform. If it was, perhaps I would have a Mac. Or maybe not.

Just last week I had the opportunity to look at this debate once again. And once again, I have come to the same conclusion. It is the tools in the box that matter. Not the box. Sure, I love to have a fancy box to put my tools in. If it can play movies and music and scratch my back, all the better. But frankly, that is not what Optiem pays me for here. And that is not what we were hiring the young designer for either.

I could go off an a whole tangent here regarding the attitudes of young designers I have met over the last few years. Perhaps in another post.

Anyway, to wrap this up. Mac vs PC is a simple contest. Do they do the same things? Yes. Does my Dell run the tools I need to do my job efficiently and effectively? Yes. Is it as flashy and cool as a Mac? Probably no. Can I deal with THAT part of it? Absolutely.

But, I just have to go on record... I DO love those commercials. They make me laugh. And if the Mac has done one thing over the years better than the PC.. it was always entertainment.

iStock Photo and the $1 photo

I have spent a lot of time recently on the iStock Photos web site. What a place indeed.

I remember when I got my first Getty Images book with a CD inside loaded with low-res versions of every picture in the book. I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store. And at the time, like most designers, thought the images on the CD were free for me to use. I was not an attorney at the time (nor am I now by the way). I didn't understand the complexities of copyright, usage and all that.

Along came the proliferation of Internet sites that sell images. I was a big user of the Getty site once they had it online. Of course by then, I was buying images on behalf of clients, and following all of the usage rules associated. They provided a great service, immediate access to the art. I was hooked. But the costs were outrageous.

Today we have iStock and the others that provide quality art for in most cases as affordably as $1. This is a remarkable turn of events. It is also one that has had all of the professional photogs up in arms. As a former photojournalist, I can relate on one level, but the marketplace demands low cost alternatives.

What I really like about iStock is that it lets regular people, those of us with digital cameras and an eye, sell OUR photos online. I have yet to do this, but I keep thinking that someday when I have a few extra hours, I will scan all my best photos and watch the money roll in... a dollar at a time.

What iStock has done for us web designers is even more profound. It has opened us up to all kinds of new design possibilities. It has become a resource for us designers for photos of course, but also as a source of inspiration. iStock has a whole section of the site dedicated to work created with iStock artwork. Sometimes, when I am looking for ideas, inspiration, or just a change in vision, I will scroll through some of the really impressive work that people are creating (very affordably I might add) with the huge library of art available.

We turn to iStock here at Optiem to help our clients find affordable art for their projects. We don't always find what we need. Sometimes we hire a photographer. Sometimes we shoot it ourselves. Sometimes we end up back at Getty or Corbis and pay more like $150 for a photo we can use. Sometimes more if we need higher resolutions.

The benefit of having such low-cost alternatives is something we can directly pass on to our clients. And frankly, the quality is still very impressive.

Managing Creative People

My creative direction style has always been as much hands off as it has been hands on. I have been on the receiving end of some very aggressive creative direction in my time and it has always had the opposite effect on me... draining my creative drive and killing the really great feeling you get from simply being creative.

So I read with interest this article at HOWdesign.com about managing creatives.

It has given me some insight into how I work, but also how those work with me. Of course there is always room for improvement. And my player/coach style has always been one that can blur the line between what my staff does and what I do. Which can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

The key is communication of course. Learning to LISTEN to what the creative people need and finding ways to help them get it. I am big on morale. Happy workers make good work. Plain and simple.

Anyway, the article was good and thought I would share it.

Peace.

SEO vs Design... again

Back a few years ago, before SEO was an issue, us designers had to grapple with other enemies... like browser-safe colors (for you youngsters, we could only use about 216 of them), or page load speeds on dial-up connections.... or making our pages work in the ridiculous AOL specific browser.

Then, a few years after that, SEO came. In fact, it came just as some of those other things were going away. Just when you think things are getting easier, more fun things always seem to come into play to challenge and infuriate you. SEO did just that for designers.

I remember the first site I built that had to be SEO "friendly". We placed a bar at the top of the page that had a nice descriptive bit of text in it. It came at the very beginning of the code. Our thinking was that this would make this page more relevant than others that didn't have such genius foresight. Perhaps it did. But what it did for sure, was have an impact on design. And it is still having a very profound one today.

Recently, I have been working on a tweak to a client's site. They perform very well in the search engines due to the concerted efforts of the SEO/SEM staff here at Optiem. But when it comes time to refresh or even redesign a site, the SEO people get a little sensitive. They don't really like us to REMOVE things from the page. So the effort to streamline or simplify a design that has lost it's lustre over the years is somewhat thwarted by the need to stay the course for SEO.

So this recent project has me trying to "clean up" a client's design while not removing any of the stuff the SEO people think is helping. So we are asked to keep these elements but retain them lower down on the now scrolling home page. To me, this is killing any chance we had at a graceful design solution.

As a designer, this offends my design sensibilities. I know we need to accommodate SEO. Like I said, back in the day we used to put indexable text all over the page. I used to tell our clients that it was like a teeter-totter... which direction would you like to lean? Toward design? Toward Search Engine performance? Or kind of hover in the middle. Today it isn' that simple. And we do have other options now that let us do better design (CSS, AJAX, Flash) and still maintain some very good SEO results.

But I feel like I am jousting with windmills here sometimes. Where the Search Engines are the windmills and I am the lonely rider doing battle... never to win.

As designers we have always had to take into consideration the delivery system for our message. In print, we were concerned with paper quality... or with Pantone colors. And, we have always had to work within the specifications of our clients. If they want it brown, then it is brown. No matter how much we hate it.

SEO has definitely taken a bite out of design in the last several years. But as we find ways to work WITH the search engines and not have to be so literal in our interpretation of their needs, I think we will be able to continue to do quality design and serve the needs of Google.

Has anyone else had similar design experiences? When you start a new design for a client, do you have to determine what level of SEO you are going to design the site to? How has SEO affected the WAY you design? More indexable text? Better tagging? More creative CSS? AJAX?

Our old nemeses are retired now. The 216/256 color palette. The crackle of the modem. But new ones have taken hold. And these are ones that don't seem to be going away as readily.

And so, the battle continues in design departments across the land.

Cool New Viral Video Service

From the wonderful people at YouTube comes the YouTube Remixer that allows you to put graphics, text and other really swell things right into your videos. Got a cool video from your phone that you uploaded to YouTube? Need a title screen on your most recent viral masterpeice? Try this remixer... it is pretty sweet!

I am really liking the way the internet is evolving recently. Lots of those tools that we were promised years ago are finally starting to turn up online. So exciting to see our little baby growing up.

Stop the stopping... NOW!

So the other day at a party we had a very humorous discussion about something none of us could figure out. It is an every day household item that someone apparently found the need to "invent"... a Wine Stopper.

I mean.. really... who STOPS wine. I say we need more wine. Not something to stop it. And frankly, if you don't like wine enough to drink the whole bottle, share it with a friend. Which is what wine was invented for in the first place! Or, better yet, if you don't like wine enough to drink the bottle down, don't buy it.

But for God's sake, don't STOP your wine.

Apparently there is a whole market out there for people who are stopping wine. Stop the madness! States have gone to all kinds of ends to regulate alcohol, but I want to live in a state where they outlaw wine stoppers. California should do this. They make a lot of wine there right? I would think they would want to encourage wine drinking. They should make it illegal to sell these inhumane devices.

This leads me to the relevant part of this blog post, at least design wise.

We need to stop inventing things that are useless. Useless design is all over the place. I invent useless things all day long that look good, like the snowflake wine stopper above, but have no place in the world (or world wide web for that matter).

I am talking about frivolous design elements. Sometimes these take the form of icons. Other times they are other design elements simply created to look good but don't do anything to increase actual usability.

I have fallen into this trap many, many times. Going to my pile of icons to search for just the perfect icon of an envelope or a printer. And sometimes, these things can help usability. But other times, they simply add to the visual clutter of the page.

One of the best things to come out of the whole Web 2.0 thing has been the simplification of design. Clean pages with meaningful interactivity courtesy of AJAX has really made designing fun AND useful. But I am really starting to feel a rebellious feeling about all these icons. And Web 2.0 sure uses a lot of them. All shiny and reflected and soft and fuzzy.

So I resolve that in a future client design, I am going to challenge myself to do an icon-less page. That means no little pictures, but also no little triangles, tri-dot tidbits, or other random bullets. Maybe it is time for Web 2.1.

One of the things I really took away from my recent trip to South By Southwest was the power of good typography. Old books didn't have the luxury of little icons all over the margin. Yet they existed with such a pure design elegance that is lost from most design today.

It is the same elegance that is contained in most bottles of wine I have had the pleasure to enjoy.

Frivolous icons are like wine stoppers. They stop the elegance. I say, let the elegance flow... and stop the stopping!

Heather Locklear Design

Recently I read an interesting post from Jason Santa Maria about working with clients that have difficulty seeing our vision...

"I’m a bit of a stalwart optimist and I’ve always considered that I need bad or, more appropriately, challenging clients. I’m not talking about clients that withhold respect, try to do my job, or undermine recommendations based on fear. No one wants those kinds. I mean clients that push us to create better things and to be better designers. Clients that want to learn, and want to question."

Now I have of course worked with a wide variety of clients just like Jason has. And I certainly have had my share of challenging ones. And the truth of the matter is, every time I get overly excited about one particular design I have done, the client never sees it the way I do. But I ask you... just as Jason has asked... is that a bad thing?

I recently did a design that I really felt would push the envelope for the area this particular client was focused on. The other sites in this arena were plain and simple. We really wanted to elevate this client's site and take it to a new level well beyond where its competitors were. It was a risk to present this kind of design to this particular client, because they were probably expecting something more in line with their industy's standard. However, we presented 4 designs, ranging from very simple and clean to a very intense, graphically dynamic one.

As a designer, I was drawn to the graphically intense one for many reasons. And I started praying almost immediately that they would choose that one. Of course they didn't. However, they DID choose one that will still be a fine addition to our portfolio and is much better than anything else their competitors have to offer.

My question is this. How do we keep pushing the "design envelope" and hoping our clients "get it" while almost always they are unwilling or unable to take the risk involved? Do we keep pushing ourselves to do designs we know they won't approve? How do we keep our intensity level up?

For me, I think it is just the possibility that one day, a visionary client will come in and say... "YES! WE GET IT! GO FOR IT!". But this is like me waiting for Heather Locklear to call me. I mean, I have been waiting for like 30 years now.. and still nothing.

It keeps me waking up in the morning. Not Heather, but the possibility that each day holds at my job. Doing something innovative, cool, a new idea, a never been done before design solution.

One day, the Heather Locklear of clients will call. In the meantime... Heather, please call me.

Welcome to Catch The Comet

Welcome to my new blog which I have somewhat irrevently called... "Catch The Comet'.

Some of you might remember the group of hapless web designers known as Heaven's Gate that offed themselves to board Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. They are no longer working on the World Wide Web. Instead they have apparently moved up to the Universe Wide Web that Al Gore has yet to introduce us to here on planet Earth.

Anyway, this will be a blog that will cover a broad range of topics concerning web design. I hope to keep you engaged, informed, sometimes infuriated, and as much as I can, educated. Hopefully we can "Catch The Comet" in the sense that we shoot for the stars (in a design sense) and make it.

No one is really sure if the Heaven's Gate group actually had boarding passes. So we don't really know if they made it onto the comet or not. But they sure made a name for us web designers for a few days there. Such a nutty job isn't it?

As a little side bar here, I need to tell you about my wonderful mom. The day that the Heaven's Gate guys departed it was all over the news. I had been working in the web design field for a few years after leaving the newspaper business as a graphics editor. My mom, who is a very funny and sometimes kooky woman, saw the news and was very excited to call me. I remember the conversation...

Mom: Oh, Paul, have you heard the latest news?
Paul: No, what happened?
Mom: Well it is terrible. And I hope you don't get upset. But I just heard that a group of web designers called Heaven's Gate killed themselves! Did you KNOW any of those people?!
Paul: Um... wow... well, no mom. I didn't know any of those people. They were web designers huh?
Mom: Yes. I figured you would probably know them.
Paul: Mom, there are web designers all over the world. Thousands, maybe millions of them worldwide. That would be like asking Dad if he knew that salesman in China that jumped off that builidng. Just because he is a salesman too. Ya know?
Mom: Well, I just thought you might.
Paul: Nope... sorry Mom.
Mom: Hmmmm, oh well.

Enough said for now.