At Optiem, we are always keeping our eyes out for talent. As the Creative Director I am charged with keeping our work visually appealing, on message, within brand and under budget. We also must be creating pages that are high-quality, cross-browser compatible W3C Valid XHTML with fully realized CSS markup. A tall order for a designer.
We have a great staff here at Optiem, but finding this kind of talent in Cleveland, Ohio has been no easy task. And as I talk to my local counterparts I find that they have similar issues as well. We see great designers, but they have no experience (and in some cases no desire) in coding. And although we are indeed a specialized area of design, there is a constant need for this type of cross developmental thinking. We also see a fair share of developers who would be designers... if only for this little thing called "talent". Not something you can pick up in a Web Design for Dummys book at Borders.
Recently I have seen a lot of these ads for Design to HTML services. One of them that I visited recently (http://www.psd2html.com) offers a complete, validated and fully compatible coding service for as low as $153. That is hard to ignore. Especially, when factoring our relative workloads here, the desire to stay on message and create COMPELLING design, that development of these more mundane parts of a web project can be costly... not only monetarily but also creatively.
This smells a lot to me like the off-shoring did a few years ago. On some levels, it is repulsive and takes away jobs from people right here in Cleveland. Or at least some would argue that. But on other levels, I can see the reason why people would want to buy cheap, clean OVERNIGHT code for their web sites.
In the case of PSD2HTML they deliver the coded page in EIGHT hours. Now frankly, and our clients know this, we have to schedule in time to work on the variety of projects that we work on. So coding up a proof of concept for a client could cost us eight hours of OUR time. I won't get into what that costs our clients, but it is considerably more than $153.
This all leads to the value question. We provide a service to our clients that is customized. And although design to code shops spend specific time on individual projects, they don't know the end client or their specific businesses. I don't know how important that is one the message and design parts are established. But I do know what we do is of value to our customers.
Would we go to a design to code provider for work? I wouldn't rule it out in a pinch... of course that can be said about most things. But I think in general, we like the control we have to make our client sites perform the way we feel they should. And our clients deserve that.
No disrespect to the code for hire guys at all. But you will always be able to find someone to do almost anything cheaper and faster than the next guy... the question is, when does the quality suffer?
Showing posts with label CSS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CSS. Show all posts
Friday, August 17, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
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.
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.
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