Seth's Blog

Seth is right on. I agree. We see too much time spent on tiny, miniscule changes in color and placement. I see photographers trying to re-invent the wheel so they can be totally unique. It is such a waste of time to go too nuts on it. And, hey, I'm a freakin' designer. I want to design a site that works for the client, that helps them increase their business and visibility. A site that helps them get found when a potential client is looking for that service or product. A site that actually becomes a living, breathing advocate for my client.

And of course I want it to look good... hell, I want it to look great. But some things are kind of a given... We re going to have navigation (and it shouldn't be in motion... GEEEEEZZZ that is annoying) and it is going to be either horizontal or vertical and it is going to have content and images and... well, you get the idea. I want to spend the time working the site for maximum use, not tweaking a pixel here to please some bozo's need to micromanage the project. CSS allows us to do so much more with so much less.

Generally I find all that tweaking is a deniability tool to keep from actually having to come up with content... you know... all that crap that goes on the page. No one wants to do it. That's hard. Let's just push the logo over about 4 pixels and change the background to a slightly warmer black... can you show me that? I am lucky enough to work with wonderful clients lately that don't do this to me... but there have been times... boy, have there....

Seth's Blog: "Start with design. Don't involve the programming team until you're 90% done with the look and feel of your pages. It's cheap to change design if it can't by supported by programming, and cheaper and faster to have design done in Photoshop before you commit to cutting it up and coding it.

I'm going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there's one that you can start with? If your organization can't find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job."