Will Harris shares some insight on working with designers. We often read about tips for designers by designers, but not tips for clients by clients. Still, both parties should read it (and print out the PDF, too!).
Designers (and professionals in related fields) will get great gems of advice that will make them go “oh, thank goodness he said that!” because it’s so common for clients to just sit there and say “I don’t like that” without giving any real reason behind their preference. A design project (again, this can apply to other fields) is the responsibility of both the designer and the client. They have to work together.
But let me digress a little bit. One thing that struck me while reading the article was Will’s first suggestion:
Choose your designer carefully. Look at their previous work. The best designers don’t have a “signature look.” Their sites look as different as their clients do. Awards don’t necessarily mean the design worked for the client. If you’re not sure about a design, go to sites they designed and ask their clients.
Do you agree that designers with more diverse-looking projects are better than those who maintain a signature look? On the one hand, it immediately leads a client into thinking that the designer has a wider skill set and can more easily meet their requirements especially if they’re fickle.
On the other hand, clients opt for designers with a consistent style exactly because they want to emulate that look on their own projects.
I think that in general, professionals start out not knowing exactly what they want to do, and try everything out first. As they grow older they start to specialize. As time passes, you’re supposed to be more sure of yourself and should be able to hold a distinguishable reputation among your peers. This can be said not only about the styles you create, but the skills you specialize in, the clientele you work with, and so on. I wouldn’t say this is the only way to go, but it seems to be the trend.
According to the latest episode from the Boagworld podcast, “you might be wasting your time designing with CSS” because now that Flash is open source, it’s “going to be everywhere and is the platform we should now be developing on”.
Flash versus CSS? What?
Let’s backtrack a bit. Adobe recently announced the Open Screen Project, which will implement a “consistent runtime environment” for Flash (and AIR) across all platforms. All, as in every medium imaginable: computers, mobile devices, TVs, and everything in between. Adobe working hand in hand with some of the biggest names in media and electronics to make this possible. For a company that’s always created proprietary technologies, moving to an open mindset is a bold move. But this will cement the popularity and innovativeness of Flash.
So how does Flash compete with CSS? We shouldn’t take the Flash vs. CSS part literally. It should be more like Flash vs. HTML and CSS. Or HTML and CSS and JavaScript. Wait, what about AJAX? And Silverlight?
See how silly this bout has become? All these web technologies are not direct competitors. (Except for Silverlight, perhaps, but I’m not even sure if it still stands a chance.)
But there’s a very real question being posed here. Should HTML/CSS coders move on to what seems to be the greener pasture that is Flash?
I firmly believe that not every website in the world has to be done in Flash for it to be jaw-droppingly awesome. There will be Flash developers who believe exactly the opposite. There will be hybrid web designers who can straddle between both and don’t really feel the pressure. Any of the three will prevail in the future, but from the looks of it right now, there’s still a place for plain old HTML and CSS no matter how big Flash has become.
Besides, both camps are still considerably immature. The web in general is, actually. It’s just that with all the effort spent into creating websites and the money that can be made from them, web technologies seem complete already. But they are just as dynamic and unpredictable as the web itself.
