Fixpert

Hmm…it’s not what you think. I’ve been doing web design since 1999, so that’s 6 years. During those 6 years, my involvement in web design has varied quite a bit. About 3 years into my “career” I quit my job as an Illustrator/Web Designer to move to NYC where I became a bike messenger. I continued to pick up freelance web gigs on the side — though I noticed that my focus was not really on this work, I was more caught up in the day-to-day of messenger work.

Riding a bike through the city and delivering packages is a much more fluid, natural, and free-form act than computer-based design as you can probably imagine. As a result, I think my mind adopted that free-form approach and it was applied to all aspects of my life. I wasn’t reliant on routines and didn’t really form any habits, I wasn’t particularly organized, etc.

This is easier for me to see now that I have switched back to full time web design work. My mind has also made the switch back — demanding structure, efficiency, and formalized processes. For example, when I get in my car every morning, buckle my seat belt, turn the ignition, and flip on the radio — in that exact sequence — I think “too bad there’s not some kind of macro for automating these tasks.” Then I laugh at what a nerd I am.

I think there’s some amount of being anal that is required to be a successful web designer. Although we shy away from talking about pixel-perfect web page design, the graphics that we create in photoshop for those pages really should be pixel perfect. I always make sure anti-aliasing is off when using the line tool so that I get a nice crisp edge. I zoom way into my image, and use the pencil tool to make sure any spotty or fuzzy areas look clean at Actual Size. It’s anal, but it really does make a difference. It’s not a super obvious difference, it just affects the overall crispness of an image. Maybe like the difference between a girl that plucks her eyebrows and one that doesn’t — you wouldn’t be able to put your finger on what was different, but one would appear to be more polished.

So, I’ve found that this anal part of my brain can lay dormant if I am involved in looser, more natural activities, like riding bikes all day. But it becomes active, and really takes over, like when I am writing a lot of code for example.

I have also found that drinking coffee as I work compounds this phenomenon. I become more frantic in my needs to classify, sort, categorize, and create efficiencies. I have also found that coffee has a way of “Unlocking the Anal” in other ways if you know what I mean — badda-bing!

Anyway, I think this switch is a necessary component of me being a good web designer. However, I’m not sure that it’s entirely healthy for me as a person. I don’t particularly want to think about macros when I get in my car in the morning. For that reason, I think it’s a good idea for web designers to spend their off hours doing watercolors, mountain biking, or indulging in other loose, non-structured activities and forms of expression. That’s why I’m sitting here at the computer working on my personal web site in my off hours — ha ha, syke!

Oh, one more thing, as spiders crawl this keyword-rich text, I’m giggling about the dissappointed pervs who have landed here after being enticed by this entry’s title. Ha! Suckers!

WordPress. Oh…WordPress, how I love thee. Movable Type had me all hemmed up, tangled and frustrated. Movable Type’s interface…not intuitive. Confusing in fact, dare I say it — frustrating. But glorious WordPress, all open source and free and whatnot. Running barefoot on the beach holding hands, wind in our hair.

It took me 2 hours to install Movable Type, and I am not experienced with running cgi scripts on a server — I am very much a CSS and (X)HTML front end web designer. WordPress, from the moment I downloaded it, I was up and running within 5 minutes.

I was staring at my crappy Kenneth Cole watch today. It’s my first experience with this brand. I just bought the watch because I needed something that looked nice with work clothes (my ginormous heart rate monitor watch is a bit bulky on my 8 year old child-sized wrists). I want to write Kenneth Cole a letter and tell them their watch sucks. I want to tell them that the poor craftsmanship let dust and condensation sneak in under the glass within the first week. I want to mention that, due to the way it’s constructed, there is no way to replace the crappy faux-leather bands that I think are biodegrading off the watch and will probably be gone in a fortnight (Tah! I said “fortnight”).

It’s kind of shocking because Kenneth Cole is definitely a company that tries to convey quality, expensiveness. When you wear “the Cole” you’re saying, “I am a fancy-pants rich person and I am breath-takingly attractive because of my money”. And, yes, the watch was freakin’ expensive, I think I spent $70 on this piece of junk!

You might be wondering why this entry is filed under “Web Design”. Well, I’ve found that when doing freelance work, the way that you price a job often affects the client’s perceived value of your work. So, if I give a client a bargain-basement price — because I’m thinking that the work will be fun or a good portfolio piece, or maybe it’s for a friend — they will turn out to be the worst kind of client. They will be fickle, ask for a lot of changes, and they certainly won’t consider me an expert and defer to my opinion on things. Conversely, charging more money can change the dynamic. The client now sees you as a valuable expert, your opinion matters suddenly.

Just keep that in mind when you’re thinking about being nice and cutting someone a deal, it’s like spoiling a child, they’ll just turn all nasty on you. Oh, and also don’t ever buy a Kenneth Cole watch.

Crutchfield just launched a pretty sweet redesign — taking a huge leap towards web standards. I’m going to write a bit about the redesign, so keep checking back over the next few days and you’ll get the scoop on:

• CSS drop downs: Or you can jump ahead and read Tim the intern’s account
• Tables: The Crack of the web world
• Web standards: Before and after
• Centered fixed-width design: An homage to the blogging community
• Making the case for web standards

That’s right, “Tables Begone.” It’s kind of like Smells Begone®. Ug, that lingering musty scent of tables. It’s still lingers in places around the Crutchfield site, but with this quick redesign we made some serious progress.

Go to Crutchfield’s homepage and if you’ve got the Web Developer extension for Firefox, outline the table cells and bask in our glory:

Ok, ok, so there’s one table cell in there, and we will phase that out over time. As you get deeper into the site, you’ll notice tables are still around, but far less tables than before. Most importantly, this redesign represents a move in the right direction.

There were so many tables on this site. It was common to see a table used just to put a 1 pixel border around another table. It was perfectly normal to see a table, or multiple tables, that weren’t doing anything and that no one could account for. Another big issue was the ASP that was driving the site. This is a dynamic, database-driven site, which means that any given page can have dozens of different display variations depending on the specifics of that user’s session. And, having not separated structure, behavior, and presentation, our ASP code was woven into a sort of Chinese Finger Trap with html tables. Glancing through our source code, you would see an asp variable in place of the colspan value for a table cell. So, you might see some logic that said “If the user has logged into their account, then this table cell gets a colspan of 3, otherwise it gets a colspan of 2.” Seeing code like this really worried me. I had built sites using CSS before, but I had never tried to take a giant dynamic site like this and recode it for web standards. And with all the reading of blogs that I do online, I had never seen anyone write a clean concise article about “it can be done, here’s how to transform your giant, bloated dynamic site into a CSS work horse.” So, let me say for the doubters and haters out there, yes it can be done. I know we’re still in transition, but we’ve made enough progress where I am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Hang in there dudes and dudettes!

Keep checking in for more. Up next: span class=”bogus!”