I’ve also been working on the next Guide for Designers that should be ready next week. It’s going to be about finding your right clients and right projects. I’ve dealt with this issue a whole lot, as does everyone else and I felt that I should share what I’ve learned because I know it can help other people too. If you have something you’d personally like to see addressed in it, let me know in the comments.

There was also a ton of client work this summer and some scheduling issues that got out of hand. Basically though, it’s been me, running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find myself and my little place in this world. It’s been painful at times. Discovery and change is always hard, especially when you’re working on big changes.

Identifying what I like doing has also had me in deep thought about what I don’t like doing. And I have some confessions to make:

• I’ve never considered myself a Wordpress designer (I thought about this when I read good friend Tzaddi Gordon’s post.) I’ve always thought that there are different solutions for different types of clients and projects. The only reason we do more Wordpress sites that others is because a lot of our clients request them.
• I don’t enjoy designing “blog” sites as much as others. Not that I dislike doing blog sites. It’s just that the standard blog layout with the content on the left, sidebar on the right, etc. feels boring and cookie-cutter at times.
• I have a hard time letting my work go. A lot of people say that if a client requests changes you don’t agree with to not fight about it and move on. I can’t handle this well. I invest a lot of me into each project and it tears me up when I feel something’s not right and I get all grumpy about it. I literally care too much. I can’t help it.
• I have a hard time with putting sites together quickly. One of the things client’s compliment me the most about is that I’m very fast. But, truthfully, if I had my druthers, I’d prefer thoughtful work and that takes time and care to do.
• I have no interest in selling templates or themes or working with them. I mentioned in this post the reason we decided not to customize themes is because we were losing time and money on those projects, which is true. But, even if they were profitable, I wouldn’t enjoy doing that type of work much. See above about thoughtful work.
• I’m not as good as I could be about client training after a project is done. This is hard for me to admit because I like to help clients, but I don’t enjoy it as much as I enjoy helping people with other “deeper” issues.
• I’ve been dealing with major burnout. For a few years. It took me awhile to realize that doing so many things at once and pushing myself so hard was taking it’s toll. Especially because I was doing a lot of things I didn’t enjoy doing. I’m making a conscious effort to focus on work that I enjoy and find fulfilling every day and par down on things I don’t enjoy. Please consider doing this if you don’t. You deserve it so that you can be the best you can be.
• I let others define me. This is related to the point above. I let clients decide the type of work I did and how to define me. There’s nothing wrong with watching your market and stretching your skills to meet their needs. But, don’t do it at your own expense.

Phew, this has been hard and it’s getting long. Plus, it’s all about me and I’m starting to feel narcissistic. I’d love to hear about you if you’re inclined. What new things have you got going on? What struggles are you personally going through?

The Roles Experience & Intuition Play in Design

This is a guest post I wrote for Mr. Sparky Firepant's website. If you're not familiar with David and his work yet, you should check him out. His new Botpreneur series is so very on point.

In my post I reveal some of my darkest secrets including my very first web design (horrors!) and some uh, not so fun previous jobs I had before I become web designer extraordinaire along with my thoughts on the classic debate: What makes a good designer, experience or intuitition & talent?

Visit the post here

Typical Client Red Flags: What Warning Signs to Look Out For When You Take On a New Client

One of the great things about having your own business is that you get to choose who you want to work with. Diversity makes the world go round, but sometimes we need to make a little extra effort to find our right clients that fit. My post outlines 11 warning signs you'll want to look out for when taking on new clients.

Visit the post here

Hope you have a nice and relaxing weekend! I'm going shopping with Koldo for a file cabinet. I'd tell you how excited I am about that, but then you'd probably realize what a serious geek I really am.

You see, lots of people ask if we can customize existing Wordpress themes for them. For example, themes like Thesis or Headway or some other.

And actually we used to do that every once in awhile, although we have always done custom websites since we started in 2003. Theme customization was a decent cost-effective solution for new start-ups with limited budgets and I personally wanted to be able to help people that way. Except, we were helping at our own expense. We lost a lot of time/money on every single one of those projects.

Now, let me clarify. Theme customization is a great choice for many small business and there's nothing wrong with that, especially when you're just starting out and finding your voice. Some people have found ways to customize their themes enough to make them not look like the original theme and that's cool too.

However, providing a theme customization service wasn't working for us as service providers. You see, we like to go a little further than changing fonts and colors on a website. We want to dig deep and then deeper still. We want to look for client's core message and personality and then take those things and run with them. That's nearly impossible to do when you're doing theme customization.

In case you're curious, here is a quick rundown of what typically the whole process looks like for a totally custom-built website:

1. Research: We work to find the core message of the client's business and/or personality. We dig deep to find keywords and ideas that represent them and what they stand for. This helps provide us a good base to work with and in actuality it's an exercise in branding rather than just aesthetics. At this stage we will also look at the website goals and what the client wishes to accomplish with their new website.
2. Information Architecture: We organize the site content in an easy to use way with the visitor's interests in mind. A website will simply not work if people cannot find the information they are looking for.
3. Wireframes: We put together wireframes that determine where the most important elements on a site will be located. Each site is different because the goals of every business is different. This is almost impossible to do with an existing theme because it largely determines structure for you. What works for one person's business may not be suitable for another.
4. Mood Boards: In turn, mood boards help us determine the look and feel of the site without structure. We use mood boards to determine typography, colors, textures, imagery, inspiration, etc. We're largely working here with emotions and what the brand “feels” like.
5. Site Design: Only after we've determine the architecture, structure, and look and feel of the site will we then work on the design itself. The thing about design is that it's not effective unless you have the proper groundwork laid out first. There's really no point in doing a custom design if you don't do that first. It would be like building a house without a blueprint.
6. Coding: After the design has been done, we then convert that into a live website. Usually we do this by coding the design into a CMS (content management system). This may be Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, Textpattern or another. We don't fit all websites into the CMS we personally feel most comfortable with. We pick the correct tool for the job.
7. Content: After the site has been coded, we'll then add the content to it like site pages, video, forms, add-ons, etc.
8. Done! After it's been coded, we'll then take the site live for all the world to see how awesomely unique that client and their business is. We then let them run with it with smiles of approval on our faces from afar.

As you might imagine, custom websites are not cheap. We recently raised our base price to $3,400 and will probably be raising that price again in the near future because of demand.

However, custom means the clients have a website that really stands for their business. No other websites will be like it and even if they try, you can't copy another company's message. It will scream, “This is what I stand for”. It will be a unique statement to the world about what the client has to offer.

For a business that depends greatly on its online presence, the extra investment in a unique design can pay for itself several times over spread across the course of several years.

That's the real difference between “theme customization” and truly custom website design.

Questions or thoughts? I'd love to hear them!

I had been seeing Alexis around the social media sphere (everywhere actually!) and already watched a few of her interviews online, so was already familiar with her and excited about the opportunity of working with her.

During the initial design discussions, we presented a mood board with warm colors, textures, and other warm elements. Alexis really wanted to focus on transparency though, so we decided to make that our main focus and go in a different direction instead. Alexis also mentioned that she really identified with the color white. She had just moved to Colorado (speaking from personal experience, Colorado does tend to be gloriously white in the winter) and it fit in well with the idea of “transparency”.

So, working with that idea and with white, we decided to make it very clean, minimal, and with a touch of warmth and personality here and there.

First and foremost, Alexis’s message is very clear when you first go to the site. You see the site name and tagline at the top of the site in large letters and then a photo and Alexis’s introduction to greet you.

You may also notice that we worked with the concept of “transparency” literally by placing transparent items throughout the side, like the backgrounds behind the dates on the blog posts and the heading boxes in the sidebar.

We wanted to make sure Alexis’s blog and blog posts were the main focus on the site. So, the typography is carefully constructed for easy reading and the links to more posts and features are featured prominently throughout the site.

Besides the site being fun to work on itself, Alexis and her team were great to work with as well. She works with some very nice and enthusiastic ladies. I love working that way too!

I hope you get a chance to visit her new blog site. I think it’s definitely worth a look. And if you identify with Alexis’s message, be sure to sign up for her newsletter. It’s very good as well (and I’m not just saying so because we also designed it based on the blog design).

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts about it!

The last two versions of the site design were very clean, white, and minimalistic. This time, we felt like doing something a little different. So, we went the opposite direction, dark and colorful.

We wanted the site to be elegant and a little mysterious, so we decided to go with purple as the main foundation of color. And since we didn’t want it too look to feminine with the purple, we used more of a plum color instead of the more typical purple you might see around.

We believe that web design is a profession where you must constantly be moving forward. For this reason, we decided this time to go a little more experimental with the layout and use transparencies and different overlapping layers to provide different effects on our own site.  For this, we had to compromise loading times and some of the beauty in Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 6 looks horrible, I’m sure (I didn’t even check it) and in Internet Explorer 7, I applied background colors instead of transparent images to make it viewable in that browser since it slows to a halt when you have repeating png images as backgrounds.

Koldo did the lovely illustrations, as always. I wish he could do illustrations on every project we work on. They just add that certain personal touch, don’t they?

We finally made the move to ExpressionEngine from Wordpress. I had been wanting to do it for awhile, but it took us quite awhile to get this design off the ground, mostly because we’ve been so busy the last year or so with client work. We chose ExpressionEngine because of the versatility it offers.

I was able to code almost everything how I wanted it without using almost any plugins, which was divine. I felt like I had a lot more freedom to do what we wanted with the design and we would’t have had that same freedom with Wordpress. Unfortunately though, we didn’t get the comments ported over to the blog. They aren’t lost, but we haven’t found an efficient way to do that because we decided to go with the ExpressionEngine 2.0 beta, which doesn’t have an import tool integrated yet. We’re still looking for a way.

Along with the site redesign, we also have decided to offer a new free service. We are now offering (for the moment) free website competitor analysis reports. If this sounds like something that might be interesting or helpful for you, go check it out.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about the new design. Also, if you see any bugs or general wonkiness, let us know too. We will be eternally grateful.

Thanks for reading and thank you for allowing us to be a part of your world (7 years!!).

These are some of the types of questions we’ve been getting lately. Strangely, this issue didn’t come up much before, but now that it has, I figure it’s a good time to take a moment to talk about it.

First, a little background. The first three or four years we were in business, we would present three initial concepts. That seemed like the standard thing to do.

But after awhile we started to notice something happening. Most of the time, two of the concepts would be pretty similar. It seemed like there were only so many ways to skin a cat effectively and after we came up with the best solutions we could, it didn’t make any sense to do further changes beyond maybe a different color treatment or similar.

The thing is, that third similar concept is not really a whole other concept and only gives the illusion of having an extra choice. It didn’t feel right to do that, so we then decided to do two concepts instead. Koldo would do one concept and I’d do the other. It seemed logical. That way, the client would get two different designs from two different designers. But, that didn’t work out how we hoped either.

Finally, we decided to start presenting only one concept in most cases. Here are our reasons for doing so.

1. Time and Cost Savings: Part of the way we work and we live in our personal lives is to respect limited resources. We hope to do the best we can with what we have available and that often means looking for ways to make the web design process affordable and productive for our clients. We want to make sure that the website provides a good return on investment and wasting precious time and resources on something that doesn’t provide enough gain doesn’t make sense. Which leads me to…
2. Avoiding sub-par solutions: In our eyes, when we work on several design concepts, there is one that is always clearly the strongest solution. I’m not talking about the one that’s prettier or has the impressive graphics either. I’m talking about the one that we know will work the best for the client’s particular situation and project goals. I think most designers will admit to themselves that they almost always have worked towards one best solution and present the other ones they explored along the way just because they have to. What’s the point in that? Is that really ethical?
3. Avoiding Frankenstein solutions: This is probably the worst occurrence because it pretty much guarantees a sub-par outcome. What happens here is that the client feels forced to make difficult choices when presented with several options. Instead of guiding the client and saying, “This is what we believe will work best for you.”, we throw everything into their court. The natural reaction is to pick and choose one thing from one concept and another thing from another and so on. This ends up creating a final solution that doesn’t have the original impact and is also not totally cohesive.

With careful thought and planning, there really isn’t a lot of need for additional concepts.

Doing enough research upfront

We hope, with each project to come close to hitting the mark the first time around. If this doesn’t happen, it means something went wrong during the initial planning phase.

Somewhere along the way, we misunderstood something, the client’s goals didn’t get conveyed to us well enough, or we just didn’t go over the initial planning process thoroughly enough together to make sure we were on the same page. In these rare cases, we offer to do another design after we have gathered more information and discussed the project goals further with the client. This is at no extra cost to the client even if it means a less profitable project for us.

If this is the case though, presenting several designs in the first round wouldn’t have avoided the problem. It would have just meant two or three designs that missed the mark instead of one.

Working in a relationship based on mutual trust.

This is a touchy area. If the client insists upon several concepts because they feel unsure we will be able to help them reach their goal with one, there is a much larger issue at play. Hopefully, we have the opportunity to address these types of issues before we commence a project, but if it comes up later on in the project, it can cause a real mess.

If there is a lack of trust on the client’s side, it’s a real possibility that the client will not like whatever we do for them, no matter how many concepts we provide. In such cases, we often recommend that they look for another firm that can provide what they are looking for.

Pleasing clients vs. giving them what they need.

We all want our clients to be happy. That’s a given. We also want them to feel satisfied with working with us. But, these shouldn’t be our main goals. Our main goal should be to come up with the best solutions we can for each project. Sometimes those solutions are ones that clients may not like the most, but that’s not a good enough reason for not presenting only our best work.

Of course, clients know their businesses better than we do and their websites should be a good representative of their business. But, presenting solutions that aren’t good enough just to please a client is highly unprofessional.

Products vs. Services.

Here is the thing that a lot of people don’t understand when purchasing a custom web design from a designer. What you are buying is a service, not a product. It is logical that people think they are buying a product. We live in a consumer-based culture.

But, when you hire a web designer to do a custom design, you are paying that person for their expertise, experience, and time it takes to come up with a custom solution just for you to fit your needs. This is different than say, purchasing a Wordpress theme and then picking the color you want. That’s a product.

Cutting corners?

All that said, does this mean that we cut corners, we aren’t working hard enough, or spending enough time on on our designs? I don’t think so.

The thing is, when we work on a design, we go through a complex process of working on several different ideas and concepts before the client sees the final result. Very rarely does it happen that we come up with a good design without careful thought and on the first try.  Just because the client doesn’t see the other stuff doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a lot of work behind that design concept. The final result has just been narrowed down to what we think is the best solution.

How long does it take?

Well, in case you’re curious, we usually spend around 40-50 hours from the very start of the project until the presentation of the home page design concept. This includes research time, going through wireframes and mood boards and revisions to those along with the corresponding discussions with the clients, and exploring several options before coming up with the final result. This is compared to spending just a few hours on each of several different concepts.

The cost may or may not be the same, but the solutions will likely not have been as well thought out and given as much time as they should have. It only gives the illusion that more work has been done, but doesn’t mean the client is actually getting more or better work for their money.

***

Designers and people who hire designers, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Designers, how many concepts do you present and what are your reasons? Clients, how many concepts are you looking for when you hire a designer?

Daniel Bird approached us because he needed branding and a new website for his new business. Memory Keepers, located in Dallas Texas, preserves old photos into digital format. What makes them different, is that they travel right to the customer’s house to scan the photos rather than having clients send in their precious photos by mail.

We thought this was a really great idea. So, what we really wanted to focus on was trust and how friendly they are. Trust is really important, especially when you are letting someone handle something so dear to you as your memories.

So, we decided to use a lot of warm colors and friendly illustrations. You can see the illustrations done by Koldo on the home page , on the inside page about how the photo scanning process works, and in the logo on the top left of the site.

We talked about having a slight retro touch design-wise to work with the idea of using old photos, but not making it look antiquated, which might be typical when you think of old photos. So, we decided to work retro-ish styling into the site and logo using colors, illustrations, and layout.

Illustrations are an excellent way to differentiate your brand and add visual interest to your site. Plus, they can really warm things up in a way that no other media can.

Not only was this project so fun to do, but Daniel was also so patient and kind throughout the whole process. I’d be willing to bet your photos would be in most excellent hands with them.

Here are some great advantages of having custom illustration to consider:

1. Get exactly what you want: Want happy flying purple cows? Sure, why not! Now you don’t need to comb through stock photo sites for hours and hours trying to find exactly what you need and feeling frustrated because you couldn’t find anything that represented you well enough.
2. Be memorable: I can’t tell you how many people have told us that they remember our website just because of the illustrations on our home page and the friendly mailman on our contact page.
3. Be unique: It’s yours, all yours. Just for you.
4. Save money: Custom illustration is more expensive than stock photography and stock illustration. But it can be a cheaper option than hiring a photographer and is an excellent way to get the results you want without worrying about props, models, etc.
5. Add personality & quirkiness: Custom illustration is really a great way to add personality to your site and business.
6. Have your own character or mascot: Characters and mascots are a well-known and excellent way to solidify your branding and help create a community around your brand. What do you think of when you think of Geico? That little cute gecko, right? If you get our newsletter, you probably think we’ve been talking a lot about mailchimp lately, but their chimp is hard not to love and is worth a mention too.

We’re currently working on an illustration for a client’s site that we are also designing. This particular client has several competitors, but his business has a particular aspect that sets him apart from the others. We decided to play off of this strength and really help create a personable brand for his business with the use of illustration. We’re very excited about this project and will be talking about it more once it has been completed.

In the meantime, here are some other effective uses of web site illustration that I like in particular:

Intuitive Designs: Yes, this one is ours. It was done by my excellent partner, Koldo. In case I didn’t ever mention how great it is to have a partner/husband who is also a very talented illustrator…well, it is!

For this version of our web site, we really wanted to focus on the collaboration aspect of the design process. We feel that good teamwork between the client and us brings the best results. So, we have the client with their idea, Koldo and I with the client collaborating together, and then the client with the end result of our teamwork.

Navigant Consulting: I fell in love with this the first day I saw it. Serious. Strong. Killer geometrical shapes. Perfection!

Moxie Design Studios: I always loved the retro illustrations on the Moxie Design Studios website. This new version of their site is just as fun as the last one was. Don’t these girls look like awesome and charming hostesses?

Daily Candy: So simple and so chic. I’ve always thought that the illustrations and overall design concept suited their branding to a tee.

Yes Insurance: When you think of any type of insurance, “friendly” isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. Yes Insurance looks like they are on a mission to change that. Way to go, Yes Insurance!

Well, just 7 months after the second redesign of Koldo’s site, we decided to redesign it again! After a few long talks, we decided that he needed a new design to fit with his new store and that the design wasn’t working for him as well as it could have been.  We purposely made the last design simple in order to leave focus on his work, but we both felt it was lacking something. This new design is also simple, but we feel it has more character and represents Koldo’s work and style better.

Koldo did the design himself including all of the small illustrated elements throughout. I love how he integrated his little creatures into places like the newsletter form and search box. You can tell they are having fun, can’t you? One of the most apparent talents I think Koldo has is his ability to create awesome and original creatures. He’s so imaginative and is one of those people who is constantly coming up with new ideas. Most of the time I don’t know how it does it, but they always fascinate me and make me smile! I hope you enjoy them too.

Any comments or feedback you might have about the site are very very appreciated, as always.  Thanks so much.

BluePrint Balance is now live, whoopee! BluePrint Balance is run by Laurie Gay, a writer, lawyer and coach who helps burnt-out corporate employees discover the energizing careers that they are meant for and express the best of themselves in work and in life.

I have to say, working with Laurie was just so easy. She knew exactly what she wanted and gave us lots information to get us started in the right direction. Just what we love! Besides that, Laurie is a great person and I think it shows through in her writing that she loves helping people.

If you are a struggling corporate employee or know someone who is, you should definitely check out her blog, especially her post “Welcome! I’d Like to Introduce Yourself. “. I think a lot of us might find a little of ourselves in there, even if we aren’t a burnt out corporate employee.

We custom designed her site design and logo and built it into the Wordpress content management system so that she can manage her site content and blog herself.

Visit the site here.