I am a logical thinker

This is great for coding. I think about things logically when coding. How things work, how information is processed, basically how something should be coded to work effectively. This is a great skill for a coder, but as a designer it’s a drawback for a few reasons. The first perhaps being is when I design something I think “well if I design it like this, then how am I supposed to code it?”. Due to this anything I attempt to design comes out ordinary and mundane.

Creative thinkers don’t think this way. They think in a completely different way. They think about how to make this design look brilliant. Perhaps if I’d tried learning to design before coding I’d be more of a creative thinker.

I’ve seen many brilliant coders that also design and it can work. I will certainly keep trying to design better. I just need to shut off the logical part of my brain and let my imagination take control of my work. If I can do this I’m sure I will be able to produce designs which are better than what I currently produce.

Find my full set of pictures from Banff, Scotland on Flickr!

Stop half assing your god damn work. I see designs every day that look great but they’re missing shit. Designers seem to forget about the little things. These little things don’t seem to matter much to them but when coding it’s a pain in the ass. Lets take wordpress themes for example.

Most designers will design maybe a single page containing the header, sidebar, footer, posts, comments, data such as the date and how many comments. However they are missing fundamental parts of the design. I have therefore compiled a list of things you should not forget to have.

• Link styles - We need to know what a link looks both on it’s own and hovered.
• Next and Previous Page links - In Wordpress posts have a link to a previous post and the next post. It’s your job to design this. Not mine
• Quote Boxes - Alot of sites don’t quote often, but it’s nice when they do for their quotes to be styled.
• Pagination - The main page will have a link at the bottom generally to previous entries in the blog. Yet again this needs to be styled.
• Posts Layout - On the single page which designers like to style it only shows one post and the resulting comments and comment form. When on the main page several posts will be together. It’s nice to have how posts will be seperated styled too so we know exactly how it’s wanted.
• Archives and Search Layout- If archives or search is going to be used on the website then it’s nice for the coder to know how to lay it out yet again.
• 404 Pages - A 404 page you might expect the coder to also do this using styles you have used before. We aren’t telepathic though, I’d rather you showed every little detail.
• Trackbacks - A comment and a trackback are different things. They should be styled along with the comments, you shouldn’t just style the comments.

I understand that your time is precious and perhaps you don’t have the time to do all these things at the price you are charging. However if you’re quoting a price for a “wordpress theme” then don’t half ass it, raise your prices if you have to. I would gladly pay the extra money to have it done right, rather than having to deduce how to style half of the site myself.

From now on any person I hire as a designer will be referred to this little list and will be told specifically that they must have all of this designed and that if they agree to designing a theme for me for a price that I won’t pay them until all of these things are completed. So if you’re designing a wordpress theme for me or any design in general be aware that all these things matter to me and I’m sure they matter to hundreds and thousands of other coders out there.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this, which I realise is probably something most people don’t think about but it is something I think about.

As you can see I am back yet again. This site has been in limbo for ages and I can’t stand to see incomplete sites. So I’m putting up a blog which may or may not be updated regularly but it’s here for when I feel I have to talk about something. For people who are new here I’ll tell you a little about me.

About Me

My name is Mark Cole and I come from a small town in the North East of Scotland called Banff. I’m currently a student at Banff and Buchan College attending their outreach centre in Macduff. At the moment I am doing a SVQ (Scottish Vocational Qualification I believe) in Business and Administration. I have applied to take a HNC (Higher National Certificate) in Business next year. Then after that my life is unplanned.

Enough about my education I think, how about we talk about my web career. I’m a web developer who can code a multitude of languages. I love PHP and is my language of choice. I am also working on learning C++ in my spare time.

In my spare time I like to listen to music, hang out with my friends and of course mess around on the internet.

Whats coming?

On this blog I hope to maybe share some code, talk about my life and anything else I want to talk about. I’m not going to make any promises saying that I will update this blog and I’m not going to dismiss updating it either. We’ll just have to see what happens.