Often the topic of starting a “great” web business comes up, and in my age and wisdom (being both old to be a freelance web programmer, and one of a minority of women in the field) — there’s two ways to go: thinking “in” the box = come up with new brilliant technology, patent it and hire people to program it better and faster than anyone else can so you can quickly market it. If it climbs to the top before it is cloned you become the next target for people trying to out-do your website. This track is getting VERY old, VERY fast. Mainly you and your absolute best friend need to be programmers to do this (think Microsoft, Google…) because you can’t trust anyone with your terrific idea. Also it has to be so ground-breaking that only the best (read: smartest, wise, long-range thinking) of venture capitalists will see the end of the rainbow where the pot of gold sits. If it is easy to get the funding for your idea, someone probably is making it already.

Thinking “out” of the box = coming up with a way to use normal everyday technology to do something that fills — rather than creates — a real need or niche. It’s cheaper, faster, and if it really IS filling a need, it’s going to spread by word-of-mouth, and it won’t be “just a fad”. This technique aims lower and comes in under the radar — no billion dollar baby here — but it’s safer, less stressful, and you don’t have to be a programmer, generally speaking. The programmer is unlikely to run off with your baby if it doesn’t look like a “google killer”.

The problem is that great ideas are easy — the means to really make them work is the harder part (invention = 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration). I’m frustrated with people who want to “share” the rewards of their great web program idea (equity sharing) of up to 50%, but won’t be doing any of the actual work to make it hang together and be practical. If someone comes to me with a truly great idea (and I have NDA’s if they don’t), I can find them a great programming team, but the team will probably want cash on delivery, not equity. More “google killers” die every day than make it. They’re not original ideas, and if a site dies before it makes money, there’s no equity and it’s a huge waste of the programmer’s time.

Imagine that someone turned to you and said, “I have a great idea for a newspaper! I’ll give you the ideas, you develop the newspaper and run it, staff it, write for it, etc. I’ll give you 50%.” That approach frustrates me. People don’t get it. I can translate it to dozens of other fields — “I have a great plan for a house, you just have to build it. Then you can live on the top floor, and I’ll live downstairs. Ok?”

Somewhere in there people are cheapening the act of programming. After all, it’s just bits and bytes, right???

The Internet mimics life in a “survival of the fittest” way. I don’t pretend to know what’s “cool” or “hot” anymore — I work with “useful” I won’t get rich but that wasn’t in my personal game plan. I have my own great or good ideas, some might make me money, some won’t but will look really good on my resume.

Then there’s the flip side of this: If you’re not the head of the programming team and you’ve paid someone to build the google killer — what if it works? Now you have to program new features, fix bugs, etc. You either need to re-hire the same team, or get a programming staff. You go on Craigslist and choose the person who claims somehow to be able to fulfill your great Internet dream, but if you have this beautiful web baby together, are you really ready for that long-term commitment with a total dweeb with no business sense?

I can’t wait to be so busy with people I’ve looked in the eye and shaken the hands of that I can’t afford to even GLANCE at another Craigslist ad. I love my clients dearly, but you don’t know how rare it was that the people I dealt with BECAME clients at all. I certainly wouldn’t want to become business partners with some guy with the “next killer app” idea and had to actually look on Craigslist for a programmer. So wait — your only experience is the front end of websites as a user, and you think you can somehow manage a killer web application programming team? That’s an incredibly poor business move and you’ll get laughed out of the bank. And you want the programmer to work for nothing but equity? That’s spec work.

That brings me to another thing: Have you ever had one of those managers who knows absolutely nothing about what you do? It happens in IT all the time, but much less so in other professions. BUT if you’ve ever heard a nurse bitch that someone “stepped in” as the head of the nursing staff from a business-only background, you might get the idea. In most large corps — and this is a place where Microsoft does NOT get bad rankings — the heads of the corporation have NO IDEA how to produce their main products…much less have a clue what their IT department does sitting at their computers all day.

It’s never a good idea to manage something you don’t understand. Ever.

On that note, are you interested in a basic web programming class?

I’m personally and professionaly one of the NO!SPEC rebels. I believe that professionals should not hand out creatives (work, sketches, anything that takes substantial time or could be stolen and produced by any kid with an art program) for any client’s job without being under contract to be paid for the work, deposits or down payments optional. This extends to contest work, where dozens of designers are invited to submit finished works in the hope that they will be picked out as the one good enough for the reward.

I’ve been reading and commenting on NO!SPEC articles for a couple months, and now I come across an interesting post on Craigslist:

Date: 2006-07-12

Carnegie Hall Seeks Original Art for Its Playbill Covers!

THEME “Music as a fundamental expression of the human spirit”–using Carnegie Hall’s 2006-2007 season as inspiration. Please visit carnegiehall.org/subscribe for complete season details.

ELIGIBILITY Open to all enrolled students (valid identification required)

STYLE AND MEDIUM Any style and any medium, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and computer-generated art

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS jpeg, tiff, or pdf digital format only; file size not to exceed 2 mb; e-mail to artcontest@carnegiehall.org

PRIZES Each of 10 selected entrants will receive $500 and 2 tickets to a performance at Carnegie Hall.

Deadline: August 31, 2006

Selected artists must be living, reside in the United States, provide their Social Security numbers, and sign a release for the use of their work.Winning works will appear on the covers of Carnegie Hall’s concert program books throughout the 2006-2007 season. Please note that while we encourage all forms of artistic expression, some controversial subject matter may not be suitable for publication. Submissions should not be literal representations of musicians appearing at Carnegie Hall. Also note that while artists will retain ownership of their original works, the photographic representation of each winning work will be considered a work made for hire for The Carnegie Hall Corporation (CHC), and CHC will own all copyrights and other rights in it, including, without limitation, the exclusive right to adapt it and to use it for any purpose and in any medium now known or devised in the future, perpetually and throughout the world.

no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: $500 and 2 tickets to a performance at Carnegie Hall

This contest is of course a contest. Carnegie Hall is looking for dozens of people to pour their time into a project, and looking to reward someone and use their work. Only this time there are some key differences. It’s open to students only; not many speculative work contests are only open to valid students. There are 10 prizes — that certainly increases the chances of winning, and means that it’s less likely that there will have been ties for first place and the winner chosen by the flip of a coin. Knowing PlayBills, it’s possible there will be 10 covers printed, and all the winners’ pieces distributed to a very mixed audience (and making a terrific portfolio piece). The prize is pretty fair — they’re giving out a total of $5000 to 10 students — and how many students couldn’t use $500?

Other interesting things to note: It’s mixed media, and there aren’t many chances for students to get that type of money for a media of their choice. It’s not a venue where the student would be needed for branding advice, or future support, unlike logo or website design contests — they need 10 single photos/pictures to print for the program book covers. The work produced by the entrants would be able to be generic and useful for other purposes (unlike a logo or web design).

I’m not saying it’s a good contest; I find it difficult to judge this one. What I am saying is that of the contests I’ve seen, this one is different, more fair, unlikely to hurt Carnegie Hall in the way that most speculative contests I have seen are eventually going to bite the company holding the contest.

Would anyone care to comment on it?

[tags]activism, spec work, competition, rant, time[/tags]

Myrna, a massage therapist of 20 years, finally has a website after years of rejecting the typical website-for-massage-therapist templates always being pushed onto her industry.

Myrna is a tough-as-nails massage therapist, very straightforward and to the point. At the same time, she is an attentive listener, and flexible in her massage style. She has 20 years of professional massage experience, specializing in therapeutic massage for a variety of health ailments, and wanted a website that was a blend of medical, sports and that touch of down-to-earth holism that she has without being at all fluffy.

personalcarebymyrna.com, designed by Eclectic Tech and hosted by Archutech Consulting, is a wiki. Myrna has the password, and I bet she’s not sharing! All the content on the site is by Myrna.

Case Study
[tags]new site, new client, holistic, massage[/tags]

I have the pleasure of being a member of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce (I really need to put a member logo up to that effect), and as part of their membership drive I get to include a letter-sized flyer in a mailing.

I opted for the July mailing, since I have a couple ads coming out in June, and I want to see what impact they have. Also, I wanted the June 15 deadline to get them the flyer. Brainstorming and printing up 3000 flyers is no joke.

I’ve opted for 100% post-consumer paper, and I’m on the third laser cartridge (if anyone knows of soy-ink laser cartridges, I want to know! Now!).

Why the brainstorming? Boy, I’m so glad you asked!

You see, most of the flyers that come in the mailers are typical. Boring. Dry. Unimaginative. I’m a designer, a creative spirit — and adding to the boredom in the world is counter to my Declaration of Don’t Waste My Time. Boring flyers destined for the round (or *cross-fingers* recycle) bin and tantamount to spam. To environmental waste. I’ve come up with a unique idea, and unlike most people I’m going to use both sides of the paper (novel, isn’t it?). I’m making sure it has as low an environmental impact as I can muster on my low-budget-advertising strings. This chamber mailer is sent out monthly with other fliers anyway, via snail mail that gets delivered daily anyway. No extra envelopes needed. The recycled paper helps too, though I would prefer renewable treeless, denim, soy ink, etc. I just can’t afford the printing costs, and if I print at an environmental printer’s there’s delivery costs, the truck to my place — the extra pollution-per-mile of delivery.

I put a plea on the paper, right next to the recycle symbol, asking people who don’t need it to pass it on to someone else. The box of 3000 pages is rather large. Did I mention 3 laser ink cartridges? I hate to think of all my effort going to the waste basket.

I also don’t think any other company put as many man-hours into designing their flyers as I have. I’ve already put about 50+ hours into it. Creativity has a price. But now that I’m done, it is also be a viable stand-alone flyer for private mailers. It also has the potential (with a smidgeon of effort from me, I did my retouching on the greyscale images) to be printed in 4 color glossy (and look great!) eventually, but this time I think it will just be a laser print. I doubt a 4 color printer with sufficient ink for 3000 flyers is in my near future, and 4 color environmentally sound printing isn’t in my near future either.

I have preview images for y’all on my inhouse portfolio page.

Enjoy!

[tags]ads, design, print design, comic, creative, recycled paper, inhouse ads, 3D art, rendering, Chamber, portfolio[/tags]

Today I completed and sent out the third round of revisions for Oxelot’s corporate identity. I’ve added round four samples to the Oxelot case study page in my portfolio. Amazingly, I’ve already heard something back from the client

[tags]new client, design, logo, identity, portfolio[/tags]

I have been working on a website redesign. It seems that creating a site design that is open and uncluttered does not sell my services. When creating my design, I thought I was expressing my preferences for information delivery over dazzle. And some people have responded to the design very positively, enjoying the fact that it is subdued and unpretentious.

Others, however, are uninterested in clarity and an uncluttered look. That 15 seconds (or less) that I have to capture their attention fails.

I want the audience that inherently understands that my design preference for my site does not dictate how I design sites for other people and other purposes. At the same time, I have to redevelop my own site, because it needs to be repurposed. During the initial design, I was not selling as hard as I am now, so my site was mainly informative. Now, my site must be geared towards self-promotion rather than discussion.

So, I will be rolling out a new design and perhaps some new content soon. The design is already in the works. I have decided on something fancier but with some of the same elements.

A rhetorical rant for those who would never get so far as to read my news: Why on earth would my site be a representation of what your site would look like? You have a different audience, different philosophy, different projections, different goals. Part of what I try to do while I work for you is become enmeshed with the energies of the organization I am designing to represent. I ask for intricate details about you and your goals, the history and the fabric of the entity I am working to represent, and I use those as the clay from which I sculpt the work I bring to you. The more accurately you portray yourself, your organization, and your target market, the more fitting the results should be. My site is not a cookie cutter.

Simple, instantly recognizable features are shown over and over to be preferable in web design. Sites that are cluttered, or have many distractions, are not instantly appealing to people; they have to have formed a good impression of the company before ever seeing the website to have a favorable view of the company. Here are the features that constitute a good web design:

• the site must be findable by those who seek it (cf search engine crawlers should find it, the web address should be in print ads, in the phone book, in TV or Radio ads, the domain name must be as short as feasible but easy to remember)
• the site is usable for both the company, its employees, and its visitors
• careful consideration to navigation, and the names in the headings
• simple drawings are used rather than photographs
• pages are read (by English language readers) from the top left to right, down the page
• there are established rules for color coordination and contrast that designers are trained in, and the stable web color palate is limited
• emotional and cultural impressions of colors should be considered

When designers are pushing designs that are non-standard, you can be assured that your website visitors will be confused. If navigation is hidden or in a different-than-usual place on the screen, or labeled in an obscure or arbitrary manner, your customers will quickly be frustrated in their attempts to find the information they need to make decisions regarding your company. If your site looks like something that might win awards, you might get some extra traffic when the awards are announced, but you’re doing far more for the designer than for your business — how many customers will come from the award announcement sites, ready and willing to buy your products? It’s more likely that other designers and design firms are looking at your site to add to their repertoire of ideas to sell to other companies.

Having competition is nice. It challenges me to new levels of activity and knowledge in my industry. Unfortunately when it comes to search engine optimization — everyone who says they DO, or CAN is making sites that AREN’T. I started a short series of consumer-education articles for SEO. If you want to know MORE about how to tell if a graphics/web firm is really creating SEO sites, follow my hints on THEIR companies and their portfolio work. If you want to know whether YOUR SEO firm has done their job — follow the hints on YOUR website.

My instincts for design have served me right. Research proves that people make snap decisions about websites, and studies show that flashy websites are NOT the “way to go” — while they amuse the designers and bulid a terrific portfolio, and they make the purchaser FEEL like they’re getting their money’s worth, good websites are really all about content, communication, information, community and how to get that across to the visitor. ASAP!