Month: June 2007

28 Weeks Later

I thought this was one of the best movies I’d ever seen.
I rate a movie by how it affects me after leaving the theatre- and after this one we crept home keeping a very careful eye on our fellow pedestrians lest they suddenly start wanting to rip us apart with their bare hands.
After a few weeks the effects of movie induced paranoia have lessened somewhat but I still like to give myself a tiny thrill by imagining that person across the street is infected, just hasn’t seen me yet!

I’m very tough on movies but I do have a soft spot for zombie films. I don’t care that technically the 2 movies don’t portray “real” zombies but rather “infected” folks…the infected kind of have the same arc as a zombie,don’t they? They get turned and then they want to kill you whether or not they are a family member. Same as any zombie worth his salt would.

And can you deny the opening scene of 28 Weeks Later was not one of the most exciting, horrifying, frenetic and utterly brilliant scenes ever?

I’ve Had It

I’m going to ask my clients if they wouldn’t mind coming here to this blog and giving me some testimonials about their experiences of working with me.

I will ask them to briefly describe the collaborative process we went through,and whether they were satisfied with the finished product.

Why?

Because of this one bad apple client.
I’m getting what can only be described as looneytunes emails about how I am bitter and angry,how they were able to do business like they like(lots of work done for them and they pay for half)before they got messed up with me and my money demanding ways.

I have really had it with these folks.
I’ve had the pleasure of working on and completing 4 sites since theirs,2 of them were hardly paying one not at all,because they couldn’t afford it.I like to do work like this and balance it out with clients who can and should pay.But I cut struggling artists a break.Because I am an artist.
My very latest client is a student and I really enjoyed bringing his vision to life. I did the same thing for the bad apple which is why they quoted a price which was double what I expected.
And they have made me chase this ever since.

According to them I am the unprofessional one.I responded with what I found out that other more higher paid and better known designers have written in their blogs that they would do in my shoes:pull the site until the client pays. So I told them if I am unprofessional they should be happy because they wouldn’t at all like what a professional designer would do if they were me.

We are now in the middle of an email-a-thon because they don’t want me to have the last word! So childish.

Each time I’ve answered an email I have remained on subject,used polite language and refrained from making personal remarks(as much as I could,anyway).
And yet they keep calling me unprofessional merely because I keep asking they pay me.And when they failed to send me a check after a check bounced, I took out 2 links(I put them back later the same night because I’m a bit of a pussy).

Now I have gotten the owner’s life story because I told him he was trying to get something for nothing.
That’s professional? I never felt the need to give my life story to a client!

Designers:Really, really get it on paper,please,for me! Don’t make the mistake that I did.I totally wish I could have just let it go without needing the rest of the payment but I kind of do need that money.Otherwise…you know.

Disgusted !

I had to disable certain aspects of a website I created for a client. I have been waiting for 2 months for the final payment. I talked to a few other people in my business and they said it was common practice to do this but they usually pull the entire site not just disable a few links. I really tried to be as patient as possible but got nothing but the runaround from these guys.All my other clients have been completely businesslike and totally dreamy.

Stop it with the tables!

8 times out of ten when I commit to do a new project it’s usually an already built site that the client wants updated. Usually they think they don’t need or want a full redesign but invariably when I start reviewing the files and documents I find a rats nest of tables.I simply do not understand the designer working today who uses these outdated methods! I’m starting to think it’s sheer laziness on their part. Maybe it’s the use of outdated and discontinued designer software like Frontpage,who knows? Maybe they learned their skills in the mid ninetees when there wasn’t much use of CSS or much attention paid to standards.
I had to use tables for a job recently because the client specifically requested them.I probably could have recreated the same effect with some suave list styling and the client woulda been none the wiser.But I had given the project enough of my time and it was a last minute request and so I relented.I realised that even if I didn’t like to use them in this one particular case it was ok because it was tabular information.Tubular!

So this latest paying gig is for a site built in February 2007.Not 1997. It’s chockfull of tables and unvalidatable because there’s no doctype and even if there were there’s some crazy javascript blocking everything anyway. I had to upload a page to my own server just to make sure it was valid.
I’m very proud of myself for creating a layout for this site with CSS because it wasn’t easy to do. Each new page I have to make consists of 2-3 thumbnails on each side of one large pic. I’m fairly new to floats,I’ve only been using them for six months but I don’t know how I got along with out them. With this layout, to achieve the effect I wanted, I had to float one set of thumbnails to the right,place the large image in a margin 0 auto fixed width and fluid height div and the left set of thumbs div could just hang out. The right floated div had to go first in the source then the left thumbs div and then the center image div. I found this out just by experimenting.
This layout I designed is going to seriously help me design future sites,especially ones for e commerce because it is perfect for a catalog layout.