DannieG

Two things that annoys me a big time, one is to compete and another is to compare, I don’t like to do it to myself and I hate others to use them upon me. I like to do things my way at my pace. Never once in my life I liked the taste of compete/compare. After all, I know for sure those are elements that’s going to throwing me off track.

However, when freelancing, I have to put up with the constant competing and comparing set up by the ‘clients’. I’m talking about those clients, carelessly uses sentence like, ‘well I can just as easily find someone to do it on the internet for this amount’ or ‘I was talking with another designer the other day and he’s also rather interested in this project’ … what do you want, me to go down on my knees and beg?! I mean I really do not get it, I charge a very reasonable rate, because I know most of the people come to me doesn’t have much to offer, however don’t take my act of kindness for granted and try to squeeze more out of the impossible, why when it comes to hiring a designer people think we don’t deserve what we earn?!

oh really! you think it’s something so simple ‘just a 20mins work’ … well if it’s so easy why don’t you just design it, oh by the way while you are at it, why don’t you sew your own cloth and fix your own god damn teeth, I mean after all all these things only takes 20mins right! — oh wait, you left out the ‘by professional’ part

Design is the key to everything in life even minimalist is a form of choice, look at the history and the present, only those who values design are more successful and more advanced. Think about it. After all what is design to do, it’s fluff, it’s not a real skill, it’s something fancy and extra which the world can live without? Everyone want to know the Target’s secret? It’s easy, it filled in the hole between high end and cheap by repackage the cheapo stuff Walmart sells. So is Ikea, without design, Ikea might as well be a giant ‘Family Dollar’. Out of all of the many countries in Asia, why is Japan so advanced? because they not only value technology, they also have a strong practice in design … after all it’s not a common thing to study 4 years in color theory anywhere else in the world.

We all know this, design is important, because, when you have a project the first thing you think about is how to make it look good. If you can’t do it, like everything else in life - you hire someone that can. Then why oh why do you try to strip out the designers? what, we do not eat? we don’t rent apartments? we don’t sleep in beds? I really don’t want to hear any more of the ’someone else could’ve done it cheaper … ‘ anymore, because if that’s the case then go for it what’s stopping you, did that someone else have the same experience? oh you left that one out right. sigh, look I like to be honest with people, because I sleep really good at night, so when I tell you my rates, don’t try the compete/compare trick, I might not know alot about many things in life, but this is what I do and I’m damn good at it, so next time when you want to say something think about it, why the heck would you say something like that to someone you are going to hire, that only creates anger and distrust, and for what? a couple of dollars knocked off? wake up you are paying the bigger amount, don’t let a couple of dollars make the project come out looking average. If someone had done it to you would you smile and do your best of work? I think not.

PS: I don’t think any of my past clients are reading this, however, if you are then you don’t have to worry, not talking about you guys, I’m simply venting about those people I refused to take on their project.

This week let’s look at some helpful applications on the web, you know what they say - when you have nothing to blog about - blog about the web. Well I do have a few things to blog about, however I think starting a weekend series is a pretty fun thing to do. Anyways, this week I want to look at websites that’s useful, stuff geeks created to make our lives much much easier:

1. Amazon WindowShop, they pretty much took ‘Judge a book/album by it’s cover’ to a whole new level. I find the site to be a great place to discover new music, tho audio books are just dead boring.

2. Designate, The easy way to make decisions. Oh’boy don’t get me too excited about this site, first, love the simple yet functional design. What you do, first, type in a question, any question you feel like asking, then enter a few options for answer (up to 8), like the magaic 8 ball just hit enter and let the site make a decision for you, what’s so great, just like the real thing, you can shake the site till you get the answer ‘you want to hear’.

3. Jungle Crazy From that name you know it’s Amazon related stuff, and it is. Jungle Crazy finds all the latest best deals on Amazon for you, it’s pretty cool. However the tag clouds on the front page aren’t as helpful to sort out products, expect to spend hours on the site and end up buying a bunch of hello kitty dolls for $1 (kidding).

4. Alltop I for one, have said many times, that I really don’t like Google - Oh how they lure me into Gmail and calendar and docs. Well at least when it comes to looking up stuff, I won’t have to be confined in a Google box, Alltop is my best buddy when it comes to rss searching, basically, if you think about it, half of the stuff you search nowadays leads to a blog, so why not use a tool that’s specialized in blog searching! that way I won’t accidentally google-click on a site from the 90s (or at least designed that way, arg the horror).

5. Action Method, too many ideas not enough action? Well check out Action method, I’ve been ordering their Action Method sheets for my design projects, so for me to switch to their online tool is pretty simple, however it won’t take long for a complete newbie to learn the method, watch the video tutorial and you should be on your way to idea madness.  That said, I still like to use the Action Method sheets for wireframes, brainstorming and such.

6. Get Satisfaction that I mentioned yesterday. Alot of times we have ideas, complaints and questions about company and service we are using every single day, needless to say, to file these takes ages, just who the heck do you talk to about the complaint? well at least for now Get Satisfaction is here to help, most of the well known brands/business, has an account there, so fire away.

7. GetSignOff a pretty new service, I didn’t look much into the site after receiving their invite email, till a recent project got me involved into much web activity. So I decided to give it a try,  any designer knows that design comps. can be messy, if you don’t have a good project management software, you will end up with files everywhere, a login screen design can be filed with footer design - all because it’s uploaded on the same day - which is a headach to explain to the clients.  GetSignOff, really understands designers and the means to manage the project, the application allows you to file each revision under it’s own design, zero time spend on search through archives, just click on the current design and click again to see all of the uploaded revisions for that design, then you can wait for your client to sign off, now isn’t that just wonderful.

Alright that’s all for this week, I hope you will find some sites helpful. Next week’s theme will be different so do check back next Saturday.

After two days of working till 3am, AtlanMeer website is finally up and running. Great big thanks to wordpress theme - Futurosity Eos - without it I’d be still lost in space. And YES I’m using a blog platform to operate the whole site, once I figured out how to add template scrips the rest is easy - 3am easy.

As for the over all design I didn’t feel it needed to be so corporation like, it’s just a small side project I’m onto. However I do like it to be elegant ( I don’t mean Edwardian Script elegant ). Recent years I feel like stuck in the sans-serif curse, everything I touch turns into sans-serif, simplicity is good… to an extend, people point to google and tell me simple is what sells, and I think if every thing is designed as google-simple how boring would that be, maybe then, dying of boredom would take upon some weight.

What is missing? What am I missing, frustrated, talking to myself, trying to find out why did the design turn to this again, it’s not bad, people would def. pay for the design as it is. However, I don’t like it, something is making it so blank, like a pretty face with no personality. Then I realized that I was cursed with the touch of sans-serif. With the solution in mind, it took another day to redesign everything. The development work isn’t completely done, I’ve yet upload the magazine, nor have I contented other pages but two days straight of working till 3am, I’m pretty beat, will leave it as is for now and look into finishing up the stuff tomorrow.