What makes a good designer? There's his brilliant use of cutting edge technology, his limitless creativity, and of course the special techniques he developed working in the dungeons for others before furtively escaping to freedom - his piece de resistance - his very own online web presence. Then of course there's his witty repartee used to impart his personal philosophy about his unrivaled designs, which of course leads us to his client list (supposing he offers one) and finally his portfolio of perfection - each thumbnail linked perfectly to the full-scale masterpiece. Right?
OK - well maybe that's a little much. Regardless, those are in fact some of the elements we're looking for when we search for a designer. Sometimes, however, we find a designer that seems to be just what we want, yet as we progress page by page on their site we are struck by the notion they are not as "together" as they first seemed. At first glance they look good, and then the axe starts to fall as we realize there are some definite flaws in what seemed an otherwise pretty cool site. We wonder if the work they do for us will also contain these same errors; if we contact them to fix something will they hop to and do it immediately or let it linger ad infinitum since they never bothered fixing these errors on their own pages? Ultimately, we run screaming the other direction not wanting to hire the cool designer lacking the attention to detail and instead hire someone who seems dependable and responsible, even if their designs don't seem as awe-inspiring. A fatal flaw of designers finds them getting so into the design process and the works of art they might create for others they fail to recognize the flaws in their own site.
The following is a brief look at 4 different studios that appear acceptable on the surface but have definite flaws that might well drive away potential clients.
Tranquil Blue Studios
The Home Page loads and looks nice with no obvious major flaws. However, the minute you click on the About page "philosophy of Blue" grammatical mistakes start to appear. There are subtle flaws like this throughout the site, giving me unease in the thought of hiring them. Overall, the site is cohesive in appearance, but has some other flaws, such as the Web Hosting page being red when all other pages are some form of blue.
Level Ten Interactive
Considering their client list, their own site is fairly uninspired; there's no real feel for what they can do. The overall color scheme is fine and "fine" is the bored sort of feeling which I carry with me as I walk away. Their links are not always clear which is a definite problem - Portfolio links give you access to the work they've done, however, if you start with their client list, it gets confusing quickly. You can't access the sites they've designed in this section; similarly, if you're in the "Success Stories" area, and you want to see the success story's site (i.e. Monarch Air), by looking at the page you might think you can click on the rollover link at the top of each story to link out to it, however, all that happens is you get thrown into a shortened version of the success story, and clicking on Home takes you to Level Ten design's Home Page.
Flashlevel Digital Laboratories
This is a visually appealing site and grammatically sound. The music fits well with neutral/blue tones of the site. The constantly moving graphic in the top left corner ended up making me dizzy and mildly nauseous, however, so instead of demonstrating a cool piece of work, my impression of it was irritation for having to put up with it while I tried to find the information I wanted, such as a client list. They do not provide much information about themselves, and there is no client list as such. You have to click on each project individually, which contains no text, to see the mini-version and then click again to link out to the client site. It's definitely visually appealing, but in the end there's a lot of work for the potential client to do to simply try and gain some basic information.
One final thing to note is that the bottom right-hand corner of the page "Talk to Flashlevel" is a little misleading. It looks like you ought to be able to click on it instead of having to glance further down to choose the email button, the contact button etc. Finally, their Recent Events section is not all that recent, which almost suggests they don't update their own site all that often or they have no recent events. My thought? It's better to leave a section like that out altogether than put only a thing or two in. Expand the areas that are your strong areas and minimize the focus on areas you are not currently proliferating.
ALL MEDIA STUDIOS
My favorite site of the 20-30 I viewed was this one. The intro page suggests some of the talent they possess, it's well unified and cohesive in structure, color and feel. The music is well chosen and also speaks to their talents since one of the 4 "Corporate Members" wrote it.
Right off the bat, however, they've got a problem because the 2 links in the upper right corner on the Home Page do not work. The affiliate links do not all work either, though by rolling over them they all act the same so the assumption is they shouold all work.
The Portfolio, on the other hand, opens well and immediately gives you a Client List although you can't click on any of the clients to link to their sites. If you click into each of the sub-fields, however, such as websites, you can view a bit about each and click on the link to go to the site itself.
They provide enough info about their company and each of the 4 main partners to let you know who they are in a nutshell and to have an idea of their talents and who the driving force is between each.
Bottom line? It's your bottom line as a designer not to mention your reputation that can be severely affected by errors such as those mentioned above. It is drilled into us all the way through school "Attention to detail is everything!" so why would we ever think of building our own site, our online "face" as anything less than perfect?
There are actually entire companies that focus on helping web designers "proofread" their sites, from the coding to the actual text. Following is a list of some of these online resources:
http://bestfoot.com/
http://www.alphabetix.net/
http://www.shellyrosenberg.com/editing-proofreading-for-website-designers.htm
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