jockturner.com

Just found First Class Web Design has reached 3rd in Google (for ‘First Class’). I’m delighted!

Yes, the tight calf, sore heel, twisted ankle etc etc- it’s all a distant memory. The legs are feeling good, my fitness is better than ever and I’m feeling good!

I’m still not running too far with the runs averaging about 10k at the moment but I’ve got the rucksack on and I’m running over pretty rough ground – that’s got to count for something surely? Anyway, I’ve got a pretty good regime at the moment whereby I’m training every other day and rowing on my ‘rest’ days! This helps my overall fitness and gives my legs a breather – well the running muscles get a break while the rowing ones take over – you know what I mean!

I’ve even moved the office out of the spare room/gym today to get the rower set up permanently again – it is a bit of a pain setting it up every time. So now I can just hop on whenever I want – within reason. I’ve had a great idea for next year where if I can afford it I’m going to buy a log cabin/summerhouse and knock down our old shed. That way I can move the rower into the cabin and install some sounds and vision possibly. Then I can go out and row to my hearts content – maybe Zoe will put a futon out there and encourage me to sleep out there too!

Anyway, better get off to bed as I have another busy day ahead tomorrow. Got to nip to the doctors first thing and were having our new vinyl (posh lino) laid in the kitchen and I need to be around to shift the white stuff. Should be smashing when it’s all down. Looking forward to Wednesday when the new NMMC website finally goes live – well that’s the plan anyway. Can finally invoice them for the work – this has been a long term project of 2 years!

Oh also went out for a meal last night with Steve and his partner Karen – Food for Thought in Fowey. Really lovely meal and company. I think we’ve found some new friends! Steve has offered another flying trip in the week – weather permitting – this time off to the Scillies. Might try and take Thursday off providing I don’t have any meetings.

Just before I go, managed to bag a great domain name at the weekend – www.websitesandbeyond.co.uk! I’m thinking of renaming the company again as I think this captures the spirit of what I do and my humour – also conjures up some great images for a logo although I haven’t even thought that far ahead yet! Better get the Twitter and Facebook pages bagged before they go.

TTFN

Thanks to Steve Chopper at ‘A Mile with Me‘ for putting me on to this one. Thougt I would embed the video as Zach liked it and I wanted to be able to find it again quickly if I needed to:

OK, let me rephrase that slightly – Should (freelance) web designers spend vast amounts of time worrying about the design of a new website? I’m probably being a bit controversial by saying that but give me a chance to explain…

Quite a few years ago, before the web really took off, people started to use computers to help them to design things that had normally been done by hand. I’ve seen the transition (yes I really am that old!) from paper based artwork created by old school graphic designers to computer based artwork that a new breed of graphic designers (let’s call them new school?) called original design. Now don’t get me wrong, I love computers, I surround myself by them every day in my full-time job and by night for recreation and through my freelance work. However, something began to disappear back then (mid 90s) and slowly but surely over the years it’s been getting weaker and weaker – let’s call it the ‘originality spark’.

Now before you start to huff and puff because you are a ‘new school’ graphic designer (maybe you call yourself a web designer like I do), just stop and think about the last time you truly created something new and original….where did you get the inspiration? Oh yes, you got your inspiration from all around you, from nature, from non online sources or maybe, just possibly, you spent a teeny weeny bit of your time browsing ‘cool website lists’ or Smashing Magazines never ending lists of top 10 great this or that (great site by the way!) – the point I’m trying to make is we are all guilty of being lazy designers – given half the chance, or to put it another way, if a design template has been already been created that fits our need, why spend time creating a new design from scratch?

Am I saying that there is no place for new design on the web? No, of course not! New design trends are like new fashions they need to happen, they must happen. Notice though I said ‘design trends’. What changes? Instead of drop shadows we use gradients. Instead of gradients we use rounded edges. Instead of rounded edges we use square edges, plain colours and lots of white space etc. What next, triangles instead of squares, black and white replacing colour – you get the point.

Design evolves, always has done, but it doesn’t change. There are great people out there who spend ridiculous amounts of time creating fantastic ‘solutions’ for any given situation whether it’s an e-commerce template, a blogging template, a business template, a charity site template a university template, the list goes on, and on and on.

There are literally thousands of designs and templates out there, many free, and some cheap enough to use without feeling guilty and saving yourself a lot of time and effort. Your clients are happy, they have a great looking professional (trendy) website. Your happy, you’ve saved loads of time and got a pretty good looking site, you’ve spent lots of time coding it, customising it, linking it into a CMS etc so why feel guilty about charging for ‘design time’. Let’s face it as a freelancer if you charged every hour that you actually spent on that project you would never get any work! Finally, the original template designer is happy, if enough people pay him/her a few dollars for their template it’s been worth their time. So everyone’s a winner.

OK, ok, what’s my point! My point is that you can call yourself a web designer without having to design. You don’t have to create something from nothing. In my opinion you are better off spending what little time you have bookmarking great design templates than worrying about new designs. Let the design companies design and let ‘web designers’ do what they do best – create websites that our clients love and we are proud of – even if we didn’t really design it!

So I’ve made my point. If anyone happens to read this, and you are a designer (old or new school) or just have an opinion, comments would be welcome.

Just a quick post to mark the momentous day when I finally launched my business website – www.firstclasswebdesign.co.uk

I know it’s been a long time coming but it’s only right and proper that I now separate my personal blog with my professional work. It also gives me a great excuse to work on something new and hone my online marketing skills and see how long it takes me to get noticed on Google. I have a few SEO tricks up my sleeve plus I’ll probably be using some tried and tested methods too so watch this space – or rather, watch Google and see how we get on.

read on…