How to know your Web Designer Isn’t…
I’ve had the opportunity over the years to work with some real first class web designers. People like Mark Hentschel, Jill Cole and Bill Hall, just to name a few. Unfortunately, there have also been a bunch on the other side who’ve billed themselves as web designers and weren’t…so here’s a list off the warning signs that you’re dealing with a web designer who isn’t a web designer.
- The design arrives as a flat jpg image that looks like it’s covered in Vaseline.
- Colors are specified using the Pantone chart.
- Sizes are specified as Picas.
- Better yet, there’s no sizes, font info, color info or anything. They just keep saying “make it look like the picture.”
Every print designer in the world will tell you they can design for the web. The truth is, the two are vastly different. I’ve vowed that I will never again accept a job where I have to work with a non-professional web designer. Life is too short to play “swap the pixel” with a moron who’s learning on the job at my expense.
If you are a designer, and you want to get the best result, you should really consider providing at the very least:
- A layered image file in a non-lossy format (and if you don’t know what that means, get another job…)
- The sizes and font faces for every single font you expect. Sizes in a web appropriate format, please.
- The colors specified in hexadecimal or rgb format for every single color and a clear list of where they go.
Better yet, at this point, a web designer should really be able to deliver a fully functional html/javascript front end with css to which I can hook my stuff up to. That way you’re sure to get what you envisioned.
I swear, the next time I hear “maybe if we made the font a couple picas larger” I will go postal.