HTML code in Text Wrangler. Want a piece of this action?

Hello everyone who may or not be paying attention.

I know it’s been a while but I was a bit distracted by some very consuming system issues with my workstation. But that cautionary tale is a subject for another post. Seriously. Cautionary. Tale. But not now.

One of the requests that I often get from clients is that they want to know how to do simple revisions and update their web site content for themselves. Of course they are concerned in this difficult economy about paying my fair, but non-trivial designer’s rate for what might be a trivial update or minor correction. I do have a minimum quarter hour charge. Which is seriously, just about how long it takes to read the email, take the call, jot a note or two, fire up Dreamweaver or a text editor, an FTP client, log into the hosting provider’s Control Panel, upload the fix, revision or update and then log it on the timesheet. So I do see their point. Or you might just want more control of your own content.

Let me diverge for a moment, and mention that there are do-it-yourself options out there if your needs and design requirements are relatively straightforward. Many of the Hosting providers out there have relatively simple, template based, drop-in-your-content web site plans, such as GoDaddy’s “Web Site Tonight” feature. There are also services like Microsoft’s FrontPage, Apple’s iWeb, and Yahoo’s Small Business Web Sites… etc. But these ARE template based sites and they can be perfectly adequate, but they’ll look like a LOT of other sites out there without a lot of distinction.

Another approach is to construct a web presence around a blog, either through your hosting provider and your own domain, or use one of the well rounded services such as WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Live Journal and the like.

But if you’re working with someone like me, you’re probably wanting something more custom designed and distinctive in the first place; really marrying your branding and message to the site design. You might want to have more complex functionality or technology on your site. Perfectly fair, and how I make a respectable chunk of my livelihood. But you might not want to bug me about changing one paragraph in your Mission Statement, or correcting a misspelling in your bio. Or you’d like to toss up a news item, and I am off in a tent in the woods that week, or buried with other client’s projects at that moment. Hey, it could happen.

Anyway, there are three general approaches to getting into the guts of your site.

Learn Web Coding

The first is the cheapest, since it can be done with any text editor and an FTP client. That would be litreally learning enough HTML and web tech to actually edit the underlying code of your web pages and upload the changed pages back to the hosting server. As you can imagine, this does imply the heaviest learning curve. And of course, depending on just how intricate the site’s design is, getting into the designer’s code could be problematical. If you’re not careful and meticulous, its real easy to break stuff. And then you’ll be calling your Webmaster or Designer and tossing a bit more than a quarter hour for cleanups. Of course with more modern coding techniques, particularly CSS, and XML, sites can be much more modular and the site’s content and its design can be separated. This makes updates and revisions much less tedious.

Use Web Access Software

Another approach is to use an end-client piece of software that allows users to access the site from their own computers, and make their edits in a more understandable format. One example is Adobe Contribute. This application allows access to a web site, but also lets the Designer/Webmaster restrict access to parts of the site that ought to not be messed with. The application even allows users to generate new pages and links, upload images and documents, while maintaining the site design and structure. Different users can be assigned different roles and levels of access. The interface is similar to Microsoft Word, so it’s a familiar way to work and training is much simpler.

This approach is a bit more costly, as you have to buy specialty software, and it requires the Site Designer to set up the site for access. There is also some training time involved, but not as much as learning full blown web coding. A mid-line solution for moderately complex sites, and reasonably tech-comfortable users.

Use a Content Management System

For more sophisticated sites, or for dead simple access, or both, is the use of a Content Management System. Using a CMS, the end user typically has a web based interface to add or modify content on their site. The software keeps the design elements and the content separated, and the user content is stored in a database on the server. This is the most costly up-front approach, as the site has to be configured from the ground up to use the technology, and set-up is more involved than a basic HTML, XHTML and CSS, site.  All the back end software is stored on the hosting server, and all the user needs is a web browser and the access credentials. This can be a very attractive solution where there is a lot of time sensitive or dynamic content, and the site gets frequent updates.

More and more, business sites are using CMS technology and more hosting providers are offering open source Web Application Software to Web Developers and Webmasters as part of their hosting packages. It does take more than a bit of specialty skill to set up, but once in place, can be very effective and easy to maintain. The initial cost may be a bit more than a basic HTML or CSS based site, but maintenance and updates can be cheaper over time. If you have a shopping cart or an e-commerce site, this is a form of Content Management, with software running on the web server tracking buyers, products, transactions.

However, none of the above typically allow the end user to significantly revise or alter the site design or graphic style. That type of work would require the re-involvement of the Web Designer and Developers. Of course, if you had that skill set, you would BE the web Designer or Developer, and you would already know this.

Still the whole point of hiring graphic or technical professionals is to free up your time to focus on your own particular vocation or specialty, and let us do our thing for you.

Next time, losing the works.  I hope I don’t keep you waiting so long for that one, its frakkin’ crazed…

Stufz (Resources):

GoDaddy Web Site Tonight:
http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/website-builder.aspx

Microsoft FrontPage:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/default.aspx

Apple iWeb: http://www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/

Yahoo Small Business Web Sites:
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/

WordPress: http://wordpress.com/

Blogger/Blogspot : https://www.blogger.com/start

TypePad: http://www.typepad.com/

Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/

Adobe Contribute: http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/

Wikipedia: Web Content Management System:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system

Open Source Applications at Godaddy:

http://hostingconnection.godaddy.com/AllApplications.aspx

(Crikey! I’m not even sure what all this stuff does… )

Banging one out in InDesign. Yeah, I know what I'm doin'. Look! CMYK colors!

With the market shifting as rapidly as it has been in the Electronic Age – this is a question that often pops up in my dealings with clients, my colleagues, and especially potential clients.

When is it time to hire a Designer?

There was a time, it seems long ago now, when everything printed, from annual reports and catalogs, to matchbook covers and little league flyers, required the hands of creative pros – designers, draftsmen, illustrators, layout artists, darkroom technicians, typesetters, color separators, film strippers, platemakers, printers and pressmen.  But that was circa 1980, B.C. – Before Computers. In the Mid 80’s the PostScript Programming language was being developed by John Warnock of Adobe, and Steve Jobs and was developing the Apple Macintosh computers. Eventually the combination of the Macintosh, the LaserWriter II and Aldus’s ground breaking page layout program, PageMaker, changed the publishing landscape forever.

“The DTP market exploded in 1985 with the introduction in January of the Apple LaserWriter printer, and later in July with the introduction of PageMaker software from Aldus which rapidly became the DTP industry standard software.” – Wikipedia
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Publishing ]

By the 1990s, the Desktop Publishing revolution was sweeping aside traditional “drafting table” publishing. The New Tools rose up to replace T-squares, Technical pens, x-acto knifes, rubylith, designer’s markers and drafting instruments. Names like PageMaker, Quark Xpress, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Freehand became buzzwords of the profession and became the Designer’s professional tools. In the current era, Adobe’s InDesign has joined the group, becoming as prominent as Quark, perhaps more so among solo freelancers and small studios.

At the beginning of the DTP R/evolution, many publishers tried to cast aside Graphic Designers and Art Directors for High School Interns,  Sales Reps or Secretaries running Macintosh SE’s and PageMaker. The results were not pretty. The years of Very Ugly Junk Mail. After a period of… what I’ll charitably call “adjustment”, Publishers turned back to having the expertise of actual Designers at the workstations and things began to look up again.

What that largely meant is that not only have Design Professionals had to embrace the digital world, the ever increasing strength of our electronic tools has significantly tightened the number of people involved in publishing projects. Compared to the legion  of specialists mentioned above, it’s often condensed down, for better or worse, to just the Designer, the Print Vendor and the Client. The force multiplier of our software allows us to take on the tasks of the typesetter, the layout artist, the color separator, the pre-press technician.  I do very much miss proofreaders in these lean times. However, this also requires us to be much more familiar with the intricacies of  the various publishing disciplines, and a competent Designer in the Information Age is as much Art Director as craftsperson. And with the advent of the Web as a publishing platform, increasingly a technician and programmer.

But something interesting has happened going into the new century. As professional class software grew in power, features and sophistication, so has everyday “civilian” software.  Simple publishing applications began to appear, and contemporary Word Processors, notably Microsoft Word and Office, now have significant page layout capability. Combined with an almost endless availability of free or inexpensive templates, clip art and stock photos, the majority of simple publishing projects can be created by end users, and sent straight on to over-the-counter printers, even Office Depot, Staples and Kinkos. ( *cringe*) Online Print services also make a lot of “everyday” printing readily available to the do-it-yourself set. So the bottom of the market, simple to moderately complex business cards, basic letterheads and 3-panel brochures, little league fliers, the pizza place menu, is no longer territory for Design Professionals. For creative pros, the market for Print Designers and Publishing Art Directors has certainly contracted.  Forever.  I’ve been hearing the comment more and more, “why do I need you expensive, artsy prima-donnas when I can do this myself in Word?” Why indeed?

So just when, exactly, do you need us?

Quite simply, when you want to look better than that.

While it is true that there is a great deal of ordinary printing and publishing you can create in word processors and inexpensive consumer level applications, or through over the counter and online print vendors. There are times when you will want to go beyond that. For starters, what is your own time worth? I certainly don’t fancy myself a Lawyer or a Concert Pianist. The little league flyer is one thing. Your annual report, perhaps quite another. When you’ve spent two hours ftuzing about in a word processor on a business card, and still are struggling with how to get the 10-up Avery template to work. When you realize the the brilliant neon RGB green prints a color that can be charitably described as “swamp water”. When you decide that that piece of clip art looks an awful lot … like clip art. Or the stock photo isn’t quite right. Or that you can’t quite get that logo you had in mind to look quite right in Powerpoint or MS Paint.  In essence, when you want to “kick it up a notch,” to look more finished, more professional … and competitive.

That’s where people like me come in. And if we’re any good, we’re probably not cheap, but we’ll provide good value. If you hire some kid in high school or your brother in law just because they have a computer and Photoshop… well, you’ll likely get what you pay for. Believe it or not, a lot of us have training and degrees in this stuff, and have devoted a lot of time to learning our craft and how to get the most out of our professional tools. And the whole purpose of specialists is that we do have expertise in our fields, freeing you to do whatever it is you do best.

When you hire creative pros, Graphic Designers, Illustrators, Art Directors, Web Designers and Developers, you are hiring people who have made good design their career and craft.  A proper designer is not a hobbyist. A creative pro brings an extra edge of professionalism and polish, and the effective impact of good design to your projects.  We also have expertise in process and production methods, so that what we send to printers comes out looking the way we planned. We understand that there is a difference between CMYK and RGB.  We might also know a thing or two about  tasteful use of typefaces beyond Times, Arial and Comic Sans. We do not fear white space.  We know a something about how ink hits paper. Can specify process and spot color and have that red look like something a fire engine would be proud to wear. We also understand and can explain to you why you cant take that postage stamp sized image off a web site and make it into a poster. And why it’s a really really really bad idea to grab a pic from someone else’s site, especially a competitor. And in the emerging age of Information, a good designer can help you navigate your documents into the digital age.  In a future post, I plan to go into the incredible explosion in electronic publishing that we call the Internet and the World Wide Web.  But that’s a whole  ‘nother topic, and worth it’s own article. Knowing our way around the print and publishing industries, and the digital word, despite our cost, hiring a pro can actually save you money by avoiding the common production errors of the novice. And your stuff will look better.

If a lot of the previous paragraph when over your head, you might just need one of us. But when you’re ready to take it to the next level, we’re here to help you and your company look your best in print or online. And a good Design Professional will be a creative partner, not a prima-donna, and will help you make your ideas shine. This final summary thought applies to not just Graphics and Design, but to any skilled profession.

Hire the Professional, we know what we’re doing.