Examples:

“Thank you for your work, but I think I would like the logo to look like more elegant, the current one does not reflect our business”

“Great work, would it be possible to change the red colors to light green?”

“Not bad, I would like to have the home page a bit lighter it looks too dark to me.”

Question of the day: Did you get into trouble by addressing an issue impolitely to your designer?

Brief

A good website brief is half success for a your designer. Your brief should include the reason you want a website, features you would like to see, competition analysis, what you want your visitors do on your website, what other websites you like. There are more points that can be included in a good website brief but now I don’t go into it.

Wireframes

Wireframes is the documentation/drawing of the website hierarchy. It is a small-scale web design usually done by the client with a software or hand. The wireframe document should show what website element goes where, and how should they look like approximately.

Content

This is very important thing which is often submitted late by clients. Website content refers to the texts and images displayed on a website. While you can contract your designer to get content for your website it is generally not his task. Submitting the website content on time, will help your designer concentrate on his tasks and will consequently do a better job.

Feedback/Approvals

This task may sound blatant but it is also very important task of the client. Web design is not only a work for the designer but for the client as well. Because the designer is hired to create something that the client likes client must give frequent feedback and approvals when requested. Your feedback should be consequent, detailed and helpful. “I don’t like it” will not help your designer. Rather explain what you are looking for, for instance “I like the colors but the layout should be more…”. Approvals help the designer go from one stage to the other so take time and approve/disapprove the phase.

Payment

This task is often times a taboo. It is ridiculous but it happens that a client hires a web designer knowing he will not have the budget to pay. Do you go to a mechanic asking him to repair your car without the required budget? So why should this happen when you contract a web designer. He works for that money, pay him on time.

Research

A good website design and development process always starts with thorough research. Research will help the web designer see the style and quality of the competition, get insight of the given industry, get know best website practices and worst website practices and more. So research is a very important process that gives a solid base for any next steps.

Sketches/brainstorming

After the initial research, studying the wireframes and brief the web designer should spend some time brainstorming and drawing sketches. This process will help him record the findings of the research and will help him pre-design the website.

Web design

Now the time has come to put together the visual concept of the website which will serve as the first representation of the web designer’s work. The graphics should express the brief, wireframes and the research in a very intuitive way.

Front end web development

Web developers now will code the web design concept to HTML, CSS and Javascript code that can be understood and rendered by the web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari). The front end developer must make his best to supply a W3C (web standard) code that can be understood by different web browsers the same way. This is called cross-browser compliance.

Back end web development

The back end web developer will code the invisible but very important elements of the website such as databases, Content Management Systems (CMS), calculations on which the website runs.

Testing

After the website is ready the process is not yet ended. Now comes the testing phase which will finalize the process of creating a website. Tests shall be run for user behavior, web standard compliance, broken links. and errors. Only then a website design design project is thoroughly finished.

Have your web guy explained this to you? Did he followed these steps?

Front end web development

Front end web development is part of the web development process. Front end development is web programming (coding) the visual “front” of the website. This visible element of the website is responsible for what you see, graphics, layout, fonts etc. Most used programming languages for this development phase of a website are HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Back end web development

Back end web development is part of the web development process. Back end development is web programming (coding) the invisible “back” of the website. This invisible element of the website is responsible for database actions, registration, upload, calculations etc. Most used programming languages for this development phase of a website are PHP, ASP, C+.

Have your web guy explained this to you?

Web Design

The term web design usually refers to the creation of  the preliminary graphical concept of a website. Usually design agencies have different people for this role. This preliminary graphic concept is usually created in Adobe Photoshop, or other graphic design program. So web design is basically graphic design for the web, or graphic design for a website.

When a web design version is ready it is sent to the client for approval. Once the version of the web design is approved it goes to the web development team for coding/web programing the website according to the graphic concept.

Web design oftentimes refer to the whole process of creating a website. This use of the term can be confusing although widely accepted.

Web Development

The term web development usually refers to the process of turning web design (graphic concept) to a website. This process is done by web programming with a given web programming language. Web programming languages varies from HTML, CSS, PHP,  MySQL, jQuery, JavaScript, ASP.NET, C+ etc. Usually design agencies have different people for this role.

Web development can also refer to redesign or revamp of an existing website. This use of the term can be confusing although widely accepted.

Have your web guy explained this to you?

Apple also knows how to do great products people crave.

Is your website so great that people crave it?

- It devalues their profession
- Payment is not guaranteed
- It is waste of time if they do not win

If you disagree with this please let us know what is your profession and if you enjoy working for free. Thanks.

Logo design contests are managed and organized by a third party website. So the customer can be rest assured that a bigger and trusted institution is backing him.

There are many talented upcoming designers so the quality of the contest is guaranteed.

Since the customer have to pay less since he pays only once for his logo (he does not have to contact several designers after one does a bad job).

So there are real reasons why customers like design contests.

What do you think of customers who get their logo designed at a contest?

The reason is that there are so many people pretending to be web designers, logo designers etc that the market is totally full. For 1 new website request 12-20 freelancer/company is competing. This is over the margins.

Second reason is that people are not thoroughly educated about digital design processes. Most of the people think that it is just “some clicks” and it is so easy that it can be done next to watching TV.

The third reason is that some web designers/logo designers broke the rules and worked for free or for very low prices. This in return set the average price for this service lower then what it worths.

Please let us not break the rules any longer and get back the prestige of this devalued but beautiful profession.

What do you think of logo contests?