DISCLAIMER: I wrote this article with small businesses in mind. I tried to be as polite as possible in my suggestions, but upon re-reading I think that some may get the impression that I am expecting too much. I think it should be made clear that no web designer should expect you to have all of these steps completed upon your first meeting. I think that you and your designer will both be much happier if you do, though.
Sometimes I’ll be at a meeting with a potential client and I will think to myself: “Wow, this would be a lot easier if they had just thought of this and this and that before we met.” But this isn’t fair to you, the client. You’ve inquired about our business because we’ve got a little more experience than your accountant’s nephew. We’re supposed to be the ones who know how all of this works. And nobody has bothered to tell you what you should know before meeting with a couple of computer nerds who may hold your company’s future in their hands.
Considering how important your web presence is to your business, your designer should be responsible for preparing for and explaining all of the work that goes into it. But there are a few things that you can do to make that first meeting a lot less confusing and probably a lot shorter.
1. Familiarize yourself with the world of web design.
This will make the entire process of developing your site a lot easier on both parties. You don’t have to take out any books about HTML or Flash, but know the difference between a “page” and a “site.” Know what a “header” and “footer” should contain. Know what a “domain” is and what a “URL” is. Know what a “navigation bar” refers to and what “hover” means.
Try to pay more attention to the layout of the websites that you, personally, like to browse in your free time. Think about the fonts used, the placement of the graphics, and the colors. When talking to your designer you should try to be as specific as possible. Rather than asking them to simply “make it look cooler,” you should tell them that you want the spacing to be tighter, or that you’d prefer a different font.
Try to be as up-to-date with web terminology as possible. This doesn’t include studying any coding or graphic design terms, but you should be able to explain what you want without using too many hand gestures. read more…
I told you they were coming very soon. You can now see multiple views of most of the artwork in our Portfolio.
Some of my favorite things are:
The 4-page ‘Skate Brasil’ print campaign.
A detailed view of Asa Dawson’s illustrated vomit.
Pictures of pretty girlies wearing the Byeline Clothing Winter 08 Line.
The fact that the whole thing is actually working.
read more…
Unless you’re a regular visitor at ByelineDesign.com (hey, they exist!) you may not have noticed our handy dropdown menus that we’ve thrown in the header to make navigating the portfolio just a little easier. That was kid stuff compared to the changes we’re about to roll out on every portfolio page. read more…
We at Byeline Design fully subscribe to the “LOCK IN!” philosophy.
So inspirational and so real at the same time… How does Diddy do it? read more…
(UPDATE: This has gotten way out of hand… go to the site and look for news links, radio interviews, and KKK-related team names.)
It’s 4:30 in the morning and me and Cole just spent the past 5 hours working with a local blogger to make this site:
http://www.normalcoalbears.com read more…
What an exhausting week. On Tuesday we had nothing but a broken version of the “Apparel” Portfolio page. Last night, at 11:47pm I started uploading the finished files. The index page went up about 13 seconds after midnight. Everybody refreshed their browser and… the countdown page was still there? Turns out GoDaddy has (more than) a couple issues with hosting. This is something we all knew going into the launch, but we didn’t think it would have an affect on our site. read more…
Thanks for checking out our new website. We’ve been hard at work for the past couple of months putting together our portfolio and getting everything just right for the big day that we launch the site. There are still a couple of bugs that need to be worked out, but we hope you had a good time checking out our work and learning about what we do.
I’m Lawrence. I do most of the behind-the-scenes web work at Byeline and I’ll probably be updating the blog most often. If Dylan and Cole ever take a break from being artistic types (it happens) then you’ll hear from them, too. Hopefully you’ll keep coming back and checking out the progress of our business. Here are a few other things you can expect to see in the blog:
Tutorials!
Picture series of Cole eating things!
Information about Byeline events!
Updates that were a few dozen characters too long for Twitter!
An inside look at the process of starting a (very) small business!
And probably a whole lot more. Stay tuned, follow us on Twitter, and keep it real. Happy Launch Day!
