5 Mistakes New Web Designers Make

Posted on February 16, 2007
Filed Under Design |

The difference is in the details.

I admire anyone willing to take the plunge in business and set out to achieve their goals and dreams often with little more than a single wing and a prayer. Many of my Photoshop students, fresh out of school frequently find themselves in risky situations in web design that can easily be avoided by simply understanding a small inventory of fundamentals. Simple things to remember what to and what not to do. We all know that solid fundamentals regardless of application really never die, they last in spite of change or advances in technology sort of like a trusty ole axes in a forest full of chain saws. So what are these mistakes web designers frequently make?

1) Tragically Ugly Web Designer Sites

Its difficult for anyone to pass themselves off as a serious web designer while brandishing an ugly web site featuring an even worse looking portfolio yet we encounter this on a daily basis.

The old cliche that beauty is on the inside is really just something ugly people say that makes no sense in the real world. Image is absolutely everything! And in a visual designers world, creating visually impressive and intuitive designs is paramount to their success. So the first order of business should be a good quality design. Naturally, starting out, this does not need to be the best in the industry but it should be a great deal better than a single white page with centered text, annoying stock animations and multi colored inline text styling. There are enough clean looking blog templates to use if just starting out to leave little room for excuse.

2) Competing with India and Pakistan “You Can’t do it!”

If it wasn’t for the importance of number one this would take its place in a heart beat because its my personal pet peeve. Every single student, web designer, or associate I’ve encountered has at some point tried to price their services as if they live with super humble needs and work from a computer in a public coffee shop in India. The plain hard truth is that competing in midst of bidding wars against those that have living costs well below your own will eventually put you out of business.

I’ve witnessed the mistake of this potentially vicious cycle of under bidding jobs that so many web designers get sucked into. It starts out fine with a few jobs for a few hundred bucks in your pocket right up until you cant pay the bills and you take on more of these tiny paying jobs until you are so swamped you cant dig out from under your work load. Over extended, over worked, and in a dangerous legal position resulting from a seemingly innocent compromise.

Its tough, especially for new designers breaking into the freelance market trying to establish themselves. I could go into great detail on this but rather than expand further and risk sounding biased toward some nations I’ll just say that designers should keep in mind two important statements that resonate with enough truth that they should put things into perspective. “You get what you pay for” and “Those that pay the least scream the loudest” Dont try to complete with the $50 projects if you ever expect to be taken seriously.

3) Ummm, All your work looks the same

Over time designers portfolios start to look like carbon copies of previous works usually a result of using the same old stock images again and again on projects. If a designers pattern for design follows the same in use of stock images, then over time it will be difficult to conjure up inspiration and innovation ultimately resulting in design quality becomes stagnant. This happens so often that some designers portfolios begin to look like template collections even though a valid and deliberate effort went into the project.

Now, understand, in some situations this is acceptable as I had worked for template design houses for years before freelancing and even now a large portion of my new designs goes to a Real Estate service provide who will market the designs with alternate color schemes and minor feature changes. I often encourage students to build an inventory of things like navigation elements or contact forms and validation scripts that they may end up using on nearly all projects. This is fine and should be encouraged. However! #2 could play a commanding roll in your design motivation if you market your services for pocket change.

Competition in design is much the same as it is in any business. Examine and explore your competitions work and draw inspiration from what most impresses you. I teach all my students that Photoshop can make quick work of some very common tasks, making conceptualizing new designs a breeze “But the difference is in the details” and its the difference and quality that serious buyers pay you for.

4) Meeting of the minds.

It happens all the time, designers get hired for one thing yet expected to do another. There is an old saying, "If it isn’t agreed upon, its assumed" and assumption is costly. Many new designers encounter projects where they may be hired to design a template yet the client expects template design to mean web design, as in the whole package, features, functions and free, or nearly so.

Its the designers responsibility to let clients know that there is a difference between such things like template design and web design. I’m a template designer that does web design and its known before we ever start that I’m either doing one or the other or I’m being hired for both. If its just a template that is designed and coded to fit a particular setup then that is clearly a template design.

Rather than go into great depth on this since I’ll be covering the subject in subsequent articles, its important to just keep in mind that working for a check list of mutually agreed expectations is fundamental. I keep two check lists in most projects. One for my standard design procedure which includes simple things like creating the custom error pages, htaccess, robots and favicon to more lofty steps such as exporting my work in formats the client can use. The second list is the actual tasks agreed upon and this one will keep you out of hot water.

5) Pending…..

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