Tales of a Designer

Getting Your Pitch Down

Knowing how to describe what you do can be fairly simple, even to people who don’t really understand the internet. I’ve gotten pretty good at doing that and almost have a little routine down for when the question arises again. But then there is the other side of the fence where having to explain your worth to a person who does understand the internet. In other words, there is a question that I have stumbled across once or twice that I’m trying to get better at nailing…

Why should we choose you to design/develop a website for us?

At first I really hated this hearing this question. I’m sure, in my rookie days, I lost a few [potential] clients because I stuttered way more than normal in a business situation. That doesn’t show confidence at all.

I can’t say that I still hate hearing that question, but it’s something that I’m still working on getting better at. Whenever you listen to successful business people, they have no problem telling you why you should choose them over a competitor. Freelance designers/developers should be the same way because every one of us, at some point, will be asked that question. And in the DIY Era, your pitch means even more now.

Having a solid pitch for your services not only helps prove that you know what you’re talking about, but it also shows confidences in your own self and/or your business. And confidence speaks volumes for yourself and skills, and helps build trust with the person that is seeking your services. Imagine walking into a car dealership inquiring about a certain car, and your salesperson can barely tell you about the specs on a car, or why you should buy it. How comfortable would you feel about buying that car?

I would image that by the time a [potential] client asks the question on why they should choose you, they are already very interested, it’s just up to you not to screw it up.

Redesigned

Well, this is my latest version of Tales of a Designer. As mentioned before, I had been planning on using my [normally non-existent] free time as effectively as possible to design something new. There were a few things that I started to dislike about my old design that I wanted to address in this design.

One of those issues was the length of blog posts that I wrote. There have been many times that I didn’t have much to say, and just chose not to write it because my design would not look right with just a small block of text and the lengthy sidebar. So I wanted to change that and setup a platform in where the design would not suffer if I wanted to write a quick thought.

The one downside to this redesign is that my distractions are now moved towards the bottom, which first time viewers can’t see at first glance, they have to scroll. The plus side to moving them down, is that I can bring more content to the front page without distracting from the main content, and be able to integrate a quick way to glance at my recent posts, tags, and search the site. It also is a huge plus that you don’t have to reload the page to get those quick glances, so I think the pro’s outweigh the cons.

Another thing I wanted to do was make it more noticeable where you could subscribe. I have no idea what I was thinking on my last design, but I didn’t use the typical RSS icon in the interface. Aside from that, it was squeezed between the 9rules logo, and my distractions, so it was getting lost. Now it’s very noticeable.

Taking a page from a colleagues book, I wanted to bring in more icons to associate with the actions/text they were referring to. Most of the icons are the Silk Icons, and one (in the comments) from the Tower Grove set on Icon Buffet. Icons add much value to an interface, so I wanted to take advantage of that.

Under the hood, I’ve stuck with WordPress, because I still love it and find new challenges each time I’m building a new site. There were only two new plugins that I used for this version of my design. One being Smart Archives, to give a clean look to my archives page. The other is iWPhone, which formats blogs for iPhones and iPod Touches. Very cool plugin.

There are still a few things that I need to touch up in the code and design, and I’m not 100% sure that the homepage is final, but it’s close. I also need to do a bit of IE testing as well, but for the most part, this will be the new look for 2008. I hope you like it! And please let me know if you find any bugs.

Working on a Redesign

Just a quick update, I’ve gladly found some free time to begin working on a redesign of this site. I like the direction that I’m heading, and it’s a good thing that I haven’t yet started over 5 times like a typical redesign that I go through. My approach to this one was a little different than the past.

Normally I start off with graphics and page layout, but this time I started with just a couple paragraphs and a header, so that I could design around those. I believe they call that epicenter design:

Epicenter design focuses on the true essence of the page — the epicenter — and then builds outward. This means that, at the start, you ignore the extremities: the navigation/tabs, footer, colors, sidebar, logo, etc. Instead, you start at the epicenter and design the most important piece of content first.

For me, and this site, the most important piece of information is the blog post. This has felt like a pretty comfortable approach. I know many designers spend tons of time on setting up their grid and gathering color schemes but I honestly did not want to go that route. With limited time, I need to be as effective as possible and not nitpick with the small things that don’t matter. I’ll save that for client work.

Best case scenario would be that I got this redesign up later this week. That will be quite a stretch, but I can promise that I will have it done before SXSW.