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Ready for May 1st?

April 30, 2007 By Devlounge

Ahh, May 1st. The annual “right of passage”, where designers across the globe come together for one day of freshness, a day to reinvent themselves and usher in a season of changes for the upcoming summer. Participants are scattered throughout every continent, and find themselves participating in one if not all of the many reboots out there today. Regardless of which one or ones you may be participating in, the message is the same – it’s time to reboot.

May 1, 2007

Last Minute Checks

On the eve of May 1st, many people frantically find themselves trying to fine-tune final elements of their sites before the big launch date. Many may have already filled their sites with temporary placeholders to increase the suspense between the final hours and the actual launch time. Some meanwhile, missed the invitation and are trying frantically in the last remaining hours to put together a new site just so they can say they were part of the event. No matter what you’re situation, be on the look out for some common checks that somehow get lost in all the madness.

  • Make sure your site is validated – Particularly if you are participating in a “standards reboot“. It was sad to see many of the submitted sites in the Fall Standards Reboot didn’t even validate. As a judge this year, one of the things we’re looking for is sites that actually read and meet the criteria for participating, and aren’t just trying to leech off free traffic.
  • Check for cross-browser compatibility – The last thing you want after an exciting (re)launch date is people complaining about a site not looking properly in their os / browser of choice. Make sure you go through some extensive checking to prevent discrepancies between different browsers. You can also turn to services such as Browsershots, iCapture, and ieCapture.
  • Re-read your content – If your site is being filled with new content (for example, you created some new pages, etc, with writing in them), make sure you have everything spell checked. Obviously, if you have a huge collection of past blog entries and articles, it could be impossible to go back and check everything, but make sure all new sections of your site are properly polished up. Eliminating mistakes will help leave people more impressed in the long run.

Get your launch post ready to go

If you are relaunching a blog of some sort, a great way to kick things off is with an introductory / about the redesign post. Share your own experiences from the reboot, showcase new site features, and finally, explain the process that went into the redesign. It’s always insightful to read someones methods of designing, because everyone does something different. It’s also a great way to focus visitors to specific areas of a redesign, such as new pages, favorite articles, etc. It really helps tie the whole event together, and it takes things a lot further than just saying “well here’s my new design, hope you enjoy it.”

Ready…or not?

An important thing to remember is that there is no need to rush a site relaunch simply for the sake of participating in the May reboot. Even if you are already registered somewhere as a participant, don’t stress over it. When things are rushed, you end up half-assing the work, which leads to a poor job. Do you think visitors would rather see a fully polished site launched all at once, or a semi-completed design that was put out that way too soon for it’s own good? You don’t need one specific day to refresh a design. There are 364 other days in a year that are fully open for the taking. Just because they don’t have a special label on them doesn’t mean you can’t hold your own reboot. Please, for everyone’s sake (yours, your visitors, and the judges of these events), don’t publish something that you don’t take pride in. It’s not good for business, and it’s not good for yourself.

Friday Focus #27

April 21, 2007 By Devlounge

Welcome back for another addition of Friday Focus. Let’s jump right into it this week and not waste any time with silly introductions!

Sites of the Week

Rock Your Stock begins our list this week with the very green, very money like theme for an investing / financial blog. The design matches the content well, which is one of the main reasons RTS was chosen for this week.

Rock Your Stock

Next up is Deeper Devotion. Church sites are not what they used to be these days. The days of slapped on wysiwyg html are being replaced with some really nice designed sites, and DD was no exception. Everything is laid out quite nicely, and it actually gives an urban appearance to a religious site.

Deeper Devotion

A rounding out this week is the Yellowstone National Park tourism site. A grungy layout meant to give a park feel does the job well, and bits and pieces also use flash to add effect and features. What surprised me was the the site is also up a Webby Award – not something many national parks find themselves looking to score.

Yellowstone National Park

Digg Weekly

Design – 25 Reasons you might be a hardcore web/gfx designer
A great fun little post with 25 simple reasons of why you might be a hardcore designer, ranging from studying your boyfriend / girlfriends shirt to critiquing menu design while out to eat.

Programming – WordPress Digg Widget
The past 7 days in Programming only saw a few items get hot, and I though the most interesting [or useful] would be this release of a WordPress Digg Widget, simplifying the digging process from individuals sites’ even more.

Refresh07 Results

The winner of the 2007 Spring Refresh Contest is Greg Wood! Greg took our current layout, played around with it a bit, and cleaned things up to provide a fresh feel for the site. Even though colors remain close and the layout is essential the same, I think in the long run, it benefits readers who have become accustomed to how things look. We will be working off his winning layout (which he is even doing the base coding for us) and trying to add more too it and address some complaints of the site being “too much copy” with so much text stuffed together and such a busy homepage. We’re going to find ways to break things up, so don’t worry. Please leave your suggestions in the comments, so we can get moving in the direction you want us to go with our next design.

Refresh Result

Once again, congratulations to Greg. You can see an entire screenshot of his submitted design by clicking the image below (will take you off this page). Once again, thoughts are welcomed!

*Note: Footer won’t really be that big. 😉

Spec Work: Good or Bad?

April 17, 2007 By Devlounge

No!Spec

The concept of “Spec Work” is one that is constantly thrown around in the design world, and became even more evident during our refresh contest, in which, despite a large reader base, we received just one entry. For this article (or more of a opinionated piece), I take a look at why people hate spec work so much, and why it is actual ruining creativity.

What is Spec Work?

To understand what we mean by Spec work, you first have to know what it is. As defined by the anti-spec work campaign No!Spec, Spec work is “the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. In other words, any requested work for which a fair and reasonable fee has not been agreed upon, preferably in writing.”

The simplest example of Spec Work is a design contest, where there is one winner, and the other entries end up going towards nothing, with no benefits to the creator. It’s speculative because you could work your ass off and get nothing for it, which would end up being a waste of time and waste of resources…right?

This is where the line in the sand gets drawn.

Let the battles begin

As a designer myself, I can totally understand why people would be up in arms over doing work they might not get anything for. When I first started out [and was a complete idiot], I spent a lot of time doing work for clients who would run away with mock-ups or stop contacting me all together after I started the design. This was never any fun, because I didn’t take down payments, and selling a custom based template wasn’t the easiest thing to do if it wasn’t generalized. So plain and simple, I ended up screwing myself over multiple times. I had then created spec work for myself, because I would get nothing or very little out of my hard work.

“…design contests devalue professional designers work…”
– 9rules member note

To prevent this, people started campaigns like No!Spec to try to deteriorate designers from taking part in such work, and to “educate” people on why they shouldn’t host such things as design contests. The topic was also recently brought up on 9rules notes, with one commenter saying so much as “No, please don’t, design contests devalue professional designers work.” after a question was asked about whether a design contest would be appropriate for someone to run.

That one sentence annoyed me, especially because it generalized all types of contests – the fair and unfair ones. There are contests that do offers fair market value prizes for the work they require you to put in, and there are others that offer you $10 to put together a full site. Obviously, they are two opposite sites of the spectrum. In our recent contest, we gave away a 30GB Zune, with a list price around $230 USD. In exchange we asked for one homepage mock-up of our next design, simply because I was strung out and stuck in a rut in terms of design ideas. I thought the prize being offered was very fair, because we were only looking for one page, which would not require all too much time being dedicated to get it completed. We had plans to showcase all of our submitted entries at the end of the week in Friday Focus, so un-used entries simply wouldn’t be thrown into the incinerator.

The fact that people would believe that contests devalue the work of a designer I found quite unbelievable. Contests are one of the easiest ways for beginning designers to get started, because they can experiment in a no pressure situation, where they have nothing to lose and plenty of experience to gain. This is why $50-$100 prize logo contests on forums became so popular and generally garnered many participants. The work wasn’t all too complex, the prize wasn’t that bad, and it gave you the freedom the experiment and see how you stacked up against other designers.

And what if you are not a beginner but a seasoned veteran? What the hell would a contest do for you if you are years past the “experimental” stage? Veteran or beginner, you would be able to have the same benefits. The ability to design without restrictions and limitations, and to try something new, would all be on the table for you. No client influence hanging over your head, no exact style you have to follow. The ability to be free – something most clients unfortunately don’t give their designers. And if you aren’t declared the winner and don’t win that valuable prize, you could add the work to your portfolio or go along and sell it. Your work would not be devalued – in fact; you’d gain even more in experience.

A contest is…a contest

When you enter a contest, you should realize that you might not win. That is after all, the purpose of a contest. No!Spec supporters believe that you have to get something for participating, so they must not play the lottery too often, because they would find themselves severely disappointed 99.9% of the time. Contests help people expose different sides of creativity that they might not be able to get out in a client orientated world. It also allows them to grow as designers, even though their wallets might not exactly be overflowing because of it. In the end, whether or not you take on spec work is your own call, and it is best to base each call off the situation at hand. Analyze whether or not you have the chance at possibly getting anything at all (because if not, that definitely helps you lean towards the “don’t do this” side), and if there is a prize, make sure it is worth the work you may end up putting into the project. But don’t, I repeat, don’t, turn away contests [or the opportunity to host one for that matter] because a portion of designers think it is wrong and/or devaluating. Your work is what you make it, and if you believe a contest is giving your work less of a value, maybe you are the one actually devaluating your own hard work simply because you are not seeing green.

Note: Please see my comment note for my view on why taking is spec work does differ and depend on whether or not you are a freelancer or full time designer. As evident (and should have been stated earlier), I am a freelancer, so this view / opinion is based on designing not be your sole source of income / full time job.

Your turn. We want to know what your thoughts are on spec work. Do you support contests and doing spec work from time to time, or are you totally against it? Please let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear your responses. This article is not intended to offend anyone who follows one view or the other, simply to present the view most people ignore.

Final Reminder: Contest Closing

April 16, 2007 By Devlounge

Just a final reminder that today is the last day of the Refresh contest, and there is just a few more hours for you to get your submissions in! Please send them in as soon as possible if you haven’t yet, so we can begin the judging process quickly. If you are close but may require an extra day, let us know, and we may consider extending the submission period by one day. Thanks to anyone that participated. We may be running a logo contest in the near future after we pick a winning layout, so be on the lookout for that.

And finally, I’d like to give my thoughts and prayers to the students and families of Virginia Tech, after today’s horrible events.

Refresh Contest Now Open

April 1, 2007 By Devlounge

The Spring Refresh contest is now officially open, and the entry period will be from today, April 1st, until April 16th, 2007. Please visit the Spring Refresh page for more details about the contest, prizes, and how to enter. Be sure to tell your friends, because the more entries, the better look you’ll be seeing around here come this summer! Please help us get the word out by digging the official entry post.

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