Out of the Box

Welcome to the first addition of my new weekly column. I often wonder what makes a lot of these columnists legitment, and I don’t mean names like Cameron Moll, Andy Budd, Dave Shea, or the countless other web developers who have made a universal name for themselves on the internet through actual book publishings and the countless seminars they speak at. Sometimes I read comments and articles that seem to be written from the perspective of a fourteen year old, for fourteen year olds. As a result, I thought I should take some time before we get started to just list my own credentials. I am a college graduate from Durham College in Oshawa Ontario, and as a result I have had classes in a little bit of everything ranging from CSS and design to the server side scripting languages such as PHP and ASP. I graduated after a two year program as one of seven from an initial class of thirty five. By the time I graduated I was working with two popular web design companies in the Oshawa/Durham region as well as participating in freelance work. Almost six months ago, I left these two companies to work for the Royal Bank, where I worked with a development team to overhaul the internal web site that is used for the Investment Advisor. I also work along side the marketing department for the Investment Advisor’s web sites. I have also just finished a web site for Golfing Buddies Inc. (This web site is a story in itself!) which is a national company across Canada already, selling golfing books that attempt to help improve your golf game.

I am not trying to gloat, or try and seem like I am better then I am, in fact it’s really the opposite. I want everyone reading this to believe that I at least have some experience in my field, and that I am not basing everything on what could be, or what if. So with all this stated, I would like to bring up my topic of interest, assuming you’re still reading of course. As I am sure everyone knows, the white canvas can be a frustrating place to be in, when you are attempting to create work for a client. I’ve been there, and I know just how frustrating it can be. However, my topic won’t be covering that, bet I fooled you! Instead, it’s about something very similar, and very frustrating, if not more frustrating. This topic being, the inability to leave the comfort zone you’ve created for yourself. My topic is about stepping out of the box.

Now before we keep going, and you all roll your eyes and say “Been here, heard that” I am not saying use a red arial font, instead of a blue times new roman font. I am talking about complete rehaul of your style. Some of you may have already decided that you don’t have an exact style yet, or you are always thinking out of the box, but let me ask a question. Are all your layouts fixed or liquid? Do you have all your navigation’s at the top? Are you a fan of using stock photography as the main header? Do you using the same font style all the time? Do you prefer specific colors all the time? Are yo…. OK, I guess you have the picture. If you can truthfully answer NO to all of those things without even hesitating, then you MUST be a design guru… or blind. The fact of the matter is, every single designer and developer has a specific style when they are creating their web sites, and the problem with this, is that after a while we don’t offer anything new to our clients. Are work becomes the same, and all of sudden we have our own little Web 2.0 look on every web site. A great designer knows how to switch it up all the time, but that can only be done over years. However, the first part is identifying it. Usually it takes someone grabbing you, shaking you, and saying “THIS ALL LOOKS THE SAME!” Being close with about fourteen designers in my class, I saw this all the time. One girl in my class was very talented, but at the exact same time, she was known to repeat certain elements in her designs. She refused to use anything other then 10px arial. She used mostly pinks, blues, and purples. Every layout was centered, no border, solid background. Looking through her portfolio, with every page flipped, you felt like you were looking at the same site, just slightly altered with a new logo. Of course, I wasn’t really innocent either. I was notorious for the fixed, centered, one pixel black borders, with a pixel background, and a combination of arial and georgia. I could go on, and list off every single designer in my class this way, but that would be a waste of time, because I assume you all have the picture. Our problem was that we’d all, as is the case with nearly every designer, had found our comfort zone and we needed to break out of the box and created something more. We never realized it, until we had someone else tell us we needed to diversify.

Thinking out of the box doesn’t just apply to our design abilities, it also can be applied to client work and requirements that don’t seem “possible” at first. At my work, one of their biggest requirements is user interaction. This means forms, and large menus that should only be updated by one file. What’s the catch? No server side scripting is possible due to security restrictions. My example for this, is a set of landing pages, all designed with dozens of links on each page. So far, it wasn’t too much of an issue since only one page needed the list of links. I only need to edit that one page, and we’re done. Now the problem at hand, however, was the main navigation which had to be identical on every single page, which was about twelve pages over all. I could have gone in, and updated each page individually. That means big changes for each page could take more time then allotted, since each change needed to be repeated and tested. It felt beyond impossible to do, since I wasn’t able to call on a simple include script for the navigation file and solve my problems like I was used to. I was in a position where my employer wanted something, and due to their restrictions I couldn’t provide! The most frustrating thing about it all was I knew how, and wasn’t able to do it. That’s when I realized that I needed to think outside of the box. Since I couldn’t rely on asp or php, I had to improvise I use what I knew. The result was a combination of XML, and Actionscript. In what resulted to be one of the most unconventional navigation techniques, everything was set up in XML, where I provided a link title and a url. Then in flash, I used actionscript and called for the XML to populate the menu system. While navigation techniques are used all over the web already, at a bank where their requests usually come along the lines of “We want you to make something that look great, and simple, and easy to navigate, and easy to use… but absolutely no graphics, just text” you don’t see too many interactive, graphic friendly interfaces. Due to this technique, a large positive feedback occurred, as everyone ended up enjoying the more graphic friendly interface. Not only did I solve my navigation problems, I also integrated something the bank wasn’t used to, and so I received praise on an easy and effective way to update as well as a good looking interface that was still able to meet the look of the bank. Of course, sometimes, you’ll find that even with looking at options outside the norm, somethings just cannot be done. My new task is to create a form, that saves to an xml file once submitted and then can be than be released to the public at a later time by means of a html styled e-mail newsletter… all without any server side scripting. While I am still looking for options through javascript, and flash, it is appearing to be more difficult then first expected.

The over all point I am trying to make, is we all get stuck in our own comfort zones, should they be on a design side or a development side. We have our styles and we struggle and refuse to break away from them. It isn’t until you are able to break out of the box, are you able to grow as a web designer and web developer. You need to push yourself to do something new, and learn new techniques. Our own comfort zones are aids to all of us, but they can also stop us from growing as well. After all, once you’re all done you will probably end up saying to yourself “I’m glad I stepped out of the box, this is the best work I’ve created to date.”

Thanks for reading,
Andrew Kelly