Every once in a couple of years or so we run into business owner or department manager who contracts us for our web design services, who fancies himself a website designer.
(I can see the smile on your face now as I write this….) Our challenge becomes keeping the site on track without it becoming a train wreck.
It takes a very experienced eye to put together a website that combines just the right elements of design, development, positioning, messaging, search engine optimization and strategy to make it a powerful marketing machine and industry leading website. In other words, it takes more than just an eye for design. It takes excellent collaboration skills to pull the knowledge about their company, service or product, from the business owner or manager and leverage it into the website positioning. It also takes skill in communicating with diplomacy, to avoid insulting when you’re hiding your horror upon discovering your client has bad taste.
If you have taste (and you probably don’t know who you are), then consider the limits of your experience and skillset as it applies to print and website graphic design before jumping knee-deep into amateur art directing.
Would you hire your car mechanic to decorate your office?
Would you hire your accountant to draw the architectural plans of your house?
Why would you appoint yourself as art director for your website?
To see an example of a good website design gone bad, see another designer’s humorous take on working with a client with “bad taste.” It’s been circulating the web for a while, but I still chuckle every time I happen upon it.
