Some years back there was a public revolt against the fast food industry and it’s unhealthy peddlings. A lot of establishments started trying to position themselves as “better” or “health-ier” fast food alternatives. It was ridiculous and at times even a little insulting to hear the way some of the companies were throwing out their combo meal calorie count and expecting everyone to look at these commercials and say to themselves, “hey the three patty-newborn-baby-weight-burger meal is ‘only’ 85,698 calories… I guess I’ll forgo the fresh fruit and a salad today.”

As the climate against fast food chains - especially burger joints began to reach the point where companies were truly beginning to see a dent in their bottom line, a couple of players decided that rather than try to fit their round burgers into a square salad bowl, they’d buck the trend and just be - shocker - burger joints. Instead of pretty, overly art directed images of perfectly manicured burgers next to a bottled water, yogurt parfait and a fruit cup, their campaigns featured sloppy, double and triple-patty burgers next to a Super-Gulp size drink and large fries. They accepted the fact that they couldn't please all of the people all of the time and they simply couldn't cater to those who saw their offerings as pure evil. They had decided they were going to stick to what they do, do it well and please the people who wanted what they had to offer. Those that preferred a healthier alternative? Have a diet Coke with your burger…

The triple patty burgers of the design world

Even at the standard 1024px wide resolution, users will only get an eyeful of lead image on the tastefully super-sized idsgn.org

As I take note of site designs that I find appealing, more and more often I see sites that are stunning in their own right. But as I break down the elements of the design and coding, these incredible creations are often the antithesis of the best practices we most often strive to adhere to. Huge, mildly optimized images; images for every button, background, bullet and text title; tons of Javascript, pngs everywhere with unapologetic exclusion of a png fix; (gasp) all flash sites; sites, in short, that could care less about validation, search engine optimization, page rank and frankly, what you, I or anyone else thinks. These are the triple patty burgers of the design world. Designers will serve these up, other designers will rave about them, phones will ring off the hook and clients will line up to have one done. The bottom line is that these sites were launched with the blessing of either the client, the designer or both. They aren’t trying to fit into anyone’s ideal of what a proper site design is. They’ll tell you, if you’re looking for the healthier alternative, you’ve come to the wrong place. Their aim is to reach their client and their client’s audience. Often potential clients will see the aesthetically pleasing samples in a designers portfolio and not realize the standards and SEO no-no's an eye-candy-heavy or full flash site will likely contain, but they've determined what is important to them is having a site that appeals to their personal senses or a certain design trend regardless of any drawbacks it may present. Flash has probably suffered the most through this movement towards standards and "healthier" websites. The Flash development specialist has become more and more scarce over the past several years and those that are left are the true bad asses doing some really top notch work. Again, with Flash there is a certain time, place and audience to appeal to - but the fact remains it still has its place. When done well, a good flash site is the ultimate supersize combo - aesthetics, marketing, eye-candy, wow-factor... the the 2lb burger and shake combo that's completely unnecessary, but so satisfying when done right.

One size may not fit all. And that's not bad...

I think even these types of designs are valuable to our web development ecosystem. Even though the strict standards based, best practice, ultimate optimized site is in most cases the best route for a business looking to see results in sales, conversions, leads etc., sometimes aesthetics are what drives a clients motives. Ultimately, the triple patty burger is what's going to satisfy their web design appetite and they are fully willing to pay for it. There is a portion of the market that is simply interested in having an aesthetics driven site. Sometimes you just need to fit in where you fit in. Embrace who you are and what you do. As much as the web community evangelizes standards and best practices for practically everything related to web development, it’s time to consider that one size will not fit all. And maybe, this isn’t such a bad thing.

Hidden Calories

YouLove.us was all about the innovation factor with the latest version of their website. So popular it was, they finally wrote a post detailing how they did it. With its oversized - and scrolling background image and png image text titles, it's surely not the poster child for a load optimized site, but no doubt its brought them new clients looking for a highly creative solution.

Looks Good Enough to Eat

Anyone that knows me will tell you I'm never one to count bytes so I wouldn't even begin to try to investigate how well MetaLab Designs web sites are or aren't optimized. But they've developed a trademark style that delivers heavy on the graphics and eyecandy. My guess is that there are probably just as many people out there who despise the signature shiny / textured / layered / drop shadow look it as much as there are who love it, but it would be no stretch to guess, the clients that come to them for just such a look are rarely disappointed.

The Pastrami Burger, Unecessary But Worth It

The FWA site itself is not necessarily any example of the this super sized phenomena, rather it's validation that the all flash site is far from dead and when done well is still revered and admired.

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The focus of my professional creative development services is based on user centered design, but one of my main goals for design for any client is to provide their business with credibility. I want to provide your clients, customers and consumers with the highest level of confidence in using your site and doing business with your company or organization.

Make your site accessible even beyond your target audience. Make it easy to use and navigate with concise and pertinent content that is easy to find and follow up on if necessary. Believe it or not, customers DO care about what your site looks like regardless of how fabulous your product or service may be. It is akin to having a five star restaurant in a bad part of town. People may hear rave reviews about your food, but are they willing to make the trip to find out for themselves?

Credible design can make your business stand out from the competition. For a client evaluating two businesses, when it comes down to making a choice between two relatively equal offers, the difference can be as simple as “this LOOKS like a company I can trust”. Pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and realize that even color can play a major part in how your business is perceived.

Can users easily find the information they are looking for? A well organized, well designed site can aid in quickly accessing and filtering information which can be critical for users who will give your site only a matter of seconds to provide them with the answers or information they seek, or for those who will quickly abandon a potential sale because of a difficult to navigate check out process.

Can users find contact info for your business easily in the event they have questions before doing business with you or concerns regarding their purchase? Many users will look for this information before they even start navigating your site. For ecommerce based businesses it is particularly important that this information is available from every page of your site. Providing this information shows that there is a real organization behind your site.

A consumer study commissioned by internet development services firm, Genex found:

Web site design matters most to the affluent. More than 70 percent of those earning more than $75,000 per year say that they will not shop on a poorly designed site and may even discontinue offline purchases from a company with such a web site, compared to 60 percent of those earning less than $50,000.

The most active consumer group is most attuned to usability. In excess of 75 percent of those between the ages of 25 and 34 say that usability is a very or extremely important factor in their online and offline purchase decisions, compared to 64 percent of those ages 45-54.

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We've recently run into the dreaded Net30 monster on a few occasions and the encounters have been less than pleasing to say the least. We know it's the typical deal for most companies and if we want the work, we just have to deal with it. But lately, we've been asking ourselves "Do we really want to deal with it?"

Working for free for 30+ days? With the very real possibility that A.) Being a small business, we may not be at the top of the "people we need to pay right away" list or B.) Net 30 terms or not, sometimes clients are just slow to pay.

Unfortunately with Net terms, the odds are against us in most cases and it has caused us to seriously reconsider our relationships with clients who require them. A typical project for us is going to last anywhere from 30 to 45 days so in cases where the policy is to only pay after the work is completed and then on a 30 day billing cycle, we'd be finished with a project well before we ever receive payment. "Hi here's your brand new, shiny web site... just pay us when you get around to it... we'll even go ahead and make it live for you before you pay us!"

We've been faced with a project in the past that was a Net 45 term, one up front payment and one on completion, for a project that probably wasn't going to take us more than 3 weeks to complete... The only reason we even considered it was because it was a reputable Fortune 500 company and it was a high 5 figure job... but our first payment wasn't even going to come in until over a month after the job was complete. It was one of the few times we weren't disappointed to see a potential project fall through.

We've come to the conclusion we can really only decide on a case by case basis and we are tossing around ideas to help protect ourselves so that if a client wants net terms, we're a little more comfortable with the amount of work we're putting in before we are compensated.

It's a tough choice when you consider turning down projects or not working with a client because they require Net terms. They are typically your high dollar, high profile projects, great for exposure. But there is a choice in the matter and I think overall, that's the best part about it. I'm curious how others handle it... Leave your thoughts, input and ideas in the comments!

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Wanted to share a tip that saved mine an my partners butts tonite on a last minute project deadline tonite.

We needed a vector logo file to finish up the project and the client sent over an Illustrator EPS for us to use. Unfortunately, when we tried to open the file Illustrator informed us the file could not be opened because it was created using a newer version of Illustrator...

We thought about opening the file in Photoshop, which would have worked fine... but since the file was for a print project, we were concerned about colorshift issues, so it had to be a vector conversion.

I remembered Mac Preview app could open just about any filetype, including EPS... My solution was to open the file in Preview and save out as a PDF with the hope that it would maintain editability..

Luckily that was just the case. I was able to open the file in illustrator with full vector editing capabilities

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Rant alert.

Most designers pride themselves on being visual problem solvers. Taking a client's needs, desires and business goals into consideration with nearly every design and coding decision.

There are varied reasons a client contracts a professional to take care of their project but every project DOES start with a problem to be solved. "Client needs XYZ." After client and designer have discussed cost, scope, timelines and goals, most times based on very well defined information from the client, there comes a moment in the design phase where the client's feedback simply consists of the words:

Make it POP.

Can someone please, tell me what the hell that means? It's nothing I've ever actually had defined for me. Not in school and not in any of the twelve years of my design career.

Oh and there are variations designers should be aware of, you know, so that should you happen to encounter one you can address the situation appropriately...

There's no POP. 

It just doesn't POP. 

We need more POP. 

We'd like to see it POP. 

Can we... Make it POP.

Crafty clients will certainly have other as yet undiscovered variations. Of course the answer to all of these is either "So.", "No" or "We can't." and sometimes "What?" because this type of feedback means NOTHING. It's the equivalent of telling a 911 operator "Help me I'm in L.A. and I'm dying." Oh, and account/project managers/salespeople, please don't even bother forwarding or otherwise conveying this type of input to your design team. It's a recipe for nothing but having a lot of people throw-up just a little bit in their mouths... simultaneously.

For a designer to help a client solve their (design) problems, the designer needs real, tangible input and feedback. Whether that feedback is positive or negative doesn't matter, it gives the designer a sense of if they are heading in the right direction or not (based on what the client wants to see not necessarily what the proper design decisions are... but that is a whole 'nother post...)

So now that I have that off my chest I'll likely be able to refrain from punching someone in the neck next time they utter that damn phrase in a meeting.

<./Rant>

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