My Life As A Web Designer

Stef took a look at my work today and said it looked awful. She was right.

I’ve been working on-and-off on a website showcasing Roxie. In case you didn’t notice she photographs well.

Stef took a look at my work today and said it looked awful. She was right. She was brutally honest. Maybe just plain honest would have been enough.

I started fooling around again with the ‘skinning’ of the site. Most websites separate content from layout. As you redesign you keep the words and just change how they’re displayed.

This time I showed Helaine.

“Too sterile.” Not her exact words, but close.

More playing will follow. Designing websites is fun for me, but not without obvious artistic challenges. How do you find the right mix of open space/images/text? How do you make a static webpage look like fun at first sight? How do you hide the fact that the web demands rectangular layouts?

Stef also asked why I was doing this in the first place? I think money can be made on blogs—though surely not this one you’re reading which grossed $1.04 so far today (an exceptionally good day judging by recent history).

Maybe a sharply focused, dog oriented blog is worth something if it can attract a crowd? And, of course, you don’t have to strike it rich with one blog when you can easily run many.

From The New York Times: Lisa Sugar began blogging about celebrity gossip in her spare time four years ago. Now she and her husband, Brian, have a little media empire called, sensibly enough, Sugar Inc., with 12 blogs, 11 million readers a month and advertisers like Chanel and Sony.

The dream of quitting the day job and making a living from blog revenue has proved to be far-fetched for most bloggers. But a few entrepreneurs, like the Sugars, have found success in blog networks.

For every success story like the Sugar’s there are thousands of geoffffox.com-like sites with limited reach and earnings potential. How can you know which you are if you don’t try?

3 thoughts on “My Life As A Web Designer”

  1. I’ve been doing Web design / development for 14+ years, I can tell you EXACTLY why a design succeeds or fails – when a client thinks they know more than me.

  2. sorry, that last post came across as arrogant – what I mean is this: You can have a poor design that’s still a great site because the subject matter is why they come to begin with…but a nice design with crap content is still crap. I’ve had clients who have ruined great ideas by worrying too much about the stuff that doesn’t matter.

    For a site about Roxy, the content is king (or queen). Just go for it.

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