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« Older EntriesHacking for Charity
Monday, September 20th, 2010
This past weekend I went to my first hack weekend, specifically Charity Hack. at the paypal offices in Richmond. I have been working on a charity project these last few months, and the developers suggested I go. Design had been sorely lacking from some of the projects last year. This year, they proactively invited more designers and by the final results, you could definitely tell.
The whole idea
You have 24 hours to come up with a concept (and hopefully a working version) of tools that help charities engage with their customers, raise money and more. They brought in Mission Fish and Just Giving who had brand new apis you could use. And, of course, Paypal has a multitude of tools, including micropayments that make getting the money together safer and easier. It was great to have the actually developers who wrote the apis sitting right there with you.
We were stationed at the Paypal offices and were buried in copious amounts of food and drink (Thanks so much to organizers and helpers Lorenza @johnxcom @anthonyxcom @amanda Deb Musaab and Corrado… you made the whole experience so smooth and wonderful!). Everything was informal: you could do anything you like, you could change your team anytime up to 9am the morning everyone presented. Teams were limited to 4 and your final presentation was 3 minutes.
My team
I was lucky enough to be asked to come, so finding a team was no problem. Here’s our team:
1. Michael Heap, a brilliant developer and problem solver. If I came up with anything, he always said sure. And he did it. Definitely the hero of the group!
2. Todd Francis, likewise brilliant developer. After some frustrations trying to get complicated apis working, really cleaned up getting the scenarios and database logic working really well.
3. Carolynlyn, an ideas lady who researched out some great scenarios and found some great apis and resources for the team to use.
4. Me, who did the design and html/css and basically badgered the two devs constantly to implement changes (I should have said yes to being involved in version control so I didn’t have to wait for Michael or Todd to go use the toilet so I could steal their machines).
We were up until almost 3am and got to about 80% finished. From all the redbull I drank, unfortunately, I was unable to sleep. I got back up at 6am and found many of the other teams hadn’t bothered with the sleeping bit. I spent my time cleaning up the designs and adding in dummy facebook/twitter integration. The team was up again at 7:30, and we worked pretty much solid until cut-off time at 1:30pm. Around mid morning, deliriousness set in. The last 20% truly takes the most time! Of course, it’s still not perfect!
Our idea
Very Hard Choices homepage: You can only use it with Facebook
We wanted to find a way of engaging the younger audiences and make the woes of charities feel more personal. So we created an integrated facebook Choose Your Own Adventure game called Very Hard Choices (you can actually play it now). The idea is that you become homeless, and your girlfriend/boyfriend are there, and a few of your friends are too.
Your friend asks if you boyfriend/girlfriend had hurt you. Eventually we want the head on the main image to be yours and your friend's too.
You go through the adventure, making hard choices that people face on the street. Eventually you either make it off the street or die. We then explain that homelessness is no game and prompt them to make a donation to a homelessness charity and share your survival rate on twitter or facebook.
We pull in their birthday if they've displayed it on the facebook page to show a proper gravestone. We then give them options to share their survival rate and donate to the charity.
We really enjoyed testing our own app even, which I think says a lot for its stickiness: we wanted to know the fastest way to die, and to figure out all the ways to the end point. Everyone who tried our adventure game loved that it was personalized and it was great fun to build!
The hack day is done…
There’s only so much you can do in 24 hours, and I especially want to thank the two devs who not only had amazing ideas, but also performed miracles in getting this up and working. We’ve set up a proper backend so we can add in new stories, new loops and lots more (there were only so many story lines we could finish up in the time we had). It is also easy to add in other types of stories for different types of charities.
Here is an example of a few other ideas we had for story lines. The choices are endless really.
And the winner is….
Not us, unfortunately. We’re very pleased with our efforts and while we would have liked to win, I’m not too disappointed (honestly! Even with my hugely competitive ego!). There were so many good ideas, and I do believe CharityBox (where you give affiliate money from vouchers to charities instead of the affiliates) was the best hack and deserved to win.
All the winners had great hacks too: people really made a big effort to make their projects amazing (and hilarious, including CharityShock, where you could shock someone by donating money, as well as BlessTheWeb where you can confess your sins and repent with money).
Another non-winner I really liked was Pitchinin, which gave artists the opportunity to give away a song to their fans in return for donating to a charity. So, if I had a song, I could say that if you raised £1000, it would be unlocked for everyone who has donated. I enjoyed talking to @kzhu about his plans for it, so I hope he gets the development funds in to make it happen.
Many of the people I spoke to said that they really wanted to continue building on their projects and get them to proper production quality. There was so much condensed passion and enthusiasm in that room (probably fueled by all the wonderful free food and drink provided by Paypal), but I’m looking forward to see what people actually do. I know we want to continue working on our project, so watch this space.
I know it’s cheesy, but I’m going to say it: I feel like I won anyway, knowing that we had a great idea, it was well implemented and useful to charities. For a first hack day, I can’t really ask for more!
Now: time to catch up on my sleep!
Know thyself: the art of choosing projects that are good for YOU
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
Choosing new clients is scary. It’s also completely hit and miss: sometimes the seemingly dull project is the most pleasant to work on because it’s well paid, you know what you’re getting into, and the people are a joy. Often the most exciting projects turn out to be nightmare time-sucks.
Right now, I love all my projects. I can actually say that I think the ideas, the people and the features are great. I’ve been able to have lots of creative freedom, there’s been a huge level of mutual trust in skills. And honestly, I REALLY do like the people I’m working with.
But…
I get a few legitimate offers for new work every week (sorry, everyone, I am not taking on any new work until the end of June!) so how do you know which offers you should pursue and which not to? Here I’m going to set up a few guidelines that will aide me in the future to make sure I am discerning when I’m speaking to potential clients (and maybe help you too).
Do they match your target industries?
Being a generalist in web design is no good. You really need to pick an area of expertise. Do you love customizing wordpress blogs? Are you a sports nut? Choosing a maximum of 3 areas and working towards focusing solely on those areas makes you into an industry expert.
I would really like to get involved in more environmental projects, but since I don’t have much experience in that area, I am becoming more attuned to projects with environmental aims. It’s a cliche, I know, but it’s really true: when you focus on areas you’re passionate about you’ll produce higher quality work. It also means when bigger, more interesting, fish comes up, you have the proof that you know their industry.
Do you have enough resource to do a good job?
Often times you have space for a medium size project when a really really big one comes in. When you can’t drop your other commitments, you’re guaranteed to do less than your best. Projects should fit your available space: you still need to sleep and occasionally shower, you know. If you can’t stretch yourself to fit them, you’re not doing anyone any favors. They feel neglected and you feel frazzled.
What are they like?
Some projects are so cool you want to dive right in, but warning bells often go off. If they appear to be time wasters or their voice drives you insane during the first meeting, what makes you think they will be pleasant to work with? Even with the best client there’s moments of tension; if you’re already ready to tear their voice box out of their throat, well, that’s a bad sign.
How to say no
I ALWAYS feel bad when I have to tell someone no. Here are a few reasons that I say no:
1) Tell them I’m not taking on projects until (x) weeks/months. Most people want their website yesterday, and those who are willing to wait are often more attuned to how much time projects take and how much money they should cost.
2) If I’m busy, but I have a tiny bit of spare space I could squeeze them into, I often try out a price increase. If they accept it, I am happy to work on it as sort of an ‘overtime’ fee. If they don’t go for it, no harm done.
3) Sometimes I’m really not interested in their project. I’m trying to take on projects that are not just coding, challenging, useful and fit into my ‘passion areas’. It’s really hard to turn down work, especially if it’s well-paid. How do you do this? I’m still learning. A few months ago I got offered some work to design interfaces for tv. The man was smart, interesting and would have been great to work with. I had to tell him that I couldn’t take the job. I told him that I wanted to focus on web design primarily in education and environment, and didn’t want to take on work that fell too far away from that goal. It was hard, especially since sometimes people are pushy. The important thing is to stick to you guns and not get manipulated: if they’re desperate for you and pushy to get their way, it’s a sign on how it will be to work with them.
You really have to find things that get you going, that make you want to get up every day and get your blood flowing! What I’d actually like to say sometimes is, “I’m really not interested in your project.” Anyone out there got some suggestions on how to say no?
Planning Peru
Monday, August 24th, 2009
Yes, Peru. I am going with Ollie this November for three weeks! The problem is, I have a book about Peru, and it’s 656 pages.
That’s a lot of cool stuff to do.
I’m only there for 3 weeks, and while I want to do fun things, I don’t want to spend my whole time travelling on a bus if I can. I also don’t want to spend a fortune on flights. So, a route of some sort needs to be made.
How to plan without planning
The only thing we really want to do is walk the Inca Trail, and I want to be accustomed to the altitude before we do it, so I can admire the view, rather than cover the view with sick. So, we need to be at a good altitude for around a week. Besides that, we’re going to play it by ear. In order to determine a route while we’re there, I’ve created this infographic to help us cost things out, as well as plan our route!
Anyone who’s been to Peru, I would love to hear your recommendations! We’re not museum people, and not necessarily big campers (I reckon after the Inca trail, we’ll be camped out). We’d love to go to the Galapagos, but we’re not sure if there’ll be enough time (or money!). On my graphic, the prices are all in US dollars.
The trees represent potential amazon rainforest tours, and Colca Canyon is 3 times the size of the grand canyon. At lake Titicaca, there’s floating islands, and at Ica you can go sand surfing. My house mate tells me La Paz in Bolivia is amazing too. Besides the Inca Trail and Machu Pichu at Cusco, they also have white water rafting and lots of adventure stuff to do.
What the hell is wrong with firefox window resizing??
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
I’ve been having this problem at work with firefox (only at work, so it’s not just me doing something freaky!) on the mac. I’m on the latest version, but whenever I try and move the window, it’ll resize either really wide and short, or really narrow and short, and then jumps all around. It is beyond frustrating! Check it out…
Anyone know why this happens? I thought maybe it was because I have two monitors, but I have two monitors at home and it’s fine.
********Update: I have checked all my toolbars, and it turns out that the culprit is Stumbleupon. GAHH!!
Redesigning BView part 2: My new priorities
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
I previously wrote a post about the history of how we came to this redesign, and the lessons we learned by doing things the hard way. This is a redesign of the site, bview.co.uk. It currently looks like this:
My glimmer of hope
We didn’t start out thinking we’d do a redesign. After another day of design by committee, my head of products, Colin, and I were discussing that we thought the overall feel of the site was a bit drab and lacking simplicity. I lamented that I knew I was capable of making it better, but didn’t have the freedom to do it. He then said, “Go out and change BView to look the way you’d like it to look.”
These words: The ones that make a designer most excited but also the most nervous.
I said, screw it, I’m going to pour my heart into this design and worked over weekends and evenings (and got a bit of work time too).
I wasn’t to change things too much functionally, but there were a few consistency things I wanted to implement:
1. Hierarchy of titles
When we talk about what is the most important on the page, these titles should follow this hierarchy.
h tag sizes and usages
2. Hierarchy of links
On some pages we have over 90 links. Obviously making them all link blue and underlined couldn’t work. Just as the titles structure our content, so too does the link structure. This is very important for future product planning, as it forces people to think about where it should fit within the hierarchy of the page: biggest to smallest.
Hierarchy of links
3. Bright, fun colour palate
Colour has always been an issue with BView because of how much content needs to fit on the page. What do you make bright? What can be in another colour? It got to the point where all the colour slowly disappeared because it looked messy with it in, as things weren’t organized coherently. So for the new design, we started with the colour palate for the site from the beginning and made sure that it stayed bright and fresh.
colour palate
4. Clear user path through the page
I want to gently lead people through our site, not bombard them with everything at once. The page should be easily scannable, and not everything needs to be above the fold (wherever that is). The hierarchy and spacing should make it much clearer what they need to do. If they want more help, that should be easy to find as well.
5. Simplicity
If it’s designed right, there’s no need to repeat buttons or text in multiple places. If it looks simple enough, it won’t scare people away. It’s easy to over-design stuff. The real talent is in keeping it simple and clean.
6. Design that causes a bit of “delight”
The new design delights me. I’ve put it on a grid. I’ve been quite strict with myself (hard work for this messy girl!). I’ve thought about the shading, the colours, the links, added subtle borders, and added little details to make it stand out. I’m also planning a few little easter eggs!
7. Use some modern web techniques
I don’t mean using the most current trends “just to have them”, but to add them only if they add to the design but keep them subtle. I’m also making sure the code is by far the most tidy it’s ever been: it’ll be full of microformats, well organized and without a bloated stylesheet. I’m going to add some visual treats for those using the latest version of firefox and safari as well.
8. Not designed to make everyone happy
I’ve been reading everywhere about ‘design by committee’ and the problem with when you don’t train others how to give feedback. Our team has been really good about trying to change the way they give feedback.
Instead of “make the buttons rounder, and I don’t like the colour and can you make them about 4px taller?” we’re now working towards,
“Those buttons don’t make me want to click on them. How can we make them look more clickable?” which I love, because then I can try stuff out and find a good solution that still matches the design.
Because we’ve been going about this redesign in a more constructive manner, I am more happy with it now with their feedback than I was on my own. Feedback is supposed to improve things, and this new method is definitely doing its job!
8. Embrace our brand
I haven’t ever really liked our logo, and that’s always been clear… but that’s personal preference. Because of that, I never properly tied the logo into the design. That’s not the right approach: a lot of the time web designers don’t have control of their branding, and their job is to properly tie in the branding into their web design. Because I want our site to have a proper good personality, it needs to start with tying the logo into the design. So, I’ve brought the courier into the design for buttons and given the whole site a feel that I think better matches the font choice.
And here it is!
It’s just being built (and hopefully released in the next few weeks), so these are just the screenshots. It’s a big job to reskin the site in the new style, and only the major pages will be done in this next block of time, but I’m really looking forward to seeing it on there! Let me know your thoughts and feedback 
Newest mock of the business profile
New mock of the search results
Redesigning BView part 1: It’s all in the past
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
I’m in the process of redesigning our website at work.
It’s a project I’m really excited about, and I thought my experiences with it would be helpful to anyone approaching a website redesign. A lot of the design in this post is quite embarrassing for me, as I made so many mistakes in both process and as a designer, but we are better designers for the stuff we’ve done in the past, and it makes the new stuff look oh so much better.
A daunting start
I have been working at BView for over a year and a half now, and I have learned so much since I’ve been here. Being in a small company (there’s only 6 of us now!) means that each role is important. When I started out in October 2007, we had up to 16 people (a lot borrowed from another company), and I inherited a logo, and a basic design for the few key pages. I was asked to work on this project as the designer 2.5 days a week (with the other few days on the parent company’s site).
The development was already over a year in, them working solely off complicated wireframes, but the design could change (ie. I could change colours and icons), making sure functionality didn’t. Therefore user flow couldn’t change.
Here’s the original screenshots I inherited:
Business Profile original mock
The original search results mock
Original methods meant a doomed design process
BView had a LOT of functionality to start off with: we wanted to launch with the ultimate resource for business owners (very ambitious). We had lots of tools that solved every problem (even before anyone thought of it), and scope creep had been rampant. We had too many features, not a lot of design or usability experience (from me or from anyone else), no time to do proper usability on any of it, and we were launching in March 2008 (5 months away). Working only 2.5 days a week meant that I wasn’t always in the picture, and the design process was completely dominated by old school management and tech sign-off processes (reems of paper, reems of screenshots, all requiring stringent sign off on them). We were about as agile as an elephant in a London apartment.
I knew there should have been some processes in place and made a few attempts to implement some, but unfortunately had no experience implementing them in the past and had also come into the game very late.
We all made design decisions haphazardly, and we changed our minds all the time. I know I changed the button style more than 10 times before our final launch. There was more than 25 required screen shots for the business profile alone (each page had 5 tabs, plus you needed to show ‘logged out empty’, ‘logged out full’, ‘logged in empty’, ‘logged in full’), the same again for the user, and then there was a lot of search related stuff. We also wanted everything in there and we didn’t pay enough attention to what the site looked like when it was empty.
With no hierarchy, a very flexible grid, an obsession with getting everything above the fold, a personal dislike of the logo design, no ability to change functionality or userflow and requiring sign off from everyone and their mother, the design came out, well….. It lacked coherence. It lacked polish. It was not that good and it was very very blue.
Mock from pre-launch
Pre-launch search results mock
Doomed design lead to doomed front end implementation
Our front-end developer was also just working 2.5 days a week on implementing it, and because of the disorganization, hap-hazard design decisions and complicated nature of the site, couldn’t even get close to getting all the design into code on the site (and because of these constant changes, we ended up with a bloated style sheet that was pretty much completely unusable). He’s a great front-end coder but (not surprisingly) became really frustrated with the whole thing, and a few months before launch, he left the company. We were left with a temp worker, who did his best to finish implementing the site in a very short period of time (less than 1.5 months left).
Day before launch, I cried.
The front end didn’t even look close to my design (which wasn’t exactly amazing to begin with), and I refused to tell anyone I knew which website I worked for. Frankly, I was incredibly embarrassed.
It’s darkest right before dawn though…
Since our front-end guy had left, and the search for a competent front end coder was a barren one, our java developers were nice enough to pick up the front end a bit. I had been begging to at least go in and clean up some of this code for months, as I was fairly competent at css and html at that point, but was met by a “tech lock-down” (also known as, “Don’t let the designer near our beautiful code!” and to be fair, the backend is pretty good looking and efficient, so I can understand the concern).
Finally, our head of tech (who is fantastic at tech, and the backend of BView is incredibly well built because of him), bless him, said that I was to take over the front end coding completely, because “there wasn’t any more work to do on design”.
Excuse me? Anyone who looked at our site would realize what a farce that comment was. No more design work? The look I gave him. haha!
But I did it, and with a lot of hard work by both me, the head of product, Colin, and the wonderful support of the entire dev team, we’ve made the whole site a lot simpler, and a lot easier to use.
BUT it’s still not EASY to use.
It’s too busy, we have to repeat ourselves over and over (buttons need to appear twice because they’re not thought out) and styles are still created hap-hazardly based on personal preference. People look at the site and go “AHHH!” and don’t know what to do.  I know I do.
Current business profile (live screenshot)
Current search results (live screenshot)
And, frankly, the site could be a lot more exciting and beautiful.
This is ME saying it, who’s built it from scratch. Not everyone sees the available functionality we’ve actually got some really good functionality in there. The css is also still a bit bloated (although I have shaved a few thousand lines off of it already) because of random ‘designing as we go’ decisions.
I’ve been learning all I can about webdesign in my free time too, which means that I am now 1000 times more capable of making the site work well. All my other designs since I’ve started here have been at least a bit fun, and had some character. I wanted that for BView. I also want to, when asked, “Who built this site?” to be able to proudly say, “I did.”
So, kids, what have we learned?
1. Design should be involved in designing the functionality from the start.
2. You should make it as easy as possible for people to interact with your site and give you content. Functionality is nothing if people can’t use it.
3. Sites should start with a few key features and do them (almost) perfectly. Add features as needed: you don’t need to start with EVERYTHING
4. Doing technical work actually makes designers more disciplined (which is fantastic for big sites).
5. Planning is important, and everyone should be involved.
6. Personal preference for how something looks should take a backseat to usability.
7. Designers need to gain their tech and their management’s confidence so they are trusted to do the job properly without being micromanaged.
8. Design by committee leads to dull, dull, complicated websites.
9. The broken record every designer goes through: Not everything needs to be above the fold, not everything is required on every page, white space is very important and links don’t need to be link blue and underlined to look like links.
10. Most pages on a website will be empty (so those should look just as good as a full profile), and you can’t trust users not to put THINGS IN ALL CAPS AND MAKE THEM REALLY LONG SO THEY WRAP OVER 3 LINES.
11. Designing things simply and well takes time and talent.
12. Designs are never perfect the first time you implement them.
13. Your website has a brand and a personality, and you should make sure they’re good ones.
14. No one will care about making things perfect as much as you, and it’s your job to be anal about the details.
Next: priorities for the redesign!
What would you do with 99% off £500?
Monday, April 6th, 2009
Nothing’s free these days, but one thing is ALMOST free… What would you do with 99% off £500? New camera? A holiday away from the monotony of a terrible job? Get your creative hats on, because I’m running a contest where my boss has given me £500 to give away as part of sponsoring Social Media Camp London. I wanted to do more than just sponsor the event (we’re helping out with that as well!), I also wanted to entertain people with a bit of fun.
So, impress me!
All you have to do is write on your blog what you’d do with the money, link back to bview.co.uk in your post, and then let me know (either here, or by emailing competition@bview.com). We’re going to have people vote on the top ten favourite entries at Social Media Camp on April 26th, so all entries should be in by April 25th. Also, if your whole entry is written in haiku form, you might have a slight advantage, as well as any person who actually writes that they want to use the money to get safetygoats made in a third world country!
I’d appreciate all my friends who help me out with getting loads of entries by spreading the word… you will then also receive my eternal gratitude (or perhaps even one of my new safetygoats I’m in the process of moulding!).
kthxbye.
Safetygoat sponsors the Photo Scavenger Hunt! (OSPSH)
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Last thursday, 14 londoners assembled for the innaugural Old Street Photo Scavenger Hunt. In teams of 3-4, we had an hour to take as many pictures of items on the official list as possible, each item worth 5 to 100 points. If safetygoat was featured, you got an extra point, and if a team member, you also received an extra point.
Here’s the list of items…
People
1. Free paper person – 5 points
2. A jogger - 5 points
3. Cyclist wearing a bright yellow vest - 5 points
4. A punk - 10 points
5. A melancholy emo kid - 10 points
6. A stranger talking on an iphone - 10 points
7. Free paper person getting shoulder barged - 10 points
8. Person on rollerblades - 10 points
9. Construction worker actually working - 15 points
10. Person in grey hoodie – 15 points (in the city??)
11. G string showing above trousers line – 15 points
12. A midget/giant - 25 points
13. A baby – 25 points
14. One of you serving beers behind a bar - 25 points
15. Genuine celeb - 30 points
16. A transvestite or prostitute - 30 points
17. Boris Johnson in the flesh - 100 points
Places
1. A four storey house – 5 points
2. An alley an SUV couldn’t fit through – 10 points
3. A bridge – 10 points
4. A fountain – 10 points
5. A building with buttresses – 10 points
6. A building with a Canadian flag on it – 10 points
7. Any building with the word “cock” on it – 10 points
8. Any street with “Oliver” in it – 10 points
9. A circus – 10 points
10. KFC – 10 points
11. A hill suitable for cheese rolling – 15 points
12. A celebrity’s house – 20 points
13. An old-fashioned well – 20 points
14. The inside of an adult store - 25 points
Things
1. A clover - 5 points
2. An over priced wine menu - 5 points
3. Kebab meat on turning thing - 5 points
4. A scooter - 5 points
5. A one footed pigeon - 5 points
6. A travel book to Peru - 10 points
7. Any fruit based beer - 10 points
8. Hamburger sauce - 10 points
9.  A horse statue - 10 points
10. A rude looking vegetable - 10 points
11. A banksy painting - 10 points
12. Closing down sale posters in store window - 10 points
13. Harley Davidson - 15 points
14. Packet of mint sauce - 15 points
15. A duck - 20 points
16. Garden gnome - 20 points
17. McDonald’s egg mcmuffin - 30 points
Here are a few highlights (and favourites) from the night. You can see all the pictures here.
The winners overall were Taurette-a-saurus Rex (Bash, David, Simon and myself) followed closely by CRAS (Chris, Ruth, Anna and Steve Berryman). Honourable mention to Dan-Meg Sandwich (Dan W, ShinyHappyDan and Meg) and Deep fried Sausage & hung lo sauce (Ollie, Margaret and Phil Berryman). It was a huge success, especially the beers after!
Thanks again everyone who participated (especially “Boris Johnson”), and all the good sports at various bars around Old Street!
Free paper man getting shoulder barged: 10 points
Mint sauce – 15 points
Guy in a grey hoodie – 15 points
Travel book on peru – 10 points
An emo kid – 10 points
A canadian flag – 10 points
Pouring a pint – 25 points
Duck – 20 points
A baby – 25 points
A giant – 25 points
A street with Oliver in it – 10 points
Hill suitable for cheese rolling – 15 points
Boris Johnson – 100 points
A prostitute – 30 points
McDonald’s EggMcMuffin – 30 points
Cock on a building – 10 points
Construction worker – 15 points
The after party!
No, I didn’t copy: The copy versus mutual inspiration debate
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Today I decided I was going to choose my top 5 or 6 blogs that I was going to make an effort of keeping up on. There’s so many blogs out there, but I really don’t have time to keep up on ALL of them. Amongst my top ones to read, I remembered about my early whirl wind romance with Information Architects and realized I hadn’t seen any of their stuff since over a year ago, when I got their last web trend map.
The subject of woe
So, onto their site I went, and imagine my nervous disappointment when I saw their baroque-style frame on their homepage and from WAY last year at the same time (it’s dated 03/08). Now, I have a similar type of frame on my homepage.
Would you say that I copied Information Architects?
Is it even a close call? Probably not. But then, when IS it copying?
There has been a lot of debate on the copying of web designs recently. The most famous one is for Made by Elephant maker, Max Voltar. He created this cute little website as a little contact form.
Soon there were those ripping off his site so blatantly, that they actually left his email address in the contact details, changed none of the code etc (I can’t find the site copied version anymore… maybe it’s been taken down? If someone knows it, can you add it to the comments? I’d be very grateful). Others have written that they are inspired by other people’s web work but there still seems to be a thin line.
Picasso says, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”. Those who copied Tim’s website as well as another who copied others’ style were dealt swift retribution on twitter and were asked to take their sites down. Some who were merely inspired were embarrassed into removing their content.
Is it, Isn’t it? Where is the line?
But what happens when you legitimately have a similar idea? There are examples abound about people coming up with VERY similar things at the same time. If there is such a thing as collective intelligence, how can we say with certainty that it is stealing, especially if the idea is well executed and thought out? As in every stylistic era, there are methods and treatments that get used over and over again. And with web trends and styles running so close together, can we, with certainty, say that we were the first to come up with something? Some say “Nothing is new anymore.” I am getting to the point where I really think things have all been done before.
So… am I a copier??
When I decided to use the gilded frame on safetygoat, I had a vision of an old-fashioned circus (and the music… na, na dadedam nadam nam noah! *that’s circus music, fyi).
I wanted a mixture between old, decorative and circus-like, and new-funky. I even think I’m still in the process of refining it. In this case, Information Architects was using it to make the point that we glorify everything we do on the web and think we’re so great. In a way, that’s what my frame does too, I guess.
So, where’s the line? Even though I claim I didn’t see it, have I ‘copied’ information Architects because we’ve used the exact same element? Even if I DID see it, can I stand accused of plagiarizing their idea? Some companies have trademarked a certain pantone colour as their own, and using a certain sort of treatment on a website is just as distinctive!
What do you think? Have I copied? Where IS the line?
Dress-making and web at online conference
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
I was feeling a bit immature in some of the chat rooms at the conference this weekend, made some comments, but refrained from shouting, “I love head! Give me more head!” but boy did I want to. I lazily decided not to attend the hub in London on friday, but watched some sessions at work. I sat in my armchair all evening saturday night, take-away curry occasionally landing on my pyjamas as I tried to balance my plate and type at the same time. And then sunday, I watched some great sessions while making a dress. Yep, I made a dress on sunday WHILE I WAS AT A CONFERENCE. Does this not sound brilliant to anyone else?
I’m sure I missed some great sessions, but I wanted to share some tidbits of wisdom I learned from the various speakers I did see. So, read on, kids! (and at the end, I promised to show you a full length picture of my new dress).
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