13.10.2009 ~ Dusty (part 2)
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On Twitter
wtfF0nzie: @davidconde I was going to say 'what rain' until I saw a spectacular flash of lightning and the associated downpour! Just great :)
Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:28:40
It's well known that designers & developers (or any creative individual involved in a client driven endeavor) need to have a pretty thick skin. But said skin can take its own sweet time growing ...
Fond memories
Back in the pre-bust dot.com days a web company I worked for was commissioned to start development on a website for a theater group. It was an exciting project involving enthusiastic photo shoots, excited interviews and a killer brief featuring words like 'dynamic', 'energetic', and 'edgy'... I guess it was before the days of 'easy to use' and 'must come first in google'. It was pretty damn exhilarating!
One dynamic, energetic, edgy website required. Now!
I was charged with the design, having shadowed James during the interviews & dutifully carried tripods during Cro's camera shoots. Armed with the latest tools of the day (paintshop pro, SSI and notepad!) I got to work.
The design would become a labor of love incorporating many techniques I've never dared to attempt on a commercial project while throwing restraint to the wind and forgetting about bandwidth constraints or anything before Internet Explorer 5 (weeks old at the time). You know, a poor man's 'boo.com'!
After plenty of internal debate and the resulting tweaks we decided to make a small presentation to the client. We stood there proudly, the spec we'd made manifest digitally firmly in hand. The modem chirped its tones and slowly the demo site homepage began to res-in. We beamed as the clients eyes slowly widened. The rest went something like this...
Client
I don't like it
Me
Really? Errr... ok? Which part
in particular don't you like?
Client
All of it.
The brief is in my hand, complete with exaggerated permanent marker ticks boldly dashed against each of the closely liaised 'strategic vision statements'... mocking me. We'd ticked all the boxes, while thinking outside the box establishing new paradigms. We'd dared to explore new ground and push the envelope. We'd fallen over the edge god-dammit! And now this person looks on at our flickering newborn marvel in the manner of a dog being shown a card trick! Or a complicated mathematical formula! Which ever demonstrates the most indifference. Surely reason and confidence in our wealth of experience will win the day?
Me
Ah but it uses all the latest ...
Client
I just don't like it. Is this going
to affect the launch date? We
need a better web page
launched immediately.
Something good.
I was gutted. Deeply disappointed. Demoralised. Drained. And burdened by an unrealised deadline...
The void between bursts...
Circa 2am that night I found myself staring blankly at a Gateway 400mhz P2, completely devoid of inspiration or the will to seek some out. An analogue clock steadily ticked off the seconds to deadline. The CD soundtrack to 'The Matrix' lay on the table in front of me. It had already been listened to death, but I'd never browsed the cover art. Indifference and boredom eventually win me over and I take a peek.
The inlay is the usual fare, with a series of still images from exciting scenes (with some curious choices considering it's a flick with ample gunplay and figure hugging black PVC). But it was how the images were divided that started my synapses firing.
A simple curving division of a stunning central image with a support cast of exciting thumbnails... it stirred various creative juices and my fingers began to dance. The result was a more conventional website that embraced then-current traditional (offline === traditional, right?) design trends, splashed a few controversial tags around (meta-refresh & the unholy frame tag) with lots and lots of black.
The client loved it! The launch (you could tell it was a web-site launch on account of the wine and cheese) was a complete success and bagged us a number of interesting clients.
Ultimately it added that very first layer of thickened skin*. And, for the record, I've never owned an analogue clock since...
And that site was?
DyDxTheatre.com - reproduced here in all it's 10 year old meta redirect and frame based glory. The site suffers from the usual age related illnesses of pop-up windows (the required resize failing in some modern browsers), a broken perl based news content management system and various other problems. But gee-gosh the memories!
Kudos go to Cro and Jim, I'm popping together a closer look at our HorizonDM days for my next 'Dusty' related post.