Squared Eye » Notebook » SquaredEye.com Launches

Starting at the end

The process of launching one’s own site is something others have written about before. It can be hard to do, and often gets thrown on the back-burner in the heat of keeping new projects coming in, loving your current projects well, and maintaining good relationships with the clients whose sites you’ve already christened. There is always the hope that they might laud your business as the great ship site builder who gave them a place to call home in the vast sea of the web. No, my last client was not Herman Melville, it just seemed like a decent metaphor. Without further waffling, here is what I’ve learned, punctuated by the wandering iterations of Squared Eye over the last eight months.

I am the worst and most expensive client I have ever had

I got an unsolicited strong critique about the site a few days ago, and while at first, I thought about how to write an extremely witty critique of this person’s inability to behave in a socially polite way, I realized quickly that whether or not they know how to be a decent communicator, they were dead on about what the design was lacking. If I had simply treated myself as a client, and gone through all the thorough rigamarole of information architecture, wire-framing, designing, and then building, I would have completed my project sooner, and been more critical of my own designing and development. I am the worst client I’ve ever had because I didn’t act like a client, I acted like a backseat driver to myself.

These versions are articulated by the new font I chose for Squared Eye. The line weight of the font is reiterated throughout the design. At this point, I was also trying to achieve a totally flexible layout. In the end, I realized I was doing so for the sake of ingenuity rather than a solution for my business needs.

I am the most expensive client I’ve ever had, because being in the loophole of trying to find the right design solution for a problem that I never quite communicated clearly to myself. Poor communication takes a heavy toll on a project. It cost this project time and money.

I don’t have time to work on my own site

This needs some clarifying. What I am saying here, is that you will never have time to work on your own site unless you make time. Again, treat yourself like a client. Think about the benefits of what a change to your site will bring. Indeed, assess if there are any? If you believe the benefit to be financially viable, then dangit, get rollin, and make time. If you don’t have enough time in the day, find someone to hire to do the stuff that they could do faster and cheaper. I should have done this. I can code, but there are folks I work with who are better and faster coders than I am. I should have released my intuition that it was ludicrous to pay a trusted colleague to work on the business site. I could have been making important phone calls and uploading new interface elements.

There is no such thing as perfect in design

One thing I’ve learned about design, which I believe I love more than anything else in the practice, is that there isn’t such a thing as perfect. There are problems, and there are solutions. Rather than trying to design to perfection, I am learning to design to solution.

These are the last versions before the one you see before you. I began trying to assess the content I'd be showing on the site, and the nature of what sets apart a hip designer website from a site that means to attract new customers to a solid web, who values cleanliness, articulate language, and a genuine love of designing.

The solutions I am interested in are marked by care for detail, an earthy knowledge of the human mind, and a lust for usefulness. These don’t happen awkwardly, they happen through the rigor of daily design exercise, through the implementation of systems and processes, and by love of doing something of value. If I had known that eight months ago, I might have come to a different solution, or I might not have had to produce all of the designs above to come to the same conclusion.

Don’t forget to thank people

These are the folks for whom I am indebted for their friendship, skill, and care for a burgeoning designer and business owner.
Amy, Brighton, and Levi Smith. You are ridiculously faithful to a man who needs your care, and encouragement. I love you people!
Patrick Woods, Mark Steinruck, Daniel Scrivner, Nathan Smith, Dale Chapman and Eric Versluys. You all made this process a lot harder! You made me work harder, think differently, and kept me on my toes. Thanks for your critique and code.