Peter Coles designs (and things of that nature)

Last month I had the privilege of attending the Future of Web Design in London (thanks Matt) and during her speech, Larrisa Meek touched on why we shouldn’t stick to our wire-frames too rigidly. She made a good point that they provide a basis to build on and a ‘weight’ for each part of the page/site. I took note and then to be honest forgot all about this.

Then two weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to come up with a design for a site he was working on. The client had provided detailed wire-frames of each page and had gone into some detail as to what was wanted where. “Great, this is clearly someone who has a clear idea about what they are after” I thought. So why then did I turn down the job?

1. I asked questions about what the client needed and didn’t like the response I got back. As a designer I crave creative license and I try to incorporate the client’s needs in a creative and imaginative way. When asking initially how set in stone the wire-frames were I was told ‘100%’. This meant I couldn’t move things around and find a visual balance or explore different, or interesting solutions.

2. Designers are not photoshop monkeys and can’t produce groundbreaking designs without being allowed some freedom. I’m not suggesting that we should get free run of every decision and never be open to debate, but its a two way street. If you are told “this goes here, looks like this, is this big and should be white” where does that leave you. Colouring in is the answer.

3. No room for maneuver. If your client won’t budge an inch or be open to your input then this renders your job pretty much pointless. Experienced designers know what they are talking about and stay on top of current trends. Their input is invaluable to the success of your site. Visitors to your site will judge with their eyes and vote with their feet if the look isn’t up to scratch.

I’m not saying this client is wrong to be so rigid in their approach, hey its their money, it’s just not a project I want to take on. I’m not interested in making work that I’m not proud of and I’m certainly not a monkey.

Just wanted to pop a small thank you out to everyone who has linked to my blog in someway, shape or form as i finally made it onto page one of google for my name. Who knew there were so many other peter coles’ with websites.

Thanks again go to smashingmagazine.com, csscreme.com, cssmania.com, neiloliverphoto.co.uk and a whole host of others i forget right now.

I will be uploading all my wallpapers for download from my site fairly soon as well as some wordpress templates, stay tuned…

I’ve been busy making up some wallpapers over the past few evenings and lunch breaks for the smashing magazine. I love this website and I finally got round to submitting some work for it. Fingers crossed I get accepted and featured on the website. Regardless of whether or not I do they will be able for download from my website very soon (I want to wait before doing and independent release).

Yes its true, I can’t speak highly enough of Apple. I recently bought a new MacBook, foolishly and annoyingly I choose to buy it right on the cusp of Mac releasing a higher-spec version for the same moolah. I was peeved but after checking the spec comparison the only major difference was the extra 40GB hard drive they had added in (at expense of the apple remote but still!) which is quite a lot of space.

Having already added some software, set up accounts and begun work from my new hub of creativity I decided that I was happy with my laptop and didn’t really want to part with it now. So I rang up the apple support team and explained my misfortune and how I was happy with the machine but felt slightly aggrieved that I’d missed out on the new version by a few days.

Result?

Without quibble they were happy to provide me with some compensation by way of a good will gesture. Why can’t all customer service be this way? I’ve always known apple were a great company and this just goes to show, looking after its customers is a top priority.

Apple 1, My Luck 0

No it’s not a bedtime story for programmers, its possibly the most annoying bug I’ve ever come across.

After tearing out my hair, and crying quietly to myself (CQTM to all you acronym text junkies) I found the problem. If you leave a comma at the end of a set of variables in javascript right before a closing tag like this—> } it breaks the script in IE.

Nice to know, at least now I know how to fix it, or I can choose to leave IE out of the fun now if I please, that will teach it huh!

This is bloody awesome

These guys make me laugh so much, this is just genius

Caught this last night on the telebox, looks like honda adverts are back to their best

Some lovely typography here (music by the hush sound who i also love)

I’ve been spending a few hours in my lunch break making up some tasty wallpapers and images using 3D type purely as an illustration tool.

I full intend to put together a full set of these time permitting, and if they turn out any good maybe i’ll print a few up.

Anyway, if you can you can download a wallpaper version by visiting My Work Page. Its only at one size right now but i’ll put a few variations up when I have time.

Me and Ryan got this live in Beta this week and it looks pretty good.

We set up a really nice flash browser using dynamic xml and .png images so we could browse between countries from the home page.

Ryan developed the back-end of the site where the client can add all the information and pictures for each property. Users can bookmark what properties they like contact the company using specific contact forms for each property.

We’re hoping to have all the bugs squashed in the next couple of weeks, overall though, really happy with this one.

It doesn’t seem to display my background png files properlly, as a result i’ve coded up and ie hack sheet to try and rectify the problem. Its not perfect, and i’ve had to use that bloody alphaloader thing but at least its looking half way ok now.

I’m seriously debating whether to start writing of I.E 6 and below all together this year. Firefox is now leading the way with 36% and I.E 6 is dropping lower and lower every month now. I beginning to wonder if its really worth the hasstle

I’ve just spent and hour or so at lunch today making a nice little php navigation with current page styling. Quite pleased with it.

I’ve also been adding links to campaigns and companies I support, you can see them down the right and side of my site here.

I will be launching this website fully over the next few weeks.

For the time being only the blog is up and running thanks to the kind people at glue. Expect more content on t’other pages when i get a chance.

For now you can hit the links on the right-hand side of the site or visit my 2005-2007 portfolio here.