My name is Ben Kahans. I am a professional
graphic designer, programmer, web all rounder. Currently on contract with the Concept for Band Poster
Seasons greetings to all dog lovers
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a merry christmas and a happy and safe new year. I endevour to make my resolutions attainable - keeping them within two or three words, ie:
- eat more fruit
- Learn more actionscript
- keep creative
- Do more jquery
- Understand print better
Cheers
Ben
Make your mark and move on
Sometimes things just seem plain stupid. It reminds me of an organization where there has been a push to make all web pages fit into three discreet columns. All signs point to establishing yet another half baked standard and implementing it on 5% of the site to further fragment the infrastructure, look and feel.
And I write this blog as I feel powerless to do anything about it. Voicing legitimate concerns is not what the brainchilds are after. They want to be patted on the back and egos stroked.
My problem is that I just can't roll over - I will shut up under duress but don't try to rub my tummy!
It appears obvious critical issues are ignored:
1. much content doesn't fit 3 cols
2. there are too many old pages to manage
3. You need to consider the people, yes, the actual people. Trying to enforce technical solutions for cultural problems can end in tears.
So when something looks like a half baked implementation of a recycled and failed idea, why do it again? Is it surprising the smartest hand-picked brains did not learn from well documented mistakes of the very recent past?
The quick gain, the glory and spontaneous satisfaction of ticking management boxes is what it’s all about where promotion and salaries are concerned.
Make your mark and move on motivated by greed and glory!
Saving for the web :
Did you know that saving for the web is different depending on which package you use? Well I decided to do an experiment. I took a photo from the web, in this particular case I chose Paris Hilton because it might generate some visitors to this website although more than likely it's the reason I am shunned by the big G!. See the 4 images "saved for web" below:
I copied and pasted the above image into Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator.
I then saved it for the web as a JPG at quality 65%, optimized. I then did a listing in the directory and documented results below.
And we have fireworks coming in first, with flash second and photoshop and illustrator dragging the chain.
As you can observe, the quality seems comparable. Although I must admit on bigger images flashes jpeg rendering seems a bit scratchy!
Conclusion: Use Fireworks to render your images for the web. Fireworks is designed for the web and cannot be beaten. Some designers out there never move on from Photoshop.
It's RESPONSIVENESS!
Ever think the people you work with are lacking RESPONSIVENESS. You move forward into battle and they go to spineless jelly. Well there is a train of thought that it is all about team building. And the foundation of a team is respect for one another, mutual respect.
If you don't have the respect of you team then possibly you branded the stick while some get better results with the carrot.
Most get sick of the taste of vinegar and crave a little sugar to keep them going. What ever! People are individuals and this needs to be understood and respected on this basis . If you treat people as a resource and a resource only then you are a nuff nuff and deserve what comes your way.
5 good reasons to give up Search Engine Optimization
Every so often I quit. I quit music, ditched graphics, snuffed programming, hosed teaching in a drunk and disorderly fashion and vowed never to pick up a paint brush again. But now it is time to give up seo? Why?
- It is a half baked pseudo science
- The results are out of your control
- The people who are in the loop stay in the loop and there is no incentive to let anyone else in
- Developing keyword strategies and linking architectures are as boring as bat sh1t
- SEO is for drongos - you can test this theory by having a conversation with one
The updates this web site should never have had.
One of the challenges I encounter is that I continue to update this site when there is no need - nothing to gain - no benefit. So here is a list of some updates I have done which arguably sent me traveling in the backwards direction. Make sense? Check em out!
1. The original web design
This is my original design. Very clean, simple, no horsing around. I wonder why I ever changed it!
2. The original web design with MORE
This is where the common sense left me and the SEO took over. Basically just added text for search engine spiders.
3. christmas dog
This is where things got a bit messy round christmas and we were feeling ill effects from too much jungle juice.
4. flash fest
Danger *** Flash for flash's sake *** too much going on - no plan - this one is a bit of an experiment/lemon and didn't last long at all
5. nu design
This web update had a bit of shape to it - bringing some folio stuff right to the front of the site styled with css to give some interactivity
6. New design Jazzed up
Well I just couldn't leave it alone. I thought this was a reasonable update none the less.
7. shaggy update
The fabric like background gave this one some texture.
8. Blue update
So I got sick of the red and decided to go blue with a buildings theme. I actually don't mind this one
9. Blue update
As usual it didn't last long and I went for a darker blue with more stuff to distract you.
Time to get a rocket up it!
Well I think it is time to get things going with this site. I made the mistake of simplifying things and taking out all I deemed unnecessary including javascripts and flash UI components. I thought making the page validate to html tidy W3C, much lighter in size and simpler technology could give me advantageous SEO results.
So what happened?
I got depreciated in google rankings - bugger! As the nature of SEO, this is hard to explain. All I can do is make changes to the site and see how it effects the rankings over time. Or maybe leave em alone and they will come home. "Possibly I made too many changes and lost some trustrank?" Or maybe some of those cheesy directories I added this site to have come back to bite me on the arse? Some say you learn more from your mistakes than from your triumphs, and so I deem it time to put some time back into this site. But no drastic changes to the infrastructure of the site - slowly slowly catchy monkey!
Armed with failures from the past I will make my site bigger, better, stronger and faster than ever before; Jumping dog design will en devour to lift our creative legs longer and higher to provide a fertile base for your next project.