I will back up here a moment and admit that a significant portion of the sites in our portfolio are in tables, including a few of our busiest. WhyEVER would we do that? I have an easy answer:

They are not new — 2007 or older. Still functional, still serving the client, but older.

Outside of newsletters, which can be a different beast, we employ a table so rarely it’s hard to even come up with an occasion. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the site for a new film: The Pursuit of Loneliness. I was stunned at so many things about it: all the text is graphical, the title tags are “menu1024″ and such, and it’s all in tables.

I pulled myself back from the edge of passing judgment, though. Why would they do this? I genuinely wondered. There must be a reason. The design is not bad. It’s minimalist, and it matches the feel of the movie.

I guess that it’s in tables for a few reasons: 1) low budget, 2) quick turnaround, and 3) it’s not going to change. There is no reason to build in CSS if there is not compelling reason to need that flexibility. No changing content… ever.

There are drawbacks, of course. There is no SEO, and it’s in tables. But sometimes the budget and future use simply does not call for elegant code. Sometimes it is valid to just get ‘er up.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

“I really need something very basic.”

“I don’t want a big website — just something basic.”

I hear this a lot. Specifically, the “really basic” part.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing anymore as a “basic website”. Any web presence should be — must be customized to fit your needs, otherwise, what’s the point? Even if you envision a small website, it’s not likely to be “basic”. If your business/product is like everyone else’s, then your specific site goal should be to set you apart. If your product is different, highlight that. And your content delivery method must figure into determination of what’s “basic” — are you planning to update yourself or have your designer update, or some of both, and if so, what specifically, and how much/often? Do you intend to blog, sell things, display adspace, etc.? Do you need a site up in three weeks or have you allocated more time for development? Would you need dynamically-generated content, feeds, or would it all be hard-coded?

These scenarios require vastly different processes and it would be wholly irresponsible for me to even indicate a cost without knowing your plans and druthers. And factoring in all these various factors, how can your website be considered basic? I know a lot about author sites. But even with those, I ask a lot of questions. It’s even more critical to ask questions about unique small businesses.

I don’t mean to be argumentative, and I respect wanting to know a cost, but no designer should advertise a “basic cost” unless they are merely churning out templated, cookie-cutter, clip art stuff. There is certainly a market for that type of product, and kudos to those who can make a living at it. I pass no judgment on those who feel that that is all they need for their web presence. But it is not what we create here, even though the majority of our clients are all in the same industry. Not even our Waxcreative Express site, which is based on a base price, is a “basic” site.

We have built websites that took 25 hours and we have built some that required over 300 and hundreds of hours have gone into building them up over the years. It’s all relative. There is no such thing anymore as a “basic website”. Plus, what a lot of clients think is “basic” is really quite complex code — it’s merely that they have seen it in a bunch of places and therefore think it must be as easy as 1-2-3.

So how do you get a sense of cost? Have a ready Scope Document, or be prepared and available to answer a lot of questions. But I bet your needs are more complex than “basic” — because your company idea is pretty cool, isn’t it? And you are an individual, with individual content management needs and workflows. Don’t sell yourself so short.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

and

And for UK editions:

And finally, we created a couple of publisher icons because they didn’t have their own:

And we made these, too, for GoodReads and LibraryThing: Please tell us if you use these, or if you see them — leave urls in the comments. We’d love to watch some Wax get spread around. Enjoy!

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

This quote was on the wall of a Pixar exhibit at the Oakland Museum last year. They strive for seamlessness, too.

Design is different, however. Design presents a message and therefore should communicate. It actually shouldn’t make you think, just decide. The message is usually, “You need this” or “When you are ready, this is ready”, and other marketing-ish communication. Design is seamless in that way. It’s one of the reasons we design author sites never to compete or subsume covers. The covers always must pop — it’s an author’s main product. I always wonder what a person is thinking when they bury a cover into a site design. Or when someone overdesigns a site such that the covers are second to the site design. Artist vs. Designer confusion there, methinks. And in the case of bad design, the “seams” are so jarring that the message is overshadowed by the discomfort. Either way, it misses the mark.

We are artistic here, but we never lose sight of the fact that we are first and foremost designers. And our goal is seamlessness.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Code-level structural changes to Fan Pages, however, get a particularly fuzzy end of the lollipop. Whereas profile changes affect your personal workflow, Fan Pages are tied to your business and changes are usually subtle, sudden, and annoying (read: costly) to fix. Facebook’s most recent change brings us back into the era of (I still can’t believe it) frames. You remember — scroll bars everywhere and a URL that never changed so it was unclear where you were and impossible to link to. It was awful.

Frames had only two valid, though clunky, uses. One of which was to embed another site within your own. However, what was awkward in 2001 is simply annoying now. But Facebook’s fortune relies upon no one ever leaving their site, so Facebook tabs now employ an updated version of a rightly-euthanized type of code. Now, with iFrames (cute how the “i” makes it all seem so cutting edge, right? NOT!), when you click a link that would take you to a site, you don’t get taken to that site — you get taken to that site within a Facebook frame, complete with those less-than-fantastic scroll bars. With iFrames, Zuckerberg and Co. ensures that you never have to leave Facebook and they can continue to get ad revenue while you browse another site. Brilliant, right?

Gawker Media probably disagrees.

Frames had one other use, that was to have one section of your page that remained global while another could change. Gawker Media used an updated version of this antiquated structure (that was replaced almost entirely by SSIs before most of today’s first graders were even born) to change the their formatting across their eleven blogs, from the standard blog view to something else — a two-paned format in which the story you’re reading is wide on the left and the rest of the stories are listed on the right, in a frame, complete with — you guessed it — those annoying scrollbars. There’s no anchoring homepage. Every single page on the blog is displayed that way. Although they’ve fixed the unchanging URL-problem that plagued users ten years ago, this is also essentially frames.

It’s a terrible user experience. It’s confusing — whether you’re scrolling through the story or through the story list is dependent on where your mouse is. How do you sort by category? Or by tag? Or even by date? According to Lifehacker’s announcement the day they made the change, their major motivation was to make the user experience better, but they couldn’t have possibly tested it because across Gawker’s significant roster, users are not jumping on the bandwagon. According to The Atlantic, traffic to Gizmodo, one of Gawker’s most popular blogs, has dropped from 400,000 in January (the month before they implemented the change), to less than 100,000 today. Even with the option of viewing in traditional blog format, people hate the new Frames-style format. So much so that they have abandoned the guilty-pleasure go-to of the gawker sites. And guilty-pleasure online habits (including visiting your favorite author sites), once poisoned with a sour taste, are very hard to get back.

Facebook is a different animal than Gawker, infinitely bigger and far better integrated than arguably any other site on the web. For better or for worse, this is a Facebook world and we’re all just living in it. Business has become painfully tied to it. Too big to fail like Gawker, Facebook has become the benevolent dictator that can, on a whim, tax our resources at will and, if it wants, bring back sleeping giants.

Bottom line: employing frames might be good strategy-on-paper in Palo Alto, but it’s a very frustrating user experience online, and it’s even worse (read: so not cost-effective) to design for. But like the peasants in Cuba, all we can do is try to survive within it, hoping it doesn’t become more oppressive.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

We believe having a great website invariably assists in reinforcing the urge to purchase. The buyer is welcomed, and reassured that the purchase is supported. The difference in entering a great website vs a mediocre or poor one is similar to the difference in entering a house that is a mess vs entering one that is tastefully decorated and picked up. It’s just more welcoming and easier to get through. It leaves the visitor with a better feeling, regardless of how much the visitor may already love you (though if said visitor doesn’t already love you, a messy house is a turn-off, isn’t it?). Furthermore, if the author’s site can display a strong community aspect, then the welcoming feeling is extended past comfort into interactivity.

Of course if you don’t have a great book then there is no level of website investment will help. And if you don’t have publisher support behind you in the form of a print run that can support a list hit, then again, no effort on your part will land you on a list. And if your promo budget doesn’t support a really good professionally designed and maintained site, then don’t kick yourself over it — you will do the best you can. But it is hard to deny a connection between a great website and the ongoing building of a solid following. And a solid following unequivocally helps in terms of sales, primarily early sales which lead to listmaking. And impressive early sales almost always come into play during contract negotiations.

And the hip bone’s connected to the backbone…

* Jennie actually hit the list many months ago. I *just* found this screenshot in my files.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

But here are a few good ways to check your site’s Awful Factor for yourself: if your site looks like it could be a site for a preschooler birthday party clown (above), and you write grown-up, alpha-male / strong leading lady romance novels, it’s time to redesign.

If your name shows up in your masthead with a big gap, or if one of the letters in your name is so funky it’s hard to read and you are relying on the fact that you think your name is recognizable without being readable, it’s time to redesign (or at least fix it).

If your name changes color and flashes like a disco strobe light and you are not a porn star, redesign. (Also consider not mixing art deco images, rainbows, and curlicue little girl fonts.)

If your site features strong color on strong color on strong color and makes people wince and draw their heads back upon your home page load, redesign.

And if you think that photo of yourself sitting spread-eagled is appropriate, think again. And as for the photo your husband snapped of you without makeup? Please don’t put it on your bio page. You are a professional!

All of these things just came across my desk in the last hour. I feel traumatized.

And this isn’t even bringing up all the sites where the author had only a teeny book cover on the home page — or no book cover at all. I mean, really. How can you call yourself FICTION BEYOND THE ORDINARY if you don’t show a fiction book on your home page?

I realize that not everyone has a professional design team in their budget crosshairs, but surely people must realize that a bad website is a liability.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

During the Discovery phase she cited other authors in her field. This is standard procedure. We certainly aren’t looking to copy any of these sites, but it’s important to get a sense of what the audience will be expecting and what they are used to. So I did some serious surfing, and discovered some serious seriousness.

Much in the same way that balloons seem to accompany almost all kid-related sites, and cloying flowers tend to pepper a lot of romance author sites (none of ours, natch), a lot of suspense authors seem to feel that if it ain’t black with reversed out text, it ain’t suspense.

My take is that the current online feeling of Romantic Suspense is a little exhausting. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it isn’t a very welcoming thing – you know, Hi welcome to my site. Let me stress you out. For me as a designer, this doesn’t work. Few people want to have their adrenaline jacked up when surfing the web. When reading a book it creates a gripping feeling and this is good. But much the same way we don’t make a borderline-porn site look for a writer of erotica, we likewise can’t be too literal when designing for a suspense theme. Covers are quite adept at conveying these specifics. We are certainly not ignoring subgenre considerations, but we are approaching this in a somewhat different way. Keep your eyes out for our upcoming new launches.

Because whatever the site, we feel it must be welcoming.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Or rather, it should have been about buy-in.

A few days ago, on their Facebook page, Gap updated their status with:

Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing.  We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to… see other ideas.  Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.

By “Passionate debate” they really mean, “everybody hates it” and by “thrilled” they probably really mean, “at least everybody’s talking about us.” Such is the nature of spin.

Says Gawker:

The main problem: Gap just stuck the logo on their website without bothering to tell anyone they were rebranding, or why. The secondary problem: the logo is dumb. Ad Age explains the sophisticated critiques of Gap’s new strategic direction being posited by the world’s foremost corporate branding experts:

Across the internet detractors have been picking apart the new look, with the most common sentiment being that it looks like something a child created using a clip-art gallery.

Even had Gap conducted a campaign first, announcing a new look, maybe run a test instead of just plunking the new logo in the corner of their site, they might have achieved a small measure of buy-in. Instead, their actions were jarring. This is not a new product making a splash, complete with press releases and stock jumps. This is a LOGO. To quote Emily, Waxcreative’s Creative Director: “This is the icon that reassures people that you are who you are. There is integrity implied. There is relationship behind it. Changing your logo is not a move to make lightly or without strategy.”

Art may jar audiences, but design must communicate clearly and smoothly (This is something that Emily says a lot). And the lameness of the new Gap logo aside, the last thing any company wants to do is to cause their audience to question the brand, because the brand represents the message. Communication: Fail.

Emily says: “I have nothing against Helvetica, but this logo is uninspired and says nothing. The old logo was so recognizable, I just can’t imagine what Gap was thinking in not easing in such a huge change.” As far back as ten years ago, when Kelly Goto and Emily first published Web ReDesign 2.0, they talked about the importance of easing an audience into redesign changes. They focused on web redesign, but the tenet holds true whether visual or product or packaging. If you change it drastically, ease your established audience in. Ease them in and they will follow. Jar them and they will balk. And in today’s twittersphere/blogosphere/Facebook-ruled-universe, that backlash will happen quickly and spread like crazy.

Sometimes you can just boldly go and to heck with the masses. For instance, when Apple first announced the iPad, there was instant backlash about the name. Eventually, though, this debate was forgotten, the name was solidified in the First World zeitgeist, and the iPad was accepted as the cool, innovative new piece of hardware. People bought into the reality. But that kind of initial backlash would have sank a lesser company’s product before it even hit.

Epilogue: Just a day after Gap’s unannounced release of their new logo,  Craplogo.me showed up. You can make your very on Helvetica-and-blue-gradiant-square logo in two clicks. We had fun with it, but at her desk across the studio Emily muttered, “No one at Gap is happy right now.”

Indeed. But they have no one but themselves to blame.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Yesterday, when I wrote most of this post, there were stunningly beautiful creations in progress on the monitors across the room. The designs had been unfolding, layer by layer. These things take time, and experimentation, and a lack of interruption. Estella worked for about a half hour trying to create an impression of light without actually going for a literal shaft of light. It had been coming from different directions, and at different intensities, and by different techniques. She finally found one that sat well with her and quietly moved on. It’s so sublime, and it looks effortless, but I know she churned the brain cells on it.

While this was going on Misono created a curve, then adjusted it, then tilted her head to the side and moved it. She straightened her head and moved it again. Then moved it back. Then she did did nothing for a whole minute, fingers poised on her trackball. Then she started creating again, adding dimension, and now she is blurring only parts of the edge. It’s — oh, there’s that word again: sublime.

I love that word. And it’s so hard to achieve. Beautiful things being created here this week.

©2012 Waxcreative Design Blog. All Rights Reserved.