wannabes
When I tell people what I do for a living, they often get a far away look in their eyes. Their voices go all soft and wistful. Sometimes they physically pull back a few inches and actually look me up and down. I can almost read their minds. "You? You . . . are . . . a . . . webdesigner?" And after people have had a tour of my website and see me again, they are positively deferential. "This is what you do all day?" Naturally, they assume I’ve really really gotten over on the system somehow. Apparently there is an assumption that webdesigners are just sitting around on their dead asses playing with with computers tweedlededee! while others are out workin' for the man.
But there’s more! Dana is one of the most talented designers I know. Before I started love-productions, I used to sit and look through her sets in awe.
This article shows her writing talent, as well. There are so many truths in this article that I relate to, since this is my goal. And even though the thieves like Dana talks about make it daunting, I still want to do it. I want to grow and make people happy with their websites!
My own sidenote, not related to the article:
Can you see how funny family and friends will look at me then? "you make webpages for a living? that’s... uh, nice?" and then "you look fine to me, I thought you were sick?" Boy, I’ll be getting a double whammy, huh?!
Comments
That’s a great article! Thanks for sharing. I came across this website today and thought of you: http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/
It’s pretty cool!
Posted by: Amy | May 21, 2002 08:22 AM
Great article. My husband is a web-designer (as in that’s his JOB). He does the pages for comics.com, dilbert.com, and a few others. I, on the other hand, am a dabbler. I do a fun little page just for me that is nothing fancy but is fun for me. He thinks my page could be so much more and doesn’t understand that I’m quite content with what I’ve done thusfar. But I liked what the article has to say about the difference between a designer and some who makes webpages.
Posted by: Jaynee | May 21, 2002 11:27 AM
That is a good article. I’m not a web designer myself - I just make webpages for myself, and I’ve never considered myself to be a web designer because of that. Even still, I found it very interesting. It’s good to see that someone has written an article highlighting that there is a very big difference between the two!
Posted by: miss kathryn | May 21, 2002 11:36 AM
Good article - stunning though that someone took all of that.
Posted by: Lady Phoxxe | May 21, 2002 12:36 PM
I just want to know...where do I look for help on desining a 'new and improved template' or should I just buy the book "HTML in a Weekend"
??
Posted by: btezra | May 21, 2002 03:06 PM
Wow, that’s awesome stuff, girl, thanks!
Posted by: Tricia | May 21, 2002 04:26 PM
I so get it (the working in your sleep bit, especially ;)...back when I was actually building lots and lots of web sites, I remember once starting to fall asleep in a biology class while taking notes. What woke me up was when I realized that I had written, "onmouseover".
Posted by: Amber | May 21, 2002 09:37 PM
Oooooh, and now I just read why she wrote that essay.
Once upon a time, I ran a web design-type enterprise of my own, before too many stupid clients made me decide that it wasn’t the thing for me. Anyway, someone managed to find my personal site, yank all of my graphics, claim them as his own, and set up his own business site (selling my other designs from my other site, and the designs of other people that I actually knew). It was probably the most frustrating experience of my life: I got the host of his site to shut him down, but he still has all of my graphics and goodness knows where he’s trying to sell them now. :/
Posted by: Amber | May 21, 2002 09:45 PM
It was really great to read all of your comments on this. I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw the brilliance in the article.
:giggle: at Amber’s mouseover!
btezra, if you are looking for a weblog template, I have quite a few on my graphics site and the blogplates ring has a whole list of designers that make them
Posted by: kristine | May 22, 2002 06:08 AM