It’s been a long time folks…but now I’m a freelancer

As the title suggests It’s been more than a while since my last post and I will endeavor to explain why.

Back in October of 2008 I left my position as Lead designer at a web agency to set up on my own as  a Freelancer. At that point the decision to go freelance was a difficult one, largely based on the fact that I have a family to support and with the then impending global financial meltdown on our shores was I making the biggest mistake of my life? After numerous conversations with my girlfriend and seeking advice from other freelancers I made the decision to go for it, an opportunity to work for many different people, manage my own hours and even earn more money were the driving force behind my decision. 

So on October 14th 2008 I officially became Quilo // Freelance web designer..now all I had to do was find some work!! I quickly came to realise that people who promise you work and on-going friendships quickly disappear so I was off to my own devices, I leant on a few contacts and things started to take off to a point where thing were coming alomg just fine..invoices were being paid and as a result I could carry on supporting my family. 

3 months on and Im still going strong, I’ve worked on some really cool projects and my work as a result is getting better and Im in full control of who I work with and what type of work Im workig on.
I won’t lie, there have been some seriously stressful times when things have gone a little quiet or people have delayed paying bills but so far so good.

I’ll be aiming to try get my blog out as often as possible over the next few weeks and months…

Cheers and thanks for reading.

Sam

Will the last person using IE 6 please turn out the lights when they finish!

I thought I’d dedicate this new post to IE 6 and it’s practicality in todays design and development world. It will come to no suprise to people who know me,  my feelings towards IE6 and even IE, I hate it! Sure I loved it back in the day when I based all my layout and testing on this browser but do we really need to accommodate this browser in todays practices? My frustrations are multi fold, firstly for me the most annoying issue…it doesnt render CSS/XHTML that well, it cant handle transparent pngs (not without a bug fix) and lets face it, IE7 soon to be 8, Safari and Firefox have the monopoly on all browsers used out there. 

A typical example of personal frustration is, I’ve been working on a huge site that is built on a pure CSS/XHTML structure, there are many many pages, widgets, dragble content and other visual and user treats that are built for the latest and future browsers. Now it’s hard enough work getting these components to pull together in the “good browsers” but to try get them to work on a dated browser is/was a challenge sure to raise word or two in anger! Another fine example of an IE6 only bug is; we discovered on a couple of sites random text just floating within the page, no matter how much source code we checked, or how many tecchies looked at it we just couldn’t crack it. Then I googled the “random text in IE6″ and sure enough I found that my nice clean html with comments was causing the bug to display the floating random text. EXCELLENT! So all those keep code clean and use comments articles that is drilled into us is totally irrelevant if your intending to use IE6!! 

It’s been over a week since I started writing this post and my thoughts have changed a little!! As much as I dislike IE6 and all that it encompasses  I feel that as a designer/developer we should make the sites as accessible to IE6 users as possible. Whilst I still maintain the thinking that its a dilapidated and awkward browser to cater for I do feel it somehow challenges you as a designer to be better at your skill set! 

But in summing up, I think it’s best left to a client who I mentioned that to cater for IE6 they would need to invest in extra time and money, their reply was short and to the point!..
“They can download a free update to 7 right?” “Yes” I replied, “well F*ck IE6 then”!!! was the well thought response”

Thanks IE6, it’s been a blast… 

A story about putting a site live

Picture the scene, Im about to make the switch between the holding page and the new homepage on my new site when I suddenly start getting the urge to make changes, not just ordinary changes but large scaled ones involving backgrounds, fonts and colours…WHY? oh WHY? 

I put these urges down to my constant nagging with most sites that I personally work on, did I nail that layout correctly? Did I maximize the colour or even the font useage to the best of my ability..Surely there has to be a point when you say no! I’m done,  time to move onto phase 2 or another project entirely. My site in particular was a labour of love, it took on various incarnations of colour, style and even content delivery type but I guess that’s a designers prerogative to chop and change as much as I did, after all would you be a designer of any grade if you didn’t want to better your own personal design?  That whole question is a different discussion right there and one I might tackle in future posts.

In the end I went with what got me exited the last time I toyed with my design, I knew that essentially I was pretty happy with what I had and I knew that it delivered the key messages that I wanted to push so hard. I’m pretty sure in 6 months the site will be different  but thats what makes design so much fun…well in my book anyhow.

In closing of this article, the only piece of advice I could offer should anyone find themselves in the same position as me.. is run with what you feel is honestly 100% your best or damn nearest. Forget about a site you saw that had a nice Web 2.0 interface or that cool gradient effect you saw 30 minutes earier…you made your design look like it did pre launch for a reason…roll with it! push it live and move on…..

But remember, one of the great things about the web is that it’s so easily editable….
Now about those icons…….

 

So this is the blog…now what?

Hi, Im Quilo well to be precise I’m actually Sam Marks…a 30 year old web designer designer based in the South East of the UK. For those of you who’ve found this via my site I wont go into detail…if you’ve stumbled upon my ramblings by accident I can only apologise..but don’t just go! take a minute to see if this is something you could get into. 

So I need to start writing something interesting and informative right? But before I attempt to do so I want to make it clear that the views expressed in all my blogs are mine! mine! and mine! I’m in no way suggesting Im right but Im offering my opinion as a professional designer.

With that in mind, I hope that who ever reads these posts will find them of interest and be able to take make use of them in what ever way they feel…I ask you to comment, join in and make this the community I think that it can be.

Thanks for your time,  

Cheers,
Sam