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For this design I wanted simple icons that looked great when they were very small. Another designer showed me the light and pointed me to an awesome collection called Fugue Icons.

This collection is very impressive boasting over 2000 icons, many of which look fantastic.  I though I would do the honorable thing and again share the love… so here you go.

Some clients on the other hand know a lot more than given credit for.

I recently had a web design project at the company I work for. It was a large project, consisting of a CMS, shopping cart and decent SEO campaign. I knew this client was on the ball as he had multiple online endeavors and was succeeding in most of them. I had sent off my initial homepage mock up, with three call to actions. I received the feedback via email and the client loved the design overall, with one change, he requested 5 call to actions on the homepage.

The email I received was quite thorough and was obvious that there was substantial thought put into these 5 buttons. I strongly disagreed with having 5 different directions to lead the visitor and I put together an email outlining my concerns. I then followed up with a phone call further explaining my email. The client pushed me to give in but I made my case quite strong and told him that ultimately, it was his choice, but advised against it. The client informed me he would think about it and get back to me, then hung up.

Moments later my boss received an email from the client praising that I am,  “on top of my game” and that he was just testing me to see if I was looking into his best interests and not just doing whatever he says to do.

The big thing I find, is that the boss, being the non-technical guy who runs the place, does not always understand how dynamic web projects can be. Webteam’s can be given KPI’s and targets within a business directly related to how much money they bring in for the month. This can be very difficult to commit to, and more often than not, the commitments cannot be kept for reasons beyond our control.

I’m am not saying web designers should be free from KPI’s and targets, I am simply saying the targets should be more than just how many dollars they bring in for the month. Not to mention that a month is a very tight deadline. The reason I think that straight dollar targets are unfair is because designers, who are in positions such as mine, do so much more than just work on projects that will bring money in for the month. Personally, I do an amazing amount of work other than revenue, 60% of my time last week was dedicated to non revenue work. Internal web design work, quoting, project managing and working on projects where the revenue belongs to departments other than my own.

Why is this work never accounted for?

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that I do not believe it to be an accurate measure to set monthly targets when it comes to Web Design. Rarely are any projects started on the 1st of the month and finished by the 31st, maybe a web projects profitability should be measured bimonthly?

If I set my team a target of $10,000 or $50,000 of revenue, surely all the in house work needs to be measured as a part of attaining this target. If I get to 3 weeks in the month and I am only sitting on 20% of my goal due to clients missing deadlines or overwhelming internal work, it is almost impossible to make it up. It is not like a sales team where you can go out and push to try and bring in new clients.

Unfortunately though, some people tend to forget that I am not a salesperson, I am a web designer.

I ran into a snag though, fitting it into my room.

You see I have a fairly small bedroom, and trying to squeeze it in amongst my CD’s, DVD’s and electronic drumkit and amp required a completely new redesign. So I threw around a few ideas, got a few suggestions and eventually agreed on something worth a try. It was going to require some new furniture and the disposal of a 15″ TV I have had since grade 3 of primary school. Kind of an emotional, yet necessary departure.

So first thing was to got through all my current furniture, clothing, computer parts and other miscellaneous items and finally dispose of the unwanted goodness. You would not believe how many toys I had just hiding away gathering dust. This took in excess of 6 hours. Two hours of which was probably wasted staring at and having flashbacks about my awesome sega collection, Multiple Master Systems 1 and 2, multiple Sega Mega Drives and boxes, boxes of games.

Next I headed out to look for some cheap furniture to store everything. I already knew my TV was going up on the wall, the only place it could fit. So my idea was to have a bookshelf underneath it to hold a stereo, dvd player, vinyl player and some toys, and on either side of this shelf two tall CD/DVD towers standing high enough for my speakers to sit on top of and beside the TV. $160 I spent on funiture and I was stoked. The CD/DVD Towers only cost me $40 each.

So I spent an entire 5 hours reorganising my room and putting the furniture together and I might say, I am quite happy with the results. Apart from the obviously wicked setup, another cool feature is the fact I have my TV, DVD and vinyl player ALL playing through my stereo.

Call me arrogant, but considering my budget, I’d say I did a bloody fantastic job throwing it all together.

Sometimes the results can be quite interesting.

I love looking through my top queries, you sometimes get some amazing long tail key phrases that people are somehow finding you for. For example I am found for the following:

“executive ball clicker” => Position 2
“hell clicker” => Position 16
and my personal favourite… “my girlfriend’s mother” at a strong 15th position

I am not the only one to notice these interesting results a few friends of mine have been found for some… interesting tags like “fat people f**king“, “fat people hugging” ,“f**king fat f**ker hugging” and the amazing “young boobs“. In each of these occasions the site has nothing to do with the phrases mentioned.

I guess these, and many more freak occurances, show how easy and potentially useful long tail key phrases can be in drawing fresh traffic to your website. If one would apply only the simplest of a range of certain keyphrases in content more regularly, I could image some very strong results may come out of it in the long run.

Now this Julia, had sent an email to Raul, clearly in an attempt to squeeze just a tad bit more dollars from Raul’s ever so squeezable wallet. Basically this email went like this…

Microsoft IE8 release

With the recent release of Microsoft’s new browser, IE8, it has brought to light that websites previously designed for IE7 and older versions will render incorrectly in the new IE8.

… blah blah blah …basically meeting IE7 needs and not industry standards.

The websites I am monitoring for you, ??? and ??? both require Style sheet adjustments (CSS) and possible page templates to make them compatible in IE8.

I can offer you 2 solutions,
1. A “quick fix” for both sites which would force IE8 to render its content as IE7 internally from the page templates. This would take approximately 2 hours total.
2. Amend the CSS (Style Sheets) and affected page templates to industry standards on both sites. This would take approx 6 hours total for both sites.

… blah blah blah Regards, Julia.

Now you’re probably thinking that, yes, this email is correct about the potential rendering differences, although solution 1 is a bit expensive for a copy and paste job. To some extent I agree, but then I hear that due to the fact “IE7 needs and not industry standards,”  Julia has taken down both of Raul’s websites until the CSS has been fixed. What a joke!

Due to some minor CSS differences between browsers, Julia has attempted to force Raul to hand over some extra pennies, claiming that the site will not work until it has been fixed.

Above: The Real Raul Julia

I immediately told the salesperson to get Raul on the phone to Julia and make him put the site back up immediately, which he then did, but I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, imagine that, upselling every client in your database between 2 – 6 hours of work everytime a new browser is updated or released. Firefox 3.0.12 was just released a few days ago, now… if I play my cards right I could have a lot of work coming up.

Once I had taken a nice look, in my haste and excitement I continued on and forgot to bookmark this site, and it was lost to me.

I looked around for it a few times but came up empty handed. I couldn’t remember the name, author or even how the hell I found it.

Well, I was just stumbling around again and… I found it

The icon set is called Crystal Clear and was created by Everaldo Coelho. The icons are 128px squared and are split into 6 categories:

1. Actions
2. Logically, actions (app icons)
3. Applications
4. Devices
5. File Systems
6. KDM
7. MIME-Types

Now that I have found them, I thought I’d best spread the love. So I suggest you run on over to the Wikimedia Commons website and have a look at this really nice set of icons. Take me!

OrangeWeb is a blog created by Michael R, (that’s me), which delivers fixes for a variety of issues that a web designer may run into in his/her travels. Think of it as a little guide or a little trickbook outlining problems and solutions I have run into, which may (or may not) prove useful in your work.

That’s not all though, OrangeWeb houses a range of tutorials, free downloads and templates that can help get anyone get started. Furthermore, OrangeWeb will also be the ramblings of a web designer based in Melbourne, Victoria.

…and who is Michael?

The question should be, does anyone really care? Probably not, but I’m gonna spill it anyways.

My Brand New 22 Inch Screens

I am a web designer who works full time for a leading SEO company located in Melbourne and I do freelance work on the side. Like so many others, I am obsessed with the internet in general and spend most of my work and free time wasting away in front of my two, brand new, shiny, 22 inch Samsung 2233 LCD monitors.

My Executive Ball Clicker

All in all, I guess you could say I have a bad case of the googles. Could you please ignore description 1 though 4 – especially number 1.