PERSPECTIVE › an aggressive analysis of life provided by a young and ignorant man in INDIANAPOLIS

Sunday, March 30, 2008

I’ve just finished upgrading my Freelance Website. I’m sure there are still typos and browser incompatibility tweaks to be made, but at least it is live.

SyneiDesign - Webpage

Part of the site upgrade involved coming up with a new mark for my company. While I have a simplified form of this mark for my business card here is the original illustration:

SyneiDesign - Fully Illustrated Logo

Filed in: Freelance, SyneiDesign | Comments (0)

Now Hiring BUT…

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

About a year ago I was finishing up an internship and had no idea whether or not they would hire me full-time. In this uncertain time I did what any person without Cable would do. I picked through the classifieds, read through online job postings, and made phone calls to major companies. I soon found out… that there were no print design jobs for the inexperienced, that there were no web design jobs unless you were experienced in (PHP, ASP, Javasript, XML, Action Script, MySQL, MSSQL, and Poly-fusion Physical Engineering with Super Conductors). I never even applied for most of the positions because the bar seemed so high.

It has been less than a year and I have learned most of those programming languages. The languages I have yet to learn I am not intimidated by… I just haven’t ran across a project that needed them. I only took 2 programming classes in college.

I want to make this very clear… I am not bragging.

I want employers to know that they are unveiling their own ignorance by putting long lists of programming languages in their job descriptions. A good programmer can learn a programming language in a week. All the languages function relatively the same so good programming in practices in one language will usually be good programming practices in another language. What a company should do is simply ask for a web programmer with the background and training to learn any programming language quickly. I guarantee you’ll get programmers that understand the language… and scare off those who went to a 2 year tech school that skimmed the major programming language without giving their students the background and confidence to learn new languages on their own.

I also want job hunters to know that they should apply for jobs that they don’t qualify for. I got offered a job at a place that had a list twice as long as the sample I listed above. When I met with them I realized that they had no idea what they really needed. I told them roughly the same things that I have covered in this post and they were grateful and offered me the position. I declined but later found out that the person they ended up hiring only had basic html and flash action script experience.

Technology is something that some employers still don’t quite understand. They use the laundry list of applications and programming languages to scare off the under-qualified. Unfortunately tech schools and online workshops are tailored to help people meet all of an employers requirements without being qualified.

Filed in: SyneiDesign, Technology | Comments (1)

The Modern Con - Search Engine Optimization

Sunday, March 23, 2008

I have been working as a professional graphic designer / web developer for less than a year and I am already disgusted to find that even a profession as pure as web design is tainted. You may think I’m ignorant for even considering web design a pure industry with the hundreds of web companies that devote there time to identity theft, spam advertising and pornography. However there is a geek-topia out there that has kept themselves entirely pure of such filth. We design solid website, share millions of hours worth of code development for free, write on forums and defend a socialist system of community even while developing sites that are hailed for grossing more money in a single month than long standing fortune 500 companies see in a year.

The problem with the success of our industry is that were so hyped up on our soma pills, pushing open source code , and frolicking through forums freely sharing every bit of information that we have discover. We’ve been so open and honest that we’ve unwittingly created a monster. A monster frankensteined together by the vast amount of information off our wiki-pages, blogs and bulletin board posts. This monster is none other than the Search Engine Optimization Technician!

Every time we design a truly brilliant site for a client. A couple months later the client asks for the sites passwords and ftp information. They inform us that they are going to have a SEO technician ‘optimize’ the site. They don’t know what that means but it sounds good. I’ve seen people pay 10,000 dollars at a pop for these monsters to load up the sites meta-tags and title tags with more copy than all the code that went into developing the site. Throughout their optimization process they call me for help. Sometimes its to ask if I can add a paragraph of copy to the footer, but more times than not its because they broke a portion of the site trying to paste an essay right out of Microsoft Word into a hidden span tag. I have yet to meet a SEO technician that would actually be able to build a website without front page. Search Engine Optimization Technicians are the used car salesmen of the web development world.

Here are things the public needs to know:

Any competent website developer will program your site to be as Search Engine Friendly as possible.
If you are in an industry where maximizing your footprint on the web is essential, tell the person developing your site. They will know better than any SEO company how to give your site the best rankings without decreasing performance, aesthetic appeal and accessibility. Not all websites need to be big on the web. A small company that bakes cookies in Westfield Indiana and doesn’t do nationwide deliveries only needs to show up in a web search when the person is looking for “Buy Cookies Hamilton County Indiana.”
Your sites web presence can easily be increased by diligently updating your site with new information pertinent to your industry. Updating your site frequently will help you rank higher than your competition (all other things being relatively equal).
If you’re site is being designed by a company without a copy writer (that knows how to write for the web), the money you were going to spend on a Search Engine Optimization Technician would be better served hiring a professional copy writer (with experience writing for websites) to rewrite your copy. I have had clients insist that I use ‘professional’ copy straight out of a brochure and their search engine rankings suffered as a result.
Promote your website. People should never be asking if your company has a website. They should be asking your website if you have a company.
Consider getting yourself listed on other reputable website. It may cost money but some of the larger more legitimate listings can help depending on your industry. Someone selling million dollar light fixtures probably doesn’t need to be in some cheap home improvement listings with Lowe’s and Menard’s.
If you think I’m a raving nut and you’re planning on hiring a SEO company anyway… I can live with that. Just do me a favor, start collecting web stats immediately, wait till your sites traffic growth is no longer sky rocketing from the initial website launch and then go hire your SEO. SEO companies feed off the stat boosts your site will naturally receive when you launch, revamp or start a new promotional, but they can’t make any assurances that their code tinkering will do anything if their the only factor.

If you are a SEO technician and you wish to refute anything I’ve said above feel free to post a comment. You don’t even have to register to comment.

Filed in: Freelance, SyneiDesign | Comments (3)

Grow The Scale

Thursday, March 6, 2008

I am a young man. Despite my aptitude for arrogance I cannot presume to know much about anything. What I have recently discovered is that life is to casually referred to as a Journey. College was supposed to be the start of my life. For 2 years I stood on the intersection of ‘nowhere’ and ’somewhere’ attempting to decide which direction… on which road. I am happy to say that I did decide, and that I spent the next 2 and half years stumbling south on ’somewhere’.

It is true that north was by far the preferred direction but I have found that the explorer in me is far from extroverted. At the end of what was essentially a 2 and half year education I was deemed worthy to seek employment. I found short-term employment and by what I can only presume was a hiccup in space and time, the ’short-term’ washed away. I now look back on the beginning of my ‘Journey’ and cannot see it as constant road well traveled. But rather a set of moments that overlap and intertwine as they let out their unique shriek. These moments continually playback a tune that evolves with more power than Beethoven and more unpredictability that Stravinsky. The more I repeat events the better I get at playing them, but it is the tonal variety of events that creates depth. In only one year what was once unpredictable is starting to read as a pattern. Repetition is a necessary vortex used for perspective but if you choose to live life playing the scale your symphony becomes just a road.

Filed in: Life, SyneiDesign | Comments (0)

Multiple: CLOSED	Monday, February 25, 2008
I’m closing this post… I found that because I was attempting to create multiple images I was creating sub-par imagery with a diluted message. Filed in: Illustration Friday, Illustration Friday Multiple \| Comments (1)

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