The following text was originally featured on Smashing Magazine's blog.We’re Not ONLY Web Designers
One of the biggest misconceptions about designers (and usually Web designers) is that we’re just Web designers — that the scope of our skills begins with Lorem ipsum and ends with HTML emails. This is ridiculous.
Everyone in this industry fills dozens of roles throughout a given day. On a call with a prospective client, we take the role of salesperson. After the contract is sorted, we become researchers, combing through the client’s outdated website, looking at analytics and identifying breakdowns and room for improvement. Soon after, we become content curators, wading through the piles of content in PDF format sent by the client, identifying what works and what doesn’t.
Then we’re architects, laying out content to get the most important messages across, while ensuring that everything in our layouts remains findable. We design the website itself. We manage client expectations and work through revisions. We write code. We introduce a content management system. We carefully insert and style content. We create and update the brand’s presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We help to create an editorial calendar to keep content fresh and accurate. We check in on the analytics and metrics to see how the website is performing.
Notice that “design” is mentioned only once in all of that work.
Ok, Shawn's turn...
As a website designer who finds himself wearing many hats, this story hits the nail directly on the head for me. I've never really stopped to think about exactly how many hats I'm expected to wear when someone calls my office. In any one given conversation I can be advising someone on the angle for their press release and in the very next breath asked to add chat room functionality to an inside page of their web site. Oh ... and how much would I charge to put together some postcards for a quick mailing due next week?
I'm blessed with having the skills required to handle both print and web design (as well as writing with my background in Journalism) ... I'm not really certain my clients would be as happy as they are if they had to work with 6 different people or even worse, specialty firms who only dealt with one very particular aspect of the project. People understand when they call my office, I'll be the one answering the telephone.
While I've never really considered myself a very good multi-tasker, I've found that utilizing some basic tools really helps me juggle the day-to-day business affairs for North Country Design. Keeping a notebook dedicated to each major client with my day to day notes, conversation notes, email print outs and etc. helps me stay organized. I can easily flip back through pages to review previous conversations - and while it might be more fitting for me to have this in a digital format, I find the ease of use of the notebook quite handy.
