Friday, September 3, 2010

Class

An incredibly talented photographer client phoned to say her conversations with other photographers yielded feedback that her website needs to include more work, show it bigger, and update it more often (BiggerBetterFasterMore!). So, having heard about sites developed by a company that caters to photographers and produces photo books, she checked out cost-efficient templates. Apologetically, she blurted that she was telling me—before she went live—that her daughter redid her website using templates from Visual Server.

First: what thoughtfulness and class. Many clients would have simply gone live. Like any expert collaborator, I want respect. At bottom, my (former) client owed me nothing; but she was decent and gave notice.

Second:
In a fast, digital, DIY world, good design means something that's easy for the client to do him/her/itself. Heck; our Designerbs diablog is a template you adapted. Another Heck: Paula Scher did letterhead templates for HP. I regret the end of the particular project, BUT I understand the need for a smooth way for a client to control fate in a money-challenged world. I hope the designers and programmers of the Visual Server make some money/residuals from their formats.

Third: The client also paid her daughter (a college student and a photographer) for her time, which makes the client double decent.

All the above said, I do feel wistful. I'm not sure whether I'm sad because the client was so stressed about delivering her bad news to me or because she let BTD go. I'll post the link to her great work once the new site is live.

3 comments:

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

I hear this from a lot of photographers. I'm only sorry that the searchability on the internet has not fully integrated with the potential beauty.

And yes, that client has a lot of class.

Beth Tondreau said...

You hear that their sites need to include more work, show it bigger and update it more often? Have they used templates? Do you meant the template / html sites are searchable but ugly? I was noticing (to my surprise) that some of the sites were surprisingly handsome. How have the photographers you know fared with showing biggerbetterfastermore?

Suzanne Dell'Orto said...

Yes, yes, and yes. They want to be googly, searchable, easily updated. I haven't seen the perfect answer yet. Templates are looking better but aren't all the way yet (I'm struggling through a wordpress template for a simple project right now!).

And I do think that designers offer a critical eye to photographers and artists work, helping to create a theme for the audience. Hard to do for yourself!