20 October, 2004

A few weeks back a colleague sent me the following statement regarding a web site where the main content was styled so that it blinked on and off:

”Can you sue a designer for fucking up your eyes?”

My mind was immediately filled with 7 years of experiences that could explain the situation and the following was emailed as a response:

”Behind every crappy designer is a marketing person with brains of shit. It would have gone something like:”

Designer: “The site is ready. I’ve just entered the content you emailed me”
Marketing: “Hmmm…that text doesn’t really grab my attention. Can we make it more exciting somehow?”
Designer (under breath): “Yeah, fire your sorry ass and get a decent copy writer”
Designer (normal): “Well, it is HTML and people aren’t here to be excited really”
Marketing: “That’s not true, my extensive research this morning reading the NetGuide web site taught me a few things about web marketing…make it blink. That way people will know it’s important”.
Designer: “Are you insane or just a dick?”
Marketing: “Just do it. Designers are so emotional”.
Designer: “Here’s your blink, your majesty”.

While not the likely scenario in this case I’ve dealt with this enough to know it actually happens. It was also fun to write.

C and I are looking at our options in life again. After realising we no longer have a cat to worry about and that our work isn’t particularly exciting or fulfilling we’ve decided to take a trip to Aus and see what’s over there. I’m thinking it’s time to basically balls up and take a look around, something I haven’t done in a while.