We open on a small, stuffy meet­ing room. There’s enough room for a small round table, two chairs and not much else. Two men walk in and sit oppo­site each other, the DESIGNER and the CLIENT.

DESIGNER
Thanks for meet­ing with me.

CLIENT
My pleasure!

DESIGNER
Ok, thats enough of the pleas­antries. Lets get this started. Tell me what it is you want.

CLIENT
Bit of an open ques­tion isn’t it? Basi­cally I’ve got this website/blog/blog site/thing and I want to update design. Bring it into the 20th Century.

DESIGNER
You mean the 21st Century?

CLIENT
Yeah that.

The designer pinches the bridge of his nose tightly, takes a deep breath and flips through a stack of web­site screenshots.

DESIGNER
OK. So look­ing at this you’ve cur­rently rock­ing a two col­umn blog with a vaguely retro look to it.

CLIENT
This is true.

DESIGNER
Any thoughts about what look you’re after? What do you want the site to say?

CLIENT
Well I still like the retro look, but I don’t think it really goes far enough. I love the worn look too. Can we include that?

DESIGNER
(angry)
But you just said you wanted to bring it into the 21st Century!

CLIENT
While also pay­ing respects to the cur­rent design.

DESIGNER
(sigh­ing)
Mov­ing on. What about func­tion­al­ity? Is there any­thing you want the site to do?

CLIENT
A cou­ple of things come to mind. Bet­ter Twit­ter inte­gra­tion would be nice.  I tried daily Twit­ter roundups but that became a quick way to kill the site. Some­thing on the side­bar would be nice,

DESIGNER
Oh, so you still want the sidebar?

CLIENT
Er. Ah. Maybe we leave that ques­tion for later.

DESIGNER
Sure thing. That Twit­ter thing is easy. Using Twit­ter Tools you can have your lat­est tweets appear on the site and have a tweet sent out when you post on the blog. Any­thing else?

CLIENT
Gra­vatars, please.

DESIGNER
Great! Now we’re get­ting some­where. We’ll just install Gra­vatars on your site. Easy peasy.

CLIENT
Uhh…yay?

DESIGNER
Exactly. What about com­ments? Have you thought about that part at all?

CLIENT

I have. I was think­ing about mak­ing the Tur­ing stuff bet­ter. And maybe hav­ing my com­ments for­mat­ted dif­fer­ently to the others.

DESIGNER
Yeah. I don’t know what the hell you’re using for CAPTCHA now, but it’s pretty hideous. I can check out the for­mat­ting thing for you. No probs.

CLIENT
Just get­ting back to that sidebar…

DESIGNER
Yes?

CLIENT
Can that be view­able on the indi­vid­ual posts?

DESIGNER
Sure thing. But it’ll cost extra.

CLIENT
Fine. What­ever. While I’m get­ting gouged can you at least make the site looked dif­fer­ent to the stan­dard Word­press themes?

DESIGNER
Now you’re talk­ing! I’ll even throw in a chun­ked up footer and incor­po­rate your side­blog posts into the main RSS feed better.

CLIENT
So you’ll take the job?

DESIGNER
(not hear­ing the Client and start­ing to twitch)
I’ll rejig your whole con­tent. Big fonts! Whit­space! Pret­tier images! Block­quotes! Pull quotes! All on a can­vas that stretches to fit the width of the biggest mon­i­tor money can buy!

The Designer begins to cackle uncontrollably.

CLIENT
Are you OK?

DESIGNER
(still laugh­ing insanely)
Never bet­ter! Now get the hell out and don’t come back unless you’ve got a bot­tle of rum and a fat wad of cash. I’ve got designer­ing to do!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 7:43 pm and is filed under life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.