Jaguarwoman
Essay: "So You Wannabe A Webdesigner?", Part I
Sometimes
when I tell people what I do for a living, they get a far away look in
their eyes. Their voices go all soft and wistful.
Occasionally they even pull back a few inches and look me up and
down. I can almost read their minds: "You?
You . . . are . . . a . . . webdesigner?"
After people have had a tour of my website and see me again, they are
positively deferential. "This is what you do
all day?" I guess they're thinking I've really really
gotten over on the system somehow. Apparently there is an
assumption that webdesigners are just sitting around on their dead
asses playing with with computers tweedlededee! while others
are out workin' for the man, living the Puritan work ethic.
It's not just me. Other webdesigners report this
experience. Along with the idea that computers are magic and
websites are made out of pixie dust, there is a widespread awe of
people who make a living by being creative. Sure, you think I'm
exaggerating. But . . . some people are so worshipful of the
creative live - and webdesign in particular - that they actually
assume the identities of real webdesigners. Apparently it's a
celebrity kind of thing.
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Contrary
to popular misconception . . . webdesign is haaaaard work.
Ideas do not fall out of my skull onto the
keyboard. I produce by the sweat of my neurons. I
live by the exercise of my wit. And to do so, I need to
actively cultivate my own vision through constant sensory self
management. I have to be dedicated to speculative
reverie about 24 hours a day. That's right, like
most webdesigners, I work in my sleep. Such are the
brutal requirements of innovation.
And then . . . interacting with real clients taxes my facade
of normalcy to the limits. Supplying the personal Holy
Grail of websites for individuals and businesses requires a
constant, gritty effort of conceptual engineering. There
are devilish puzzles to be solved in order to develop (and
pronto!) a unique webpresence for clients who think getting a
website is like ordering a suit from a Hong Kong tailor.
Like . . . maybe I dispose of a basement full of sweatshop
laborers who can toil overnight to produce the site by
dawn? But nope, I'm AM the sweatshop.
Of course, thinking up big ideas is just the beginning.
A webdesigner also has to know how to manifest those ideas in
a technologically functional form. Digital design
demands a complex interaction of creative vision, graphic
skills, and technical know-how. There are dozens of
knowledge domains which compete for space in my slim attention
span . . . and I'm technically challenged to begin with.
So, as I said . . . webdesign is haaaaard work. It's one
thing to make a simple webpage. Just about anybody can
do that. Coming up with LOTS of unique, functional
designs on a businesslike production schedule is on an
entirely different order of difficulty. I suppose it's
understandable if there are people who don't have the heart to
actually assault the learning curves but who still wannabe
webdesigners. Instead of doing the sweating themselves,
they pretend to be webdesigners, working hard to avoid
the hard work of creativity and knowledge acquisition.
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Lotsa
people wannabe webdesigners, but the difficulty of actually doing
webdesign produces lots of eager cheaters.
Here's an infamous example, where someone has used dozens of
my interfaces - from old linkware to current shareware to
custom work designed for individual clients - to construct a
"readytowear" storefront:
http://shells.free.fr/
Click
on "Collections" to get a surreal insight into the
lengths to which some people will go to assume the hallowed
mantle of a webdesigner. This "collection"
represents quite a lot of work, y'know? Work that could
have been devoted to actually being a webdesigner instead
of pretending to be one.
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Look,
there is no shortage of people who fantasize about creative self
employment in a computer-related area. There's a ton
of people in the world who dream of (1) staying home, (3) being their
own boss, and (3) getting paid for thinking up stuff. That is
perfectly understandable. And I'm here to tell you it's grrrrrreat!
But that's because I am, after all, someone who thrives on challenge and
hard work and self direction, not because I'm counting on some vague
fund of "talent" to get the job done. I wouldn't dream
of pretending that what I do is based on talent. Webdesign is
waaaaaay too hard to be a simple matter of talent. For me it's not
a fantasy; it the bread and butter, meat and potatoes that makes my real
world go around.
While I am indeed living my fantasy, being a webdesigner
is not quite what others imagine it to be. Although
webdesigners are hardly enriching themselves, "webdesigner"
has come to be one of the most desired jobs descriptions in
history. But very few people who wannabe webdesigners have the
slimmest clue what it takes to get the job done and get paid for
it. For the vast percentage of fantasizers, actually being
a webdesigner is something like a fairy story. And some of those
people would rather have the fantasy than the reality.
Coming
soon . . . Further Topics In "Webdesigner Wannabe"
"The
Better The Webdesigner, The Bigger The Target"
"The
Webdesign Business As Guerilla Warfare"
"Clients
From The Black Lagoon"
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