The Design Process – Behind the Scenes, Part 2 Redux

You can read The Design Process from the Client’s View and The Design Process – Behind the Scenes, Part 1 if you want to start from the beginning, or read the summary below. Any italicized or emphasized words are jargon used at my company.

An Overview

From the Client’s View

The client decides they need a web site and call Rich. Rich explains why it is important to their business that they have it. They pick a look and their domain name, then supply us with their content. We contact them with a proof on the test site. If they approve it, the site goes live. If not, corrections are made and proofed again.

The Other Departments

Supporting the Web Department with their expertise: Photo Department and Proofreader.

The Web Department – Technical and Design Process

Rich builds a work order or a packet, gathering all the necessary materials – the content, the look, contact information, specific requested items, and directions. He gives the new text to the proofreader, a photo order or purple sheet to the Photo Department, and the packet to the web developer (that’s me or Tim).

Now that I have a packet in my hands, I can check the Web Marketing mac server for my directions. First step to a brand new site is to take the Photoshop file and turn it into a CSS layout. On a good day, this takes me about 4 hours:

1. Slice up the Photoshop file and save the images, making sure the images are optimized for dial-up users.
2. Open my master site file. The grand scheme consists of a folder with two items: an HTML document, the aptly named template.html, and a Cascading Style Sheet, main.css.¹
3. Take the template.html into Dreamweaver and define the editable regions.
4. Create the new pages with Dreamweaver and upload it all to the test site.

The client is e-mailed a notice that their design is now available to view online. If they are diligent, they have already submitted their content, and the notice informs them that their content will be on the test site soon.

The rest of the time is spent putting their content into the site. This includes building an animated flash intro (if they insist on it), building slideshows, adding text and photos, and incorporating small bits of AJAX where needed.

What happens next?

When they have new information they would like added to their site, they contact one of our Web Coordinators (Sara or Doneta) and give them the directions for changes. Sara or Doneta then types up the client’s directions, gather the necessary materials and order photos.²

Footnotes

1. Kaizen. These files are signs of our progress. When I first started, there was no specific folder where all the designs were saved. Each artist who had created the design had the Photoshop file saved on their computer, wherever they liked. That same artist would find and open that particular Photoshop file, slice it up for a table design, then open up GoLive and cram the design into nested tables. On a good day, this took me 8 hours to create (but only 1 hour for Tim).

A year later, we have centralized our materials. All Photoshop files are housed on the Web Marketing server in their own folder, with backups on the individual artist’s machine as well; the CSS layouts take less time to build (3-4 hours for the layout/presentation) than tables; an HTML file and CSS file supply a skeleton and works as a guideline to stop errors before they happen (such as incomplete doctype declarations in the HTML). Our efforts have been rewarded with less stress: either of us can build the new site, they are no longer dependent on any one particular person. That means while Tim is gone, I can handle building new sites that he originally designed, and vice versa. It also means if one of us is overloaded with packets, the other can easily take on some of these assignments and pick up where the other left off without difficulty.

2. The Web Coordinators’ responsibilities are much more involved than this, but it is outside of the scope of the Design Process. For the record: they coordinate the updates to the Sale Almanac page, compile the materials for the Upcoming Events e-List, obtain new photos from the clients and/or other agencies possessing updated photos, post the Angus Journal magazine to the Angus Journal web site, bill out the hours for each packet, field client calls, and create Sale Reports among many other things.