Hear that? No? It’s the huge web design uproar, caused by a (relatively) innocent post down there at Carsonified blog. It’s the sound of designers clashing their lightsabers mice tablets, asking for blood, waiting for revenge, twisting their thumbs pointing down.
Ok, I do kid, but seriously people, what’s the whole fuss?
For those oblivious, Keir Whitaker of Carsonified posted a blog post, calling designers to well, design a holding slide for the upcoming FOWA event, without being paid of course but earning your place on the screen, complete with URL or Twitter username. It was supposed to be an innocent design competition, supposed to be fun.
It’s not anymore.
Web-des superstars like Paul Boag and Mark Boulton cried foul at this contest. Along with other designers, they insist that this is spec work and people should not invest time at it, if they’re not getting paid. I’d say, alright, I’m the first one to claim that free is dead, but seriously…
Is it so important?
It’s supposed to be a simple design competition, the likes of which we’ve seen countless times on the interwebs so far. Why the revolution? Why demand money for such a simple (in my simple eyes) task? Either you like the idea and you do it, or you don’t like it and you don’t. Is this whole 130 comments thing really necessary?
I’d be more critical on Carsonified for their latest spamming failure, but this? Come on people. Where’s the fun in being a web designer anymore?
I absolutely love most of the work of Squared Eye. So much attention to detail and lovely designs, I always love that. They even went as far as to provide us with two awesome looking case studies based on two of their works – lovely, lovely.
I often use one of their sites, PatternTap.com, to find design tidbits and get inspiration when designing a widget (since I don’t have my LittleSnapper library with me when at work). Most often than once, I found myself trying to search / browse among the stored screenshots for a specific style.
PatternTap provides two ways of filtering images: by tags and collections. I haven’t had much luck using both. Let me explain why.
Are those all?
First of all, when clicking on one of the options above, you get a nice sum of relevant keywords. I always find myself wondering, what, that’s all? Are those all the possible tags that people used? Are those all the possible collections of all users? For some weird reason, this way of showing stuff does not convince me that it’s accurate.
Alphabetical? Reverse Alphabetical?
Are those tags / collection names sorted? If yes, how? I’d prefer it if they were presented in an alphabetical order, I wouldn’t have to scan the whole list to make sure the tag I look for is not included.
Collections without Images?
Some collections I’ve tried (namely Borders) yielded zero images in expected results. How can that be? Why is the collection there anyway if it’s empty?
Dude… wait, what?
Users are notorious of their short memory. Then how come there’s no indication whatsoever of the sorting filters I’ve used in the next page? The breadcrumbs only say, Collection / Sort. Yes, sort, but sort by what? There is a (wise) Reset button, but no obvious way to see what you’re resetting. You have to re-open the Tags or Collections menu to see what’s selected and what’s not.
Plus, uhm…
A tiny “no results” bug!
I may be nitpicking there, I don’t design better than those people but I found those flaws while using their site, not while admiring their work. It’s just some issues that could be easily resolved, in my humble opinion, leading to an even better service.
I think my latest desktop sums it up sweetly.
I really missed the excitement of it all. But I’ll get it back, I promised to myself. I’m making baby steps.
On other news, kittens.
