anxioussilence

Honest Web Design

2007-08-01T23:09:28Z

I tend to be brutally honest in business, even more so than in social situations. Not for any dishonest or ladder climbing purposes, mostly because I dislike dishonesty but also because most of our clients are small to medium businesses and I cannot live with the idea that we would sell them something that would screw up their business.
I run a small business business myself and know how it feels to be on a tight budget, especially when you only have one crack at an opportunity. This is the situation for many of our clients, if we screw up their e-commerce site/brochure/whatever, their budget and resources might not cover someone else stepping in.

Leaving aside the issue of taking pride in our work (which of course I do) and my general obsession with getting the job done properly, I've never believed that you should leave your morals at the door when you arrive at work. I've chatted to many peers and friends in other industries and too many of them seem to think that "it's business, stick the knife in". It's an attitude I cannot align myself with, just because it's business doesn't mean it isn't someone's life. Most of my direct colleagues and peers run small businesses to pay their mortgages and feed their kids, it's not just business to them, it's their lives, screw up their businesses and you've caused a lot more grief than just knocking some share values about a bit.

Anyway, this attitude leaves me with the ability to be terrifyingly honest to a client. I don't talk to clients often, I stay strictly on the technical side of things when I can, there are not enough hours in the day to do otherwise but sometimes I get dragged into meetings in an OH NOES WHO LET THE GEEK IN type way. These often get to a point where whichever colleague has the misfortune of having me in there with them gets some rather horric face-in-hands moments when I explain things in a rather too straightforward manner to the client.

The things that the tend to suprise the most are when I explain that the shiny animated bits the client and my colleague have been focusing on (to avoid talking about the dull stuff) are completely beside the point and there's no necessity to discuss them at such length. Actually the thing that really shocks is when I have to explain that no, we cannot guarantee 100% security, occasionally argueing the point with my own colleague. Security is not something to be taken so lightly, just brushing it off with a "yes, absolutely it will be 100% secure" is one of the most retarded things you can utter. NOTHING IS 100% secure, it does not happen.

Colleagues, mostly those in sales and marketing, tend to believe that by being honest to the client we will lose their trust and probably lose the project. But we don't. In fact I don't think any meeting we've had with a client where I've bulldozed (politely) over a colleagues claims or booted down the client's preconceptions of what they can really afford has done us any harm, I think it does us the world of good. It probably doesn't do much for the industry as a whole sometimes, specifically when we tell them how much things REALLY cost.

It's getting to the point now where colleagues are pointing me at clients much more readily as it appears to have a positive effect, perhaps people are sick of dealing with buzzwords and marketing bullshit, I hope so.

Specific case. We have a possible new client who had the brief for their e-commerce system written up by another agency. The brief was well written, looked shiny and convincing, lots of nice typography and graphics. Fair attention to detail. BUT the brief specified that the system was not going to be built bespoke but an installation of an off the shelf FREE CMS system. The client asked us to quote on the same brief. After a bit of investigation the CMS system (which shall remain nameless), turns out to be a fairly shonky one, easy to install but insecure, needs lots of patching and generally not up to the job.
I don't know how much the other agency had really looked into it, I suspect, but may be wrong, that they were intending on landing the client with this rather wonky system then either charging an arm and a leg for the regular patches and upgrades needed or just taking the money and legging it.
Anyway, my response to potential client was to call up and tell them that I would not quote on a spec that could be harmful to their business. I explained (in nice non-technical terms) what my reasons were and how we could build them a nice bespoke system tailored to their business or alternatively use a decent properly supported off the shelf product that may not include all the funcionality but would do the job and shouldn't fall over. I explained that this would probably be over the expected budget but you get what you pay for. They were ecstaticly happy that we'd been honest with them and although they may not have the budget to use us I think we'll at least get good recommendations from them.

WIAIWYA Rough

2007-05-07T19:26:12Z

First draft (based on sketch by John).

http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/wip/WiaSite_Rough1.jpg

Freudstein Store

2007-04-28T15:43:52Z

http://www.freudsteinstore.co.uk/

Just launched the new Freudstein download store. It's basically just an updated version of the OnLineOut store. Andrew (Freudstein) did the graphics and html I did the php/database/paypal integration. It's simple and effective.

Oh, their music is worth a listen, go on, buy an album.

New Line Out Site

2007-04-14T10:52:05Z

Soooo... busy couple of months. Have been doing LOADS of stuff but not really had a chance to talk about it.

Main thing is the NEW Line Out site http://www.lineoutrecords.com

It's a lot sleeker with plenty of new features. I'm still working through the content and adding new sections. The main concept now is to aim at the punters not the press (as the previous version was), the two biggest updates (so far) are the Bands Section and the Downloads section, the downloads go through a tracking system (invisibly) so I can keep a log of the most popular downloads each month and who is linking to them, this could be done with standard log analysis but I wanted to try this out it also means I can block referrers/ips if I want to.

The bands section, like a lot of the rest of the site uses an internal tagging system to dynamically build the page. Each band has a selection of tags associated with them; the band name, and previous band names, all of the rest of the sections on the site (events, gallery, images, link to us, downloads) also have tags associated with each item so it's exceptionally easy to build a dynamic page about a band or anything else with a tag. No need for complex database structures, as long as I don't misspell band names.

There's loads more on there, I'm quite fond of the Link to Us page which again uses tags and is controlled by the database so easy to update and keep current. There's still a fair whack of 'static' pages but I've made as much of it dynamic as possible to make sure I actually update it.

Lots more to add, a new gallery system, a comment system (for news/gallery/whatever), media player and more.

More later if time allows

Line Out Website - Work In Progress

2007-03-01T22:17:06Z

This is very much a work in progress and may change any number of times before it's finished. This is still a bit of a rough sketch...

Line Out 2007

This is the 7th version I've done this week, I've not been getting on so well with it. I can never find time to work on personal projects, especially ones of this size with such specific requirements.

The site design needs to be as flexible as possible as I never know what we are going to want to do with it next. I was really into the idea of making it a very 'designed' site but it is in reality a working site with a lot of dynamic content so it needs a fairly basic design that I can hack new things into whenever they come up.

I'm updating it for several reasons, mainly because it's soon going to have a lot more multimedia content, the current design (http://www.lineoutrecords.com) is too rigid. I still like the current design but the fixed width makes it tricky to put expansive multimedia pages in. Also, we are embarking on a load of new promotions shortly and I felt an updated design was called for.

The new design is based on a combination of an older Line Out website version and the recent ads we've been running (decayed paint, clouds, etc). I've completely dropped the images of cables and sockets. It's a tricky balancing act coming up with a design for Line Out, trying to avoid cliches and not design for any one scene but still making it look 'interesting'.

The site is going to be very different from the current version. Currently it's aimed very much at press coverage, the new version is going to be aimed utterly at the fans of the bands with photo galleries, videos, free mp3s and stuff like that.

Hopefully I'll get the layout done by this time next week. Then start coding!

DeathBoy Advert for Kaleidoscope

2007-02-19T20:31:51Z

Quick 'n' dirty ad for inclusion in Kaleidoscope....

DeathBoy - Kaleidoscope, Feb 2007 (PDF)

InDesign/Photoshop

Sinthetic 2 Live Booklet

2007-02-18T20:39:32Z

Finally finished the Sinthetic 2 Live booklet. It's my first piece of magazine/booklet style design using a proper grid system. Done in indesign with a bit of photoshop.

Photos supplied by: Scott Wylie (scotbotuk), Andy Upshall and Steve Hunt (cidergoth). It's taken a while to finish as I had to write the content as well which is something I'm not too comfortable with but thanks to a team of fact checkers and proof readers it seems to be ok.

I've kept it simple as it's just an insert for a free download album. Although I designed it as a print piece it's been output at screen resolution and isn't actually suitable for print. I have a printable version that clocks in at 15 Meg.

It's purpose is as an introduction/explanation of the first Line Out Records CD release that will shortly be available as a free download.

Sinthetic 2 Live Booklet

Next project is the complete redesign and rebuild of http://www.lineoutrecords.com and http://www.onlineout.com wish me luck!

News Aggregator

2007-02-16T22:14:53Z

Bit of a work in progress, the Line Out news aggregator. The idea is to save people having to visit all the different band websites, myspace accounts, communities, etc. Just one page with all the recent headlines from the different feeds:

http://www.lineoutrecords.com/newsAggregate.php

There's an admin interface which allows feeds to be added and removed, all that's needed is the rss feed's url and a descriptive name (i.e. Line Out MySpace). It's automatically updated once every 5 hours by a cron job. The aggregate information is also available as an xml file (NOT an RSS feed)...

http://www.lineoutrecords.com/syndication/aggregate.xml

I've written a simple PHP Class to parse the aggregate file and do some basic stuff to the data so it can be easily plugged into any site. When the new version of the Line Out site is live there will be feed of the latest 10 headlines on the front page with a link through to the complete list.

Very simple application but should aid with promotion. There's a few more things I may do with it when time allows.

Tomorrow, some graphic design (probably).

Killer B-Movie Photoshoot

2007-02-07T21:43:28Z

My first photoshoot! This was a little awkward as Kneill wasn't too keen on having his photo taken and I don't have much experience with photographing people (especially those who don't like being photographed), it felt a bit odd doing a photoshoot for a friend but it was ok once we'd relaxed a bit.

Anyhow, I've uploaded a selection of the untreated photos to Flickr, these are not my best work ever but it was good experience. I'll be going through them with Kneill shortly and choosing the best which will then be finished off in photoshop.

In case you were wondering, the gun was a toy!

Complete Set (40): http://www.flickr.com/photos/anxious_silence/sets/72157594523415292/

Killer B-Movie Online - http://www.killerbmovie.com

My camera is unfortunately currently being repaired by Sony so unsure when I will get a chance to use it next.

Reincarnationfish Asset Protection/Download log

2007-01-28T18:06:13Z

Just installed the first version of my new download log/asset protection script on Reincarnationfish.com. The Reincarnationfish site only went up recently but not commented on it as still waiting for a fair amount of content, it's a bit sparse at the moment, also I think the layout needs tweaking a little.

The download log is an apache handler and a php script that automatically logs the download of any mp3 from the site, letting us know when it was downloaded and any referrer information (was it hotlinked from another site or downloaded from an internal link, etc). Although this information is included in the site's standard logs it's handy to have it saved seperately. The logs are rotated monthly and saved as CSV files so that Nick (rfish) can open them in Excel or OpenOffice should he choose to.

All Nick has to do is upload the mp3s to the site through FTP, everything else is done seperately. The script can be easily modified to do a host of other stuff including:

- Blocking certain sites from hotlinking
- Blocking users by IP
- It can be adapted easily for any other type of file
- Graphing the download data
- Easy Upload system
- Reading the ID3 data from mp3 files and including that in the logging

Anyhow, you can test it for yourself by downloading his latest track:

http://www.reincarnationfish.com/mp3s/Reincarnationfish-WeLivedInIgloos.mp3

You can check out the rest of his website here:

http://www.reincarnationfish.com/

More in a couple of days.

Easy Gallery for The Furze

2007-01-20T13:10:40Z

Have added the latest version of my easy xml gallery to the Furze site, you can go look at it here....

http://www.thefurze.net/multimedia/Gallery/

It's designed to be nice and easy to use and nice and easy to update. To add a new set of photos to it you just upload a directory and run the process script this resizes the photos, cleans filenames, creates thumbnails and creates the XML index of the images in that set.

The thumbnails are inserted into a fixed size background to avoid nasty layout problems.

If you feel the need you can then also add captions, set description, order the images and do assorted other stuff, it's all saved in the xml file. It uses XML instead of a mysql database as it means it can be quickly and easily installed without needing to faff around with the server.

I'm currently working on a Flash frontend that will allow for slideshows and the like, possibly a Web 2.0 javascript version and also a more complex variant that allows users to add comments and rate the photos but this will involve mysql and need a bit more work to install.

I've got several different variants of this gallery system now, and can knock up new ones with additional functionality fairly easily.

The Brenna Wolves gallery. This is a very basic setup, to add a new image it is just uploaded by ftp to a directory. The gallery directories are scanned on the fly and thumbnails and resizing is done on the fly. It uses lightbox for the image display.
http://www.brennawolves.org/gallery/

Andew Upshall. This version doesn't include a public list of the sets you need to enter a client username to view a gallery. Clients are also given a direct url to view their gallery if they don't want to keep entering the username. This is not so much for security (it's not intended to be secure) so much as a personal touch.
http://www.andrewupshall.com/client_galleries/

Faetal. The earliest incarnation, pretty straight forward.
http://www.faetal.co.uk/gallery/

Claires Court. Last version prior to today's. There's a LOT of content in this one so everything is cached on the server and nothing is done on the fly.
http://www.clairescourt.com/multimedia/gallery/

Killer B-Movie. Another basic version. Some nice Killing Joke pics.
http://www.killerbmovie.com/media/gallery/

Anyone want a gallery?

Claires Court Schools Site Launch

2007-01-14T18:53:36Z

New site launch today:

http://www.clairescourt.com/

I'm not 100% happy with some of it but this is very much an ongoing project. I'm going to be tweaking the design over the next week and adding a flash animation to the hompage (NOT a splash screen just an intro anim at the top).

The header image needs tweaking as it's a little flat at the moment. In reality this site is much more about it's content than it's style so we have aimed to get it live with correct content then adjust the style as we go along.

Xmas Card

2007-01-09T23:19:44Z

For no real reason other than I've been cleaning up my directories here's the Xmas card I made girlygoth for Christmas, it was knocked up Christmas morning while I waited for her to come round for lunch. The snowflakes are from Kapitza's rather nice snowflake pack. The rest is my own illustration (Adobe Illustrator), all texturing and colour done in Photoshop. The final version was covered in glitter.

Click for big. Big version has been converted to RGB and shrunk to desktop friendly size.

What's Your Malfunction - DeathBoy Viral

2007-01-07T16:39:16Z

Here's the product of yesterday evening and a fair chunk of today. Please be aware it plays music at you (with rude words in it), includes rude words in the text. There's no nudity but plenty of drug/violence references....

http://www.lineoutrecords.com/malfunction/

It's a viral quiz to get some coverage for the DeathBoy - End of an Error album. The results cards were supplied by David Williams, the music, concept and questions by deathboy the remainder is myself.

It was knocked together rather quickly but I've still tried to make it as flexible as possible. The code that runs the quiz is php, I considered a javascript/ajax type thing but we want this to be as absolutely robust as possible as any viral should be and time was of importance, I find PHP much easier to make robust than Javascript (and I like PHP) so there you go. The quiz engine accepts a human readable config file so it can be adapted very quickly to make a new quiz. It could also easily be set-up to allow the public to generate quizzes but there are plenty of sites that already do that.

The audio player is a bit cheeky as it plays by default, but we are advertising the album, the concept being to get people to listen so defeats the object otherwise. I built a basic player in flash and scripted the minimal animation (the track name fades in). Again it's flexible in that it uses an xml playlist to load the tracks.

The background texture is a macro photograph of rust on a skip.

Fat Habit Flyers (Mark 1)

2007-01-04T21:07:48Z

Double sided A6 flyer for Fat Habit gig/album release.

I'm not very happy with these as I've only had a very short time to get them done in due to overwhelming mountain of work that dropped through the door today. Anyway....

Side 1
Just a cut down version of the poster (see previous post).

PDF: http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/wip/FatHabit_Flyer_Side1.pdf

Side 2
Quick 'n' eezy throw together of the album cover with some text, not much too it. I did the album cover a while back and still quite like it, Mark told me what he wanted and I created it, he supplied photo and logo, I drew the sign, the graffiti is my handwriting. The gargoyle in the background is from the 12" cover, it's a vectorised and slightly adjusted photo of a gargoyle candle holder girlygoth bought me a while back.

PDF: http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/wip/FatHabit_Flyer_Side2.pdf

No time for anything else tonight, massive pile of work to plough through :0(

[Edit - I've just noticed the colour mismatch on the second flyer, will fix later]

Fat Habit Launch Party Poster

2007-01-03T21:32:29Z

Fat Habit launch party poster.

Just need to sort an A6 variant for posters and it can go to print.

A3 PDF Poster
http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/wip/FatHabit_LaunchPoster.pdf

Reference Jpg
http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/wip/FatHabit_LaunchPoster_REFERENCE.jpg

The logo and photo were both supplied, the rest is all my own. I like doing stuff for Fat Habit, it's a nice change from the stuff I usually work with and Marky is a nice geezer (buy his album).

Reincarnationfish Work in progress

2007-01-03T21:15:44Z

Currently working on a new version of Reincarnationfish.com (current version has nothing to do with me).

Current state of the site:
http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/wip/Rfish_Site_Draft.jpg

I think it's nearly there, just need to get rfish to sign it off. I suck at doing final details on a website draft graphic and I usually put the final details in as I code the html, this is a habit I need to get out of.