Why I usually can't help
I offered to help teach a friend how to create a site in Dreamweaver. He's a graphic designer so he'd already composed something in Photoshop, he just needed to slice it up, import it to Dreamweaver, then add the necessary HTML and CSS in order to make hyperlinks, fill text, and define styles. Simple stuff, really...he'd done all of the hard (design) work.
This afternoon I went over to his place and sat down with him at his computer. Aside from being a little lost navigating around on his Mac I think I was able to help guide him through the whole slicing and importing process and told him about some potential problems that I saw down the road for him as well as helping him get started on creating a template. This took all of two hours and I felt like, while he was clearly still a beginner with the program, he was getting it...
...Then he asked me if I'd do it. All of it. For free.
I said "yes", because he's a friend and also because he's promised that he'll actually bring me in on projects that he's lined up to do similar work--and I'll be paid a proper contractor's fee at that point. It's also very little work and I'm not contracting for anyone else right now, so all I've been doing lately is build my portfolio site. Whatever hours I'm "giving up", I'll make up in the long-run with the work I get through him.
But this is why I usually don't offer to help friends with their websites; not because I'm unwilling to do free work for a friend, but because unless they already have some grasp of the web design process (and I don't just mean basic comprehension of HTML) there isn't much I can do except to do the work for them. I won't pretend that making websites is the most difficult job in the universe, but there are right and wrong ways to do things, and because it relies on the code and not artistic methods to accomplish a certain task, it requires an understanding of the materials (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) in addition to a keen eye--even with wonderful programs like Dreamweaver that let you design sites with a user-friendly, visually-oriented interface.
He had the Split design view open (where most of the screen is a rendering of the page with a second section that shows the code), and when I had him click on blocks of code to edit them I could see his eyes glaze over. When I explained how Dreamweaver had taken his sliced images and arranged them in a table, pointing out where the files had been placed and how he could edit it in the future, he looked like a lost child. He's one of those really talented visual artists that has no interest in (or capacity for) coding. I've always considered myself an artist, but there's also a part of me that is intensely fascinated with the way things work. Maybe it means that I'll never be as good of a visual designer as some of my friends, but I've always had my engineering side that sometimes conflicts with (but usually compliments) my artistic side.
The way I see it, a Ferrari is an awe-inspiring piece of moving architecture, but that gorgeous design follows a strict attention to engineering. I guess I relate more to car designers and architects than I do to purely visual artists.
This afternoon I went over to his place and sat down with him at his computer. Aside from being a little lost navigating around on his Mac I think I was able to help guide him through the whole slicing and importing process and told him about some potential problems that I saw down the road for him as well as helping him get started on creating a template. This took all of two hours and I felt like, while he was clearly still a beginner with the program, he was getting it...
...Then he asked me if I'd do it. All of it. For free.
I said "yes", because he's a friend and also because he's promised that he'll actually bring me in on projects that he's lined up to do similar work--and I'll be paid a proper contractor's fee at that point. It's also very little work and I'm not contracting for anyone else right now, so all I've been doing lately is build my portfolio site. Whatever hours I'm "giving up", I'll make up in the long-run with the work I get through him.
But this is why I usually don't offer to help friends with their websites; not because I'm unwilling to do free work for a friend, but because unless they already have some grasp of the web design process (and I don't just mean basic comprehension of HTML) there isn't much I can do except to do the work for them. I won't pretend that making websites is the most difficult job in the universe, but there are right and wrong ways to do things, and because it relies on the code and not artistic methods to accomplish a certain task, it requires an understanding of the materials (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) in addition to a keen eye--even with wonderful programs like Dreamweaver that let you design sites with a user-friendly, visually-oriented interface.
He had the Split design view open (where most of the screen is a rendering of the page with a second section that shows the code), and when I had him click on blocks of code to edit them I could see his eyes glaze over. When I explained how Dreamweaver had taken his sliced images and arranged them in a table, pointing out where the files had been placed and how he could edit it in the future, he looked like a lost child. He's one of those really talented visual artists that has no interest in (or capacity for) coding. I've always considered myself an artist, but there's also a part of me that is intensely fascinated with the way things work. Maybe it means that I'll never be as good of a visual designer as some of my friends, but I've always had my engineering side that sometimes conflicts with (but usually compliments) my artistic side.
The way I see it, a Ferrari is an awe-inspiring piece of moving architecture, but that gorgeous design follows a strict attention to engineering. I guess I relate more to car designers and architects than I do to purely visual artists.