Greg i have a problem.

Greg I have a problem.

You wouldn’t believe how often I gotta hear that phrase. “The color of my red logo is not the same on most of the product photos on my screen!”. I dont even need to see them, i have already a pretty good idea about what happened. My bet is on the so called “Photographer”.

There is a really easy way to avoid bad surprises like that. Here´s my take on it …

How to find out a photographer is crap.

Two simple questions.

• “Sir/Ma´am, what colour space do you use for your photos?”
  “Adobe RGB! Why? Because Adobe has the best colours!”

I’m not gonna bore you with details, you avoid that fellow like the plague. The only correct answer is “No colour space at all”.

So you want to be bored? Photos are shot in so called RAW mode, which has no colour space at all (well, it has just the sensor´s colour space). Your photographer should post process your photos and export them in sRGB. Because, no matter what you use for showcasing your photos – they will all only support sRGB, if you are lucky. Your smartphone, monitor, lcd tv …

Exception to the rule? The 0.01% of us freaks (aka designers, photographers, artists) who use expensive (useless) Adobe RGB screens … Some Fine Print Stores, where ProPhoto RGB could be better, but most of them will only accept sRGB.

• “Is your Camera calibrated?”
  “Cali.. Whut?”

Run. Run for your life! 😉

The long version. You can teach your cam, monitor and printer to print the red as it should be – the red you know, it´s called calibrated colour workspace. For most photographers it starts and ends with their screens, but they should have also calibrated their printers and cams.

It´s a good sign when you see your photographer messing around with Colour Cards.

Greg make it…  webbish!

The client didn’t know how to describe it otherwise, so he used this funny phrase. What does it mean? Web is a different medium than a folder or a book, so you can’t cut and paste design between them. Following many different rules it’s actually more challenging to design for Web than for print. Why? Because with print you know how the end result will look. Online, it’s a guess, at best. You don’t know if a user will read your site on his computer, smartphone or tablet. What resolution? What connection speed?

You need to be prepared for all of them. Are you? 🙂

Keep the User in Focus.

I see failures like this very frequently. Fancy websites with nice navigation styles which are very artistic but not user friendly… well, epic failures. For daily usage you need a clean and straightforward design. In my opinion there is absolutely no point to reinvent the wheel, and that´s why designers/artists always fail at it. There is a reason why Microsoft, Google and Apple invest millions and years of work in their UI designs. And as a silly little designer or even web agency you don’t have the luxury and capacity for a complete UI.

Check out  5 Ridiculously Common Misconceptions about UX  by Usman Anwar and How Design Impacts Blog Readership by Damion Wasylow