I want to point out before I begin this next rant that I am not ranting at any clients specifically and that I am not saying that such services can’t be offered by myself, my firm or even other designers, but more if you are a client looking for a web designer that you should be aware of what a web designer does and does not do. You may be in the market for a marketing firm or brand consultatant if you need more.

I have found it particularly interesting how clients sometimes think I have intimate knowledge of their products. Particularly when working with graphic design I get “Just put something about the product feature there”. I am using this blog to PUBLICALLY state that I probably never “read” the content customers provide me. I move my eyes over every word BUT in my mind I am searching for things like broken tages, weird characters and strange quotes. I just don’t have the time to understand the features/functionality of each given product/service. I work with clients for all sorts of products/services ranging from beauty products to high tech web software. Some of which I am personally interested in, some I am not, but that doesn’t reflect on my design skills. I am more then happy to give input in terms of if you pitch me a line I can tell you if I like it, but I really don’t know the product. With some of my long term clients after doing so much work for them I get a basic sense of what the product does, but I think the line between web designer and marketer is pretty clearly defined. As a web designer I am concerned about things like look and feel, layout, accessibility, performance and scalability. That is after all what I was hired to do and what I am good at. I don’t want to rant here, but if I can enlighten one client, even someone elses client, to realizing that their web designer doesn’t know which of your products should be featured on the homepage or what would be a good tag line or even what features to highlight on the page then I have done the web designers of the world a service.

On the same note, I also do have partners that are specifically marketers and brand managers and Powered By Geek is more then happy to provide such services, but this blog is my perspective as Lynn Wallenstein the web designer.