Please meet Web Systems designer Sven 🙂 Sven has been working at Web Systems for several good years now and has designed dozens and dozens of websites, logos and banners. In the post below, he gives us a bit of background on his work and tells us about his creative hobbies. Enjoy reading!

Designing a website is creative work. However, there are also fairly firm limits to this creativity.

It can be said that designing a website is like the art of compromise, where the designer plays the role of a diplomat, trying to reconcile the client’s wishes, user-friendliness, aesthetics and the developer’s preferences so that all parties are happy.

There’s always a goal when creating a new website , whether it’s to improve sales or user experience, to modernise the website, to promote the brand or something else. Therefore, the design of a website starts with a conversation to find out the customer’s wishes, requirements and needs. This results in a mapping document, which is also the cornerstone of my work.

Website design starts with a conversation.

But the most important thing for me is to know what is most important for the client. That’s where I start when designing a landing page. But before I even click open the white page in the design software, I need to gather ideas. Every designer has their own way of doing this, one goes to the woods to listen to the babbling brook, the other to the gym to lift weights, but there is one common source of ideas that unites us all, and that’s net surfing 🙂 Sometimes an idea pops into my head on the walk home, so it’s good to put it down somewhere.

The time it takes to design a website depends on the complexity of the website, the size of the project and whether a CVI(corporate visual identity ) exists or needs to be created first. If I can only focus on one project, it takes me a couple of weeks on average to design the first look. But usually, minor changes in other projects, logo or banner design, or other work where the designer’s hand is needed, are also part of the work in progress.

Once the initial views are ready, we present them to the client. Based on feedback from the client, I make changes. Usually it’s a small change, like moving a block forward or backward, or resizing the logo. Often the client will ask for the logo to be made bigger. Then it has to be made clear that the logo doesn’t have to be huge, it has to be in proportion with the rest of the page. There will always be a need to explain why to do one thing one way and not another.

The size of the logo should be proportionate to the rest of the page.

Once the changes have been implemented, all the views have been designed, and the client is happy with the whole package, the development team takes the baton and starts coding the design. You might think that this is where my job as a designer on this project would end, but that is far from the case. The designer will support the development team until the end of the project, because the developers will always ask for clarifications on the design, or even additional requests from the client. And even after the project has been handed over to the client, the designer is always ready to jump back into the boat…. in case he has already got out of it 🙂

In fact, it’s quite common for a client to ask for corrections both during the development process and after the page has been uploaded. In the course of use, it becomes clear that there are things that need to be added or improved. So you need to be prepared to make improvements to the new website. In addition, I will keep an eye on my own website, which I designed several years ago, and make suggestions for additions and improvements if necessary.

The job of a designer is varied, as projects can be very different. It’s important to understand what the client really needs – it may not come out 100% the first time, but through mapping and client meetings, all the wishes will eventually be politely translated into the design.

Designing a website is creative work. And it’s good to have a creative hobby to distract yourself from work 🙂 I’ve been doing photography for years. First with street photography, where I would go out on the street and try to capture some intense emotion or situation in the crowd. Now I focus on photographing people. In fact, this hobby has now grown into a job. Sometimes I need to do some professional or product photography for a client in addition to designing a website.

Creative hobbies on the sidelines of creative work.

When one hobby slowly turns into a job, you have to take up a new one 🙂 I’m practicing tattooing. Since I already have a few tattoos and would like to have more, I found out that it makes more sense to buy some equipment and just practice a bit. Besides, I don’t want anything complicated. So I combined my creative desire for self-expression with a practical need and have already created several miniatures on silicone sheets as well as on my own skin 🙂 .