In this episode of the Engaging Marketeer podcast, I am joined by Nick Arkell, one of the amazing web designers at Engage Web, for a discussion on all things web design. While I hoped that we’d be able to inspire people that want to become web designers, our suspicions that this will just turn into two grumpy old blokes moaning about web design and how things have changed was more or less how it turned out.
If this is the kind of thing you’re in to, be sure to check out the full episode on our YouTube, which includes these highlights:
Darren: So Nick, tell me why did you actually get started in web design in the first place?
Nick: I was bored one day at home and thought well this looks exciting, and it went from there.
Darren: Well, that’s a riveting story, thank you for thrilling us with that one Nick. What was the first thing you ever worked on?
Nick: In around 1998 I think, Jesus Christ, we first got the internet and my mum was really annoyed because my friend caveman from the sixth form came around our house and install this thing called freesurf. Within about probably a couple of hours of having the internet, I thought wait a second, I can do something on this, I can make stuff.
Darren: Hang on, I have to unpack that. Caveman?
Nick: Yeah, he was called that because he looked like a caveman, plain and simple really.
Darren: What was the first professional website that you built?
Nick: About a year out of uni, I got a job with my friend Jeremy near Manchester working for his company and um I forget what the first one was um one of the biggest sites I did around that time was one for an organization called the Manchester Beth Din. They’re like a Jewish organisation that checks things to make sure they’re kosher. Building their website so earlier in my career was quite a privilege really, with no links to the Jewish Community myself until that point in my life, so it was quite a big one to do and quite a lot of pressure because there’s a lot of stuff on there that people of the Jewish faith need to know.
Darren: I was thinking of something recently that really pissed me off, so I wanted to talk on the stupid things that clients say and ask for. A lot of the time, people when they have websites designed for them very often think the website’s for them.
Nick: Oh no, it’s not, it’s for their customer.
Darren: So yeah, important point for people, when you have a website designed for you, it’s not for you, it’s for your target audience. So what you want and what you like isn’t necessarily relevant, it’s what your target market is looking for.
Darren: What advice would you have to people who are looking to get into the industry?
Nick: Don’t try to look like everything else on the web, because I think this is a habit which every web developer and designer can get into. A client will come to you and say ‘I want a website’ and you know the temptation is to go online have a look at what other people do. The trouble is if you do that you’ll end up designing a site which looks like those templates, when actually they’ve come to you because they want something unique.
Darren: In the future of web design, where do you see things going and how is it going to change? It’s a bit of an open question.
Nick: Yeah, it’s a big question. I mean, there was a point where we thought it’s all it’s all going into apps, but I think with apps they’re only really necessary and important and useful for things where it gets complicated. Maybe things will become a little more interactive, a little more animated, maybe
Darren: Yeah, you’d hope.
Huge thanks to Nick for coming on to have a good old fashioned bicker about the web design industry. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Engaging Marketeer, be sure to show us some love by liking and commenting on the podcast or video, and be sure to subscribe to us on your preferred podcast platform and to our YouTube channel. We hope to see you next time.
