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July 11, 2003
Working for Myself
I've been watching quite a lot of Changing Rooms (neighbors swap houses and redecorate a room with the help of two designers) and Ground Force on BBC America. On the 100th episode of Changing Rooms, two of the designers swap and redecorate each other's houses. In the preamble, designer Lawrence mentions that it's really difficult for designers to decorate their own houses because they're always working for other people and never really thinking of the decor for their own personal consumption. I find the same is true for web design.
When building and updating my own sites, I feel that I'm far more critical and/or fussy about what I'm doing than when I'm building a site for someone else. I don't mean that quality suffers in either case (well, you can be the judge of some of that anyway), but I go through far more possible designs when building my own site. Part of that indecision is what draws out creativity and stretches the boundaries of my repertoire. That's the fun part.
Another (large) portion of the process, however, is spent saying "does that layout/design/color scheme/functionality really speak to me and match both my tastes and my personality? Or is it just something that seemed like a cool idea or design and would work well if I was only building a site for X, Y or Q?
It's rather difficult trying to invest oneself and place one's personal stamp on something that is meant as both for public consumption and private display. Seperate, the two are relatively easy to identify and cater to, but making something personal and for sharing is no easy task--whether it's a web site, a room, or a garden.
As I consider this further, I begin to wonder if there's much difference to an extrovert's opinion. E's are used to dealing with the human element more frequently (by choice) and may be attuned to it more. Or, perhaps, just as the uncomfortable introvert's presentation of "self" is worked and reworked, so too does the extrovert go over the many possibilites that could be both personally appropriate as well as socially.
Either way, it seems to boil down to one simple generalization. One presents oneself in a way that they feel will garner the most acceptance. The details are just in the balance of social acceptance and personal pride.
Posted at July 11, 2003 10:58 PM | Web Site Stuff
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