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A LETTER FROM THE CHIEF WEBHEAD
Design Chemistry?
Back in 1995, during the Web's infancy, I was also giving birth to a design company. I had been working as the marketing director for an international pet products company and decided it was about time to forge ahead on my own. I decided to name my company Design Chemistry based on a name of a prior business venture. (People ask me all me time how I came up with this name.) I've been a musician nearly all of my life and was involved in various bands and musical efforts. One of which was live sound engineering. The name I had given my service was Sound Chemistry. I really liked the sound of that name, no pun intended, so decided it would be perfect for my new business, Design Chemistry.
It's all design, or is it?
Early on, I could see the importance of the Web and the impact it was going to make on society and I truly wanted to be a part of it. Since my main area of expertise at the time was marketing and print design, I was only beginning to get my feet wet in web design. I thought "design is design" and it shouldn't matter whether it's print or the Web, right? Boy was I wrong. Luckily, I quickly learned the Web is and will always be a very unique medium unlike any other. So, any traditional designer should understand that it must be treated that way. However, I do believe many graphic designers have no business in web design. They still think like print designers and don't have the necessary technical ability to truly master web design and development. If you can't handle coding and programming logic, you'll never be much of a web designer and will always rely on your software to do the technical stuff for you.
Many of my first clients were utilizing my talents in marketing and print design but were quickly learning the value of the Web as I already had. My first few web sites were very eye opening to all of the inconsistencies of the browsers and platforms and how I had to give up much of the control I had over my print designs.
The Web takes over
As time passed, I discovered how most of my work was becoming more and more Web related. It was a true case of the market dictating the direction of a business. So, I spent even more time learning and polishing my web development skills. Now that I was building more and more web sites, I saw the advantage to setting up my own web server for hosting the sites. Having my own server not only meant more control over what I could offer my clients, it also meant learning an entirely new set of skills including Linux, Apache, and DNS. In other words, I now had to become a server administrator and, to a certain degree, an IT pro.
Windows to Mac
I've always been on the Windows platform since I began working with computers (I know it's strange with my design background). However, the more I worked with Red Hat Linux on my web server, the more I discovered how flawed Windows was and still is. Switching to Linux for my desktop OS was just not realistic since much of the software I use on a daily basis was simply not available on Linux. However, Apple had recently released an entirely new Mac OS built from the ground up around a FreeBSD Unix core, named OS X (aka Jaguar). Hmm…
This interested me enough to start checking it out further. Once I found out enough information and worked with some demo Macs at CompUSA, I was quickly sold. I made the "switch" as the creative Apple commercials say. Let me just say, it's been the best computing decision I've ever made. I don't miss Windows in the least bit. Of course, I still operate a Windows PC especially for site testing since the majority of people are still sadly stuck in this pitiful computing environment.
From tables to CSS
If you don't know, we web designers that began our careers in the early stages of the Web, built most of our page layouts using tables with invisible borders. This was our secret "hack" to get the layouts we wanted and also to make our sites look good in most, if not all, browsers. As I said before, browsers have been notorious for inconsistent interpretation of the exact same HTML code. So, we had an entire bag of tricks and hacks we'd use to get around the problem. Web Standards have finally started to reach the browsers and many of the other web devices on the market. Designers can finally utilize CSS for site design and layout and leave the HTML for what it was intended, document structure.
Adopt Web Standards Today!
As a web designer, I'm so happy Web Standards are finally becoming a reality. We can now ditch the bloated code of table-based layouts and move into more streamlined, and accessible XHTML and CSS coding. I believe this trend will continue and only get better and better. Adopt Web Standards Today!
So here we are…
From my humble beginnings in web design, Design Chemistry has become a team-driven web design and development company catering to the needs of small businesses. We still offer print design and marketing services, but by and large our true passion is the Web and always will be. We continue to look forward to expanding our knowledge of this wonderfully exciting medium we call home.
Your Chief Webhead,
Jeremy Ball