Polished Rock – Responsive Web Design
Different can be very difficult
For most designers the idea of being able to explore something totally different is an exciting concept, especially if it also needs to be responsive web design. Let your imagination run wild to make something unique, a design that is unusual and hasn’t been done too often. Of course one always needs to remember that in web design the design needs to be executable. That is, it has to work according to how the client would like it to work.
And between those two concepts, that is design on the one hand, and execution on the other can be a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon valley. In fact, bigger!
Perhaps there is also a touch of the arrogance to the idea that we can design anything and surely some coder can make it work. Surely it can never be impossible.
And to a certain degree that is most definitely true. Most things can be made to work as requested. And if not now then most definitely in the near future. However, there is a small problem attached to that thinking. Most special functionality that you will see on the internet whether it’s a clever phone app or an amazing website that allows you to search for a property to rent on the other side of the planet like Airbnb’s site has had a ton of money thrown at it to make it work. High end computer programming specialists have worked in teams and for months to launch the site and continue to work on it to continue to keep it awesome.
For Yeah Can, whose target market is small to mid sized businesses with an ongoing mantra that spells affordability for the small business guy or doll teams of programmers are not an option . So taking on a project that requires such high end programming is usually not a good idea. It doesn’t tie in with the target market! And the clients generally don’t understand the complexity of their wishes either. Just make it work, is the thinking in most cases.
Of course this particular project was nowhere near the complexity of an Airbnb. However, in terms of making the site responsive and working on every single gadget the client could think of to test it on (even gadgets team Yeah Can had no way of getting hold of to try the site on) it felt like we were abseiling the one side of the Grand Canyon and crawling up the other side.
Polished Rock. Very different design.
It was with great thanks that team Yeah Can had a client who showed huge patience while the team worked through issues, tried different solutions and in general tried to make it happen as quickly as possible. And yes, the site looks harmless enough. But making it responsive was the hurdle. The mountain that at times didn’t feel as if it could ever be climbed.
But we did it. Thanks to all concerned. Check it out at Polished Rock.
And no, at this stage we ain’t going to do it again any time soon.
