I recently designed a website to promote Ed Burns’ Secrets of the Rockstar Programmers. Ed was a brilliant client who was good at communicating what he wanted the site to do, and what it should look like. I think being a great design client is every bit as hard as being a great designer, and I have a lot of respect for people who bring their full attention and skill set to the task. My first job out of college–about the time Madonna was wearing fingerless fishnet gloves and hanging out in Danceteria, if that dates me–was as an assistant to the design writer Ralph Caplan, and he was always threatening to write a how-to book called “How to Be A Client.” I’m still waiting for that book, and I wish he’d get to it.
There was a forensic quality to this design, as I was striving to match the look and feel of the book jacket without having access to the graphic files. I do love a challenge.