Alex Williams

This is somewhat of a rant on the chaos of merging left-brained logical and binary thinkers with right-brained creative types: programmers and designers…

As most of my regular readers know, i’ve been spending a few days every week working with my friends at Nerd Studio. We’ve been working hard trying to pump out new websites for existing clients. Most importantly, we’ve been working on launching our own website: www.nerdstudio.com

The website was originally designed in Fall 2006, and officially launched on Friday May 18, 2007. That’s a whole 8 months. It’s the typical story of a web design company who’s too busy to build its own website. Can you blame us? Not really, just ask our clients ;)



If you look carefully at the website, you’ll notice a few key things which are relevant to this post: the pictures are breathtaking (1), the design is clean and simple (2), it’s unilingual (3. french only), the logo says “Agence Creative” (4. Creative Agency), and some images aren’t corrently linked (5. a minor database error).

Obviously, there was much more effort placed on the visual, rather than the content. They would argue the content IS the visual. In any case, there are obviously some flaws which need to be addressed. Unfortunately, some are more philosophical than others, which delays things even more.

You see, having worked with these guys for many (at least 5) years, I’ve come to know exactly the way they work and think. Creative types always want to perfect the visual aspect of things and display their creative prowess, which is a good thing in itself. Unfortunately it can come to hurt you in many ways. In our case, it has delayed the launch of the website by over 8 months, and it has prevented the implementation of important functionality, such as an english version, and an easy to maintain database.

I take partial blame for this, because I am technically supposed to be the logical thinker in this company. I think part of my responsibility was to step forward and handle the logical bits instead of sitting back and watching them debate the creative aspects.

What I learned from all this is that if you’re a logical, left-brained, binary thinker, like me, then you should take the time to understand the right-brained creative people who work with you. Give them a hand and step up to the plate. It will have great repercussions for all parties involved.

In my case, I’ve decided to create a 2nd website for the Nerd Studio. One which will be purely HTML (and PHP) and available in 3 languages at launch. It will be an extension of the current website. Kind of like an alternate ego. A place for us to display ALL the projects we’ve worked on without any limits or constraints. It would be a placeholder to display our talent in other categories, such as music, photography, art, and coding. Ideally I would like to incorporate a blog for transparency with our clients, and to birth discussions with fellow designers and web developers. Unlike the main website. I plan to launch it within the next 2 weeks.

Thanks for reading.