Coptix. Visit.

On Tuesday October 14^th Josiah Roe, President and creative director of Coptix, visited our web media class. Josiah opened class with a statement that I found particularly intriguing. Josiag said that Michael Hendrix once told him that there is no such thing is the bad design, only the right design. Josiah scans the room and asks several of us what our creative process is that leads us to a final solution for a problem. Several of us that were asked obviously responded in different way which solidified Josiah’s point, in that, it doesn’t quiet matter how you land at that point its arriving at the appropriate design that is of the up-most importance. Josiah was also accompanied by one of his designers, Melinda Taylor, and together they took us through the process of working with several clients that they have just completed print and web design for. Their explanations led us to the understanding that a designer has to realize that their ideals about design aren’t always going to be shared with a company, because it may not “be them” and they aren’t going to understand the designer aesthetic. This lends itself to the importance of constant contact with the client and including them every step of the way so that time and effort isn’t put forth by designer only to have the “wrong design” for a client.

 

It is also important to be professional, get a g-mail account, or pay 10 dollars a month to get your own domain name and get e-mail through that, I’m tired of getting emails from buckfucker420@aol.com. (quoted loosely of Josiah Roe)

 

On the second day of our Coptix visits, we were joined for class by, Tyrik Christian and Bekka Reese, two designers from Coptix, also Daniel Ryan, web production manager and web developer at Coptix. On this day it was less about client and design team work relationship and instead transitioned into more of that process of designing a dense website for one of their current clients with tons of pages, user expectations, visual identity, and information that has to be accessible to people of a vast age range and often times aren’t as familiar with the Web. Bekka took us through the process she had in developing a scheme for the grey boxes for the site. Tyrik explained his direction in arriving at a design for the site with the color scheme, in the tribulations with the client to appropriately depict their services, and other important aspects that add to the look and feel of the site. Tyrik is also intense with his organization with his Photoshop documents dealing with a site. After break we came back and Daniel walked us through some of the process of putting together the (X)HTML and CSS for the website… MINDBLOWING! Daniel showed the class resources for web designers, which are appropriate learning tools, which are used by professionals in the field. After implementing something into a website on three different occasions they place it in their archive so that it makes their workflow quicker in the future. Daniel is a genius and I believe I speak for our class in saying that we could sit around with him and pick his brain for much longer that one class session.

 

The week was a great learning experience, in that it is important that we understand that the field of design isn’t as experimental as school and that working for a client, doesn’t always mean that your ideals for a design are going to be understood or appreciated. It is also incredible to be privileged to have the president of a company that started small and is now on the verge of going national with their company, to sit with us and share his vision and ideas about the working designer.