August 27, 2008 – Write From Karen

Karen is very tired. She has been working, nonstop, for the past five days on her newest project. It was a large project. A whopper, in fact.

(Karen hopes that her readers do not think she means the edible kind of whopper).

Karen has spent a lot of time and effort tweaking and perfecting this high school website.

And it’s still not done. But actually, she wonders, are websites EVER really done?

She thinks not.

But it’s a good tired. It’s a she-built-something-really-attractive-and-it’s-helping-people-out-sort of tired – and she is satisfied.

And she has received many thanks from many different people. And even though the gratitude embarrasses Karen, she would be lying if she didn’t admit – she sort of likes people gushing all over her.

Verbally, that is.

And she has had lots of fun. Lots and lots of fun building the high school website.

For you see, high schools are challenging. There is SO much information that needs to be shared that sorting all of that information into cohesive, digestible chunks is quite challenging to display in an organized electronic manner. Karen’s websites are simple. She does not, nor has any interest, in building fancy-smancy websites that require crazy graphics or flash movies. She prefers her websites to be functional, yet attractive. She would rather build a website that informs it’s visitors as opposed to burning the retinas of it’s visitors.

She knows that people’s time? Is valuable. And most people do not have time to wait for cutesy, sophisticated graphics to load before they get to the meat of their search – the information the website contains.

And so, Karen’s websites are straight forward, yet elegant. Informative, yet entertaining – on a more subtle level, you see.

*pause*

*another long pause*

Alright, enough with the third-person talk. Is that not annoying or what?! I have a blog in my Google reader that reads like the above. It’s all in third person and I have to tell you, I’m on the verge of deleting the blog from my reader because it annoys the ever-loving shit out of me. (Sorry, but I’m quite cranky).

I mean, what is up with the third-person journal? Not only is it EXTREMELY annoying to read, but it automatically distances your readers from you. It’s like your living your life, on the outskirts – not really participating but rather an observer.

How lame is that? If you write your blog this way, I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. Why? Can anyone tell me how writing in third person, in a journal, about YOUR LIFE, is a good thing? Because I’m seriously curious to hear your answers.

But anyway…

Getting back to the website design thing. Yes. I’ve been really busy these past days. Things are settling down now and I can breathe for the first time … in a while. I’m seriously excited about this website because I truly think it’s going to help the school, overall, improve it’s public image. I also think it may stir up some school spirit with the students and teachers, too. After all, the more information that is made available, the more people know about it and the more people want to get involved.

Right?

I also gave my Write From Karen blog a face lift. (Did you notice?) This is my fall template. I plan on changing it to a Christmas template at the end of November and then I’m going to try and put a template together that I can live with all year long so I can concentrate my energies on designing things for other people and my writing.

I’m seriously thinking about hiring a cartoonist to make me a customized header. I have one in mind, thanks to my good pal Dale (thanks Dale!). He’s very reasonable (the cartoonist that is, though I’m sure Dale is reasonable, too) and I like his work. I’ll link to him soon – I don’t want to jinx anything at this point.

My brother-in-law is also an artist. And I’ve thought about asking him to do a caricature of me, but I haven’t worked up the nerve to ask him yet. AND, I’m sort of afraid of what he might come up with. My big nose? Pretty much a given, but I can only imagine what other characteristics he might exaggerate. 🙂

I’m splitting my websites in half. I plan on having one website devoted strictly to school and small business websites and one strictly for blog templates and blog components (buttons, banners, etc). I think it will be easier for me to keep track of project requests that way.

Of course, I’ve been talking about doing something like this for like, forever, so who knows when it’ll actually happen.

In the meantime, I’m accepting more website clients if you’re looking for a designer. I’m REALLY easy to get along with and I’m pretty cheap – much cheaper then you probably think. So, if your parent/teacher organization needs a website, I’ve got four years experience in designing, AND maintaining school websites. Again, I like to keep things simple, so if you’re looking for a lot of flashy stuff, then I’m probably not the designer for you.

In case you’re curious, here are some other websites I’ve done:

Disney Elementary
Cherokee Middle School
Pershing Middle School
Wilder Elementary
Wanda Gray Elementary School
Glendale High School
Kickapoo High School (most recent)
Ozarks Regional YMCA (the YMCA people did the flash stuff)
Freedom Financial Inc.
Midnite Thunder (rock band)