Monday, August 11, 2008

I need...

... a new job.

(Warning: endless rant about stupid people following. No, it's not about cyclists, eBay sellers, sociologists, this is a new group of people - graphic designers.)

Starting here:

A new job where I do not have to work with people who reduce the dpi [not dpn as I had written previously. Obviously even unconsciously I'm thinking about knitting.] number of a screenshot thus decreasing the resolution and the size of the screenshot and then create a banner image adapted to the new dimensions of the screenshot!!! It will be too S - M - A - L - L!! And not only once, but like four times? Five times? Six times? And do it to the same screenshot of the same website, creating the same wrong-sized banner image over and over again? He just keeps sending me banner images that are simply tooooo small. Small, small, small! No matter what I tell him.

I don't understand how a graphic designer with more than 15 years of work experience could do this!

If he believes that graphics on a website have to be reduced to 72 dpi (I have no clue) he should reduce the original image and then create the banner image. Increasing the resolution will just give you a low-quality image. What's so difficult to understand about this??? He complains that I don't give him the exact measurements of the image while I tell him to make design changes to the layout as he wishes and that the technical implementation was my business and if I couldn't do it do I would forward it to the multimedia agency who created this \&%$/§& website. I'm going crazy with that kind of people. This is just an example, but it's irrational things like these that drive me nuts. Recently just mentioning the words "marketing" and "website" drives me up the wall.

Rant over!

Anyway, I've decided I want to do something with environment - phytoremediation (short version: the use of plants to remove toxic substances from contaminated soil/environment). As a student I did an internship at a lab where they did research in this field and I still think it's a pretty cool thing. If you have been wondering about my recent blogging frenzy, it's because I'm on annual leave. I'm taking two weeks off (this is my second week now) and not going anywhere so I can take care of this jobseeking thing. I've been procrastinating a lot, but I think having an idea of what you want to do is an important step forward. I'm feeling superanxious at the moment, even if you don't believe it. I have problems with applying for job, because I get hypernervous just reading the job description, so if you have any kind of helpful advice to give, go ahead. It will be very much appreciated. :)

... these puzzle mats (or whatever you call them in English):

Puzzlematten

I bought them at Obi, but they don't have them anymore. :( Has anybody the same puzzlemats from Obi and would like to get rid of them?

... patience. I gave in and ordered a spinning wheel (YAY, YAY, YAY!! :) ), a Kromski Minstrel, but the delivery time is 4 weeks! I could cancel the order and order it somewhere else, but that dealer had the best offer and I need to be considerate of my budget. *big, big sigh*

Last but not least, my recommendation for a really tasty cooking blog: www.deliciousdays.com I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but the food always looks very yummy and if someone writes with that much passion about food, the recipes must be good.

10 Kommentare:

Tini said...

my advice: JUST DO IT.

when I applied for the job I have now, I thought I wasn't well trained enough but still got the job (since my bosses thought differently I guess ) and I'm the happiest I've ever been on a job now. What do you have to loose?

Elemmaciltur said...

@ Tini: agree (1)

@ Girl with orange knitted dress (yeah, you): Absolutely, just apply. You know where you want to be headed to, start from that. As for the Minstrel, mine took 4 weeks to be delivered, too.

Anonymous said...

Phytoremediation sounds interesting... for me blindly applying for a job has never worked out. Networking, networking, networking... almost all the freelance jobs I get are through word of mouth. I don't even have a business card and my business web site sucks, it's just a list of sites I have done. I hate interviews and applications too!
BTW, you really need to spec your banner in pixel dimensions :-)

projektleiterin said...

@Tini: Thanks a lot for your comment. I really need to get back to my former mindset where I didn't care too much about getting a job and just asked. I just need to find vacancies now...

@Elemmaciltur: I probably should just listen to your advice. After all wearing the dress did not kill me. :D

@Vicki: I'm not so good with networking, that's why I'm posting, but it's something that I should become more active at.

Regarding the image: I didn't want to give him any specification, because there were none actually. It was up to him to design the new banner image, but in his draft he suggested one that would cover the right and the middle column. What he would repeatedly send me was an image that would only cover the right column and a bit of the middle column?! Not sure how he had managed to make the draft.

Anonymous said...

Well, if the right and middle column are fixed width, or a percentage of a fixed width, you can determine the width the banner needs to be. In HTML, in a fixed width design, the width is almost always specified in pixels, and never in inches.
If the columns are not fixed width, there is no way the banner will cover both columns if the user has the window maxed on a large monitor
because the columns will stretch to fit the window.

Web browsers always display images in pixel dimensions. If the image is 4 x 2 inches at 300dpi, that's 1200 pixels by 600 pixels and that's how much space it will take up in the browser. If you hold a ruler up to the monitor and measure the size of the image on different monitors, it will be different on different monitors depending on the monitor resolution.
In knitting terms, if you knit the same number of stitches at a higher gauge, the sweater will be smaller. Different monitors have different "gauges" but the important thing is to keep the proportions consistent.
Hope this makes sense!

projektleiterin said...

The website has a liquid design, therefore the middle column does not have a fixed width, but the website has nevertheless been optimized for a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (*theoretically* we don't care about people who have screens with a smaller or higher resolution). The banner image is supposed to stay aligned with the right side, even when the middle columns becomes wider on a screen with higher resolution and it will never change its size.

Since he reduced the dpi number, instead of having a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, the screenshot he now worked with had a much smaller resolution. Instead of having a banner image of let's say 600 x 210 pixels, he created a banner image in the size 400 x 140 pixels.

I'm not sure why you mention inches?

I've built my own website from scratch with a text editor, I know what CSS is, I got a "sign of approval" from a friend of mine who is in IT, but I have no clue what that dude is doing. If you can explain to me what his reasoning is, I'll gladly appreciate it, maybe I am indeed mistaken and I don't mind learning more about this, but honestly, I doubt it. I had also asked him to send me the banner images for all four websites (they're all basically the same apart from the language and logo). Three have the same size, the other one is 1 px higher and wider.

Anonymous said...

Inches are relevant because most graphic designers understand them better than pixels. Sounds like he could be resizing in photoshop by reducing the resolution, but keeping the image size the same (in inches). Why he fails to notice that this reduces the total number of pixels, I have no idea. Probably he learned one thing - "screen resolution is 72 dpi" but doesn't understand how it works.

projektleiterin said...

I had gone over to his office and told him to show me what he had done. What he does with the screenshot is reduce the dpi number and that also reduces the resolution, it's not 1024x768 pixels anymore, but smaller. The screenshot shrinks and it would have been obvious to anybody who was not blind that the screenshot had shrunk. I told him he can't do this, but he keeps on doing it. I suspect that the last time he resolved the problem with the small banner images by increasing the resolution, because the quality of the images was just lousy.

Well, I need a new job anyway and this is clearly too much of an irrational working environment for me. I'm really going insane here.

projektleiterin said...

Ok, he is a nice person and pretty good-natured, he has helped with a couple of non-work-related stuff, but I really don't want to work with him or the other guys in the DPT department. They're all the same irrational lot. *whine*

projektleiterin said...

"'DWDL' mutmaßt, dass man sich bei der ARD nicht verzählt habe, sondern ein Grafiker die Flagge der Vereinigten Staaten versehentlich falsch zugeschnitten, also verkleinert habe."

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,573593,00.html

Ha, ha, ha... :D


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