The field of web cannot survive without designers & developers who work in a combination to make things happen. But there is one constrain that is always time taking, lacks resource and cause issue when the design meets the logic.

Pure designer know one thing best that is make layouts that look visually pleasing, colors that bring the Wao effect as soon as you see and typography that just compels you to read. Stuff like this does look amazing on photoshop or a jpg mock up but if you some how hand over your baby to developers there is chance the line height might change, correct font might not be used and maybe the little curve that you put on the top disappears. Stuff like this do happen, designers restrain from coding even HTML / CSS while developers restrain from looking into details.

When ever i conducted interviews for design job and asked if they know how to code html / css there was a “no we don’t” answer and strong resistance to such a query, stating it a technical and non creative job. Is coding non creative … then who said “Code is Poetry” a quote written on the footer of wordpress.

I never resisted from coding to xhtml / css / Javascript & using of jQuery as well rather i fell for it, css is like a beauty for my design and a challenge to solve design problems keeping technical details in hand, if web is limited to 4-5 fonts only i know that when i design, if something in css is impossible i would know and might not put that in my design, in my view coding helps designer visualize better and keep the design he build intact with technical constrains. If i know what can be done with jQuery i can make my layout screen that will make use of it as well.

Being a big fan of 37signals there way of working [4 days of work week], there products and the company itself i have been very inspired by there posts specially the one i recently read “Designer who also develop have more power” it raised a very questionable thought in mind and makes a very strong sense on the benefits if a designer can code or a developer who can design. The most compelling benefit is that things getting done quickly, no one is dependent on another.

Here i will put forward two scenarios say a developer receives layouts for an application as big as facebook, now the layout will be probably be 5-10 pages designed in photoshop delivered work begins and developers finds out there are 10 more pages that are quite similar but the data type & its arrangement has changed what should be done … the work comes to an hold and designer is activated again who spends another day in completing those layout sending them over and so on.

Keep the same scenario and convert the developer into a designer / developer so would there be any halt…. would that person be more resourceful and an asset to the company / client he presents ?

A very innovative project by Coca cola, finally they did something better then there brrrRR commercial which is quite annoying. Any how apart from critics while browsing the tv i stumbled upon an episode of coke studio featuring ‘Ali Azmat’ and ‘Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’ singing Balaman [download here] a semi classical song mixed with the modern feel with guitars and immediately fell in love with the song. I am not a big fan of classical music but i guess with age this taste develops which is bad as it seems and feels like growing old which is one thing we really want to avoid.

Being into web i searched on the coke studio and for a moment was impressed with the website they had build although they used wordpress for there core system but no doubt a very nice job done and some body did work on details for it.

Thanks to them all of us who missed the performance on tv can download the songs in mp3, and can even watch the videos on YouTube. There are four episodes expected from them and first one has been released on there website from where you can download the songs or view the videos check them out

Those who still have no idea what coke studio:

Coke Studio is a journey into the heart of a recording studio where you will be able to experience the magic of live music being performed by some of the most talented musicians and artists of Pakistan.Born out of a dream to merge tradition with modern, consistency with change, we have embarked on a journey to create a first hand experience for you to witness live studio sessions - something very few people have witnessed before as studio recording sessions are a secretive process normally only reserved for producers and musicians to witness and experience.

coke studio

Finally i watched “Pirates of the silicon valley”.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 film based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. It is an unauthorized made-for-television docudrama written and directed by Martyn Burke which documents the rise of the home computer (personal computer) through the rivalry between Apple Computer and Microsoft.

I had been looking for this movie since a long time a movie about how Microsoft & Apple emerged, but my continuous search didn’t help me find it on a DVD so i tried torrents and attempted to download twice which failed. Once the file got corrupt and the second time i downloaded a version in German language so the torrents didn’t work out for me, but thanks to a friend who had successfully downloaded an English version & i was able to get the copy and watch it over finally.

A very interesting movie and of course i recommend it to all technology enthusiasts and clearly shows that Microsoft & Apple are build on a foundation of stolen technology but the credit goes to them as they were the ones who could envision its future while others discarded it.

As Picasso said “Good artists copy, great artists steal“

clickClick an ambitions product by Bramerz Pvt. ltd goes live. This is the first and the only pure Pakistani based advertisement company focusing on online advertisement solutions. In simple terms it will be helping bloggers & website owners earn revenue from the local market & on the other hand opening up a door for advertisers to advertise on our local famous blogs & websites.

This is a great step for our dot com industry which is growing at a very rapid speed. The network seems to be catching up as they have signed up with publishers like The Nation , BrightSpyre & BuzzVines

Bramerz (Pvt) Ltd. is proud to launch “clickClick”, Pakistan’s 1st Ad Serving Network, taking online advertising in Pakistan on to the next level. Many more features are built-in with this first roll-out and much more enhancements are marked to be offered in near future.

[We have a lift off]

Sometimes, once a while I do receive e-mails or questions from friends as to “How to become a freelancer in Pakistan”. For the last 3-4 years i have been a freelancer, and my freelance carrier have been quite exciting and successful, I got the chance to work on some of very big projects, designed products for clients and made extremely good connections with some of very successful people from the silicon valley.

During this journey i focused my work to work only for international clients & companies. Usually my target market was USA / UK & very few projects from Canada as well. If I take sneak peek back in time I did even build a website for a renowned celebrity from Hollywood.

Freelancing is just like another carrier, you work hard, you grow with time learn allot and of course you do make good money sometimes. But one thing that you need to remember is it’s not a piece of cake, the only benefit of freelancing is that you are your own boss.

Starting freelance can be quite easy or very difficult to do, it’s a sort of setting up your own business and you have to be a designer, a developers, a business developers, a marketer and a manager of your own self. You have to manage your time, learn, market and sell project to clients. If you have made up your mind to do so then yes you can read below as to how to proceed further.

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