The right blue that isn’t orange…

Sigh! I’m currently working on a site redesign for company that shall remain nameless. A hand-full of people who are representing said company from the UK are over in our offices working with me / us on the redesign. We’d previously set up an area where the client could view mockups on the web, but the distance and time difference was proving to be a hassle. They find it far more convienient to sit with me / over my shoulder, watching me change colours in photoshop while they um and ah over differing shades of blue, aqua and orange. I pushed for purple but apparently purple has expensive connotations — or so I’m told.

I don’t think I need to explain how annoying and constrictive I find working in this way — I’ve done it before but only for say about ten minutes and with one other person, and once I’ve had to code html with the client and their programmers watching me. However these experiences failed to prepare me for about 4-5 hours straight of this without my morning coffee and in the presence of three other people, with another manager dropping in and out from time to time. The only coping strategy I could muster up was going into auto pilot mode, not caring about the stupid colour ideas being thrown around, you know like ones I know won’t work at all without going through the pain of mocking it up, or ones I had already come up with but were never shown to the client beacuse the project manager on my end decided that’s not what client-x wants.

This project seems to be developing into a series of battles, I know that as this coporate design there are going to be comprimises — but this one seems to be a series of battles. So far I’ve won the icon battle with very little comprimise. All I had to do was knock back some shading and draw a bed. Done all happy now. But everything else seems up for grabs, (see colour scheme saga in previous paragraphs).

Of course all of the subsequent changes being made this week are subject to opinions of other stake holders back in the UK. Fucking brilliant isn’t it.

The colour battle continues tomorrow, and if I’m not as jaded as I am now about my job / chosen profession of the moment, I’ll right a funny entry for you all as a treat.