An insightful and informed article I read addresses the ever-contested topic of designers’ personal authorship versus client interference in a design. Using as an example the ubiquitous client request of, “Can you make the type bigger?,” the author discusses the many issues that are brought up by a client demanding changes to what is most likely a design that has been very carefully crafted with issues of size, color, composition, and spacing already thoroughly tweaked. Brought up are the arguments of design authorship, the functional side of a design, and the utter subjectivity of seeing a design from a non-designer point of view.

As designers, we will all eventually be confronted with this quandary; when designing for a client, should the final product be solely our autonomous vision or should it simply be an implementation of exactly what the client envisions?

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Some years ago, IBM invented the Personal Computer, and began a decades-long battle with Apple for market share. IBM decided early on to use Open Architecture, wherein the technical details of their hardware were made available to the public, while Apple opted to keep such details confidential.

One result was Apple, and later Macintosh, computers that ran beautifully, ostensibly because all hardware periperals and software packages were made by them, and matched perfectly.

Another result was hardware and software markets run amok, as a never-ending line of vendors small and large sought to sell their products, port conflicts and all, to a geometrically-increasing base of consumers. Americans, after all, like to own, not rent, and the attraction of a computer to which no gadgets can be attached was approximately the same as for that infamous automobile of the 60s that came with a sealed hood, because “the engine never needs repair”. Ahem.

One need not be a stock analyst to see the end result on market penetration of the corporate philosophies of IBM and Apple, despite a surprising valid argument about relative quality.

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The Level10 Blog Matrix (L10BM) plugin provides a suite of extended WordPress sidebar, navigation and blog info template tags that can be filtered by author and category. For example, the standard WordPress calendar shows the post dates of all posts regardless of post category and author. The L10BM plugin calendar looks the same as the standard WordPress calendar, but can be filtered to only show dates where posts have been made in a specific category or by a specific author.

Download Level10 Blog Matrix WordPress plugin here!

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