Shouldn't Have Done That

I am a website designer, I've been doing it for over ten years. But I'm not particularly great at it. Sometimes I have done work I'm proud of, but if you were to look at my coding skills, they're mostly pretty average and naive. I like to be tidy, but structurally I can be haphazard, and anything beyond HTML and CSS is mysterious and incomprehensible to me.

As I'm not currently working, which is great and I wish it could ever be so, I don't get to do website stuff much anymore. I could probably redesign my own website, but I've got nothing to show anyway, so it's laying dormant.

So I was talking to my mate Rob about a website I visited recently, and how I thought it was in desperate need of updating, which I'd gladly do if I was paid for the work done to it. And inevitably, I had images in my head of how it could be improved upon. That night I had a very clear idea of the graphics I'd apply to it, and the colour scheme. And then the next day (yesterday) I couldn't help myself, and I spent all day designing the page.

On the one hand I need the experience and to keep up my skills, it can be great fun to create something that works well and fulfils the vision you have for it. But on the other hand, I basically did work that will never be showcased. I have no job lined up, there's no payment, they don't even know I did it.

I find myself wondering if I should contact them and suggest I work on it. But then that would mean a lot of work for them, and therefore a lot of time and money, which they may not be willing to outlay. It really ought to be them who volunteer to upgrade, rather than some pushy designer coming along trying to convince them to do something they have no intention of following up on.

Still, I am happy with the design I did, so here it is.