I don't think I have ever commented on this long drawn out drama. I am not involved in business with either side, nor do I know anyone personally from either side, or have any beef with either party.

Here are my unbiased observations and opinions...

It looks like BDS provided you with a design, so you should provide them with the money you owe them for their creative services.

If they re-designed it 15 times, then you definitely owe them money. Most design firms may give you two concepts initially to choose from, and then they will generally only change the one that you select once or twice. After that they may charge you for change orders.

It seems as if BDS went out of their way to accomodate you. Design is subjective. Sometimes you have to pay even if you are not happy. Designers should not be expected to work for free. If you are unsatisfied with their work then don't work with them in the future. You still have to pay them though.

I noticed the EuropeanWebmasters.com site is still not online, which might cause some to think that you decided to postpone/scrap that site, which might really be the reason you are not paying.

I also took a look at your GayWideWebmasters site. The design doesn't seem substantially better than the BDS design, and since art is subjective, one could argue it is worse than what BDS designed for you.

The bottom line is, it looks like BDS provided you with a design, so you should provide them with the money you owe them for their creative services.

ADG Webmaster

Get out of here... GFY has no place for people speaking common sense :winkwink:

Regards,

Lee

I will give ya another bump, common sense posts always seems to kill threads around here.

LOL im expecting this thread to drop like flies anyway, it seems people only like threads about me when they put me in a negative view.

Guess people love to hate me on GFY :1orglaugh

Regards,

Lee

Lee you stopped talking to them, how could they have finished the designs?

They did 15 revisions already, how much more of my time should i have wasted on them?

They certainly werent going to recompense me for my time in doing revisions with them again, how long would you work with any designer to get something right? It seems to me, 15 revisions is way more than enough to get something right by ANY designer, even an outsourcing company can deliver something half decent after the 2nd or 3rd revision.

Regards,

Lee

I just found some of the 'revisions' too here ya go..

http://www.bluedesignstudios.com/hp/.../main_eng.html

http://www.bluedesignstudios.com/hp/.../main_eng.html

http://www.bluedesignstudios.com/hp/.../main_eng.html

Any significant change in the quality of those revisions that you can see?

If you can see a change in quality please let me know, because i certainly cant.

Regards,

Lee

I agree, does not look like their quality standard.. maybe it was outsourced? :-)

I agree with regards to the main page...I wouldn`t like it either.

You made them revise the design 15 times? No wonder it looks stripped down. You are delusional and a designers nightmare and they should have charged you triple or refused your business.

looks like crap to me, i'm not feeling the colors.. :(

Yes i did.

However, you seem to have missed the fact that in the first post is the ORIGINAL design they gave us and, a few posts above this one, are the revisions.

Theres no difference between the original and the revisions as far as i can tell, quality wise or are you looking at some other layouts?

Regards,

Lee

Before people respond to this thread they should realise that the design is 2 years old and that when Lee was advising Blue Design on what he wanted he got hit by a hurricane which caused a breakdown in communication.

2 years or 2 centuries, the work quality is still crap :1orglaugh

Regards,

Lee

15 times is a bit much.. Not sure which side should have called it quits first. After the 2nd or 3rd you should have made them start over fully, maybe worked out a deal for a higher quality site with a price break.

I would have just told ya to piss off to be honest and cut my loss on the design work.

If thats all they where charging you should pay them.

It's not all that great design, but it's not that bad either. You get what you pay for.

Agreed thing is, im a perfectionist and the revisions were more about the 'quality' not the actual layout.

I beleive Andrew is also classfiying 'change this font, add this text, thats spelt wrong' as 'revisions'.

As you can see, there are only 3 versions of the main page in their portfolio :)

Regards,

Lee

I wouldn't pay for that shit either, it looks like crap. But then again a deal is a deal.. tough call.

I should say also, if Andrew isnt counting typos, text changes and font changes as 'revisions' he is more than welcome to post the othe missing 12 revisions he did for us :thumbsup

Regards,

Lee

I can't believe this is over $550.

Andrew,

If you are charging $550 for work now, please hit me up.

LOL What total bullshit.

Webmasters choose a designer based on their portfolio.

If the end result isn't of the same quality level that their portfolio implies they are capable of, then it's a bait and switch.

I really hate to say it, but I think Lee has a legit point about the quality of the design. I dont think the quality is up there with the rest BDS sites.

...But Lee, if you hadnt been such an asshole in your first post without any samples to back it up or if you made this thread a year and a half ago, more people would be on your side. But you didnt. And ss a designer, I would have told you to fuck off a long time ago. :2 cents:

...its over...stop crying about it alaready.

Andrew posted the sample, yet everyone was to blinded by the 'drama' to actually bother looking at the quality, Andrew has also been board stalking me for almost 2 years calling me a scammer, this is long overdue restitution on my part, as of yet Andrew still hasnt addressed the issues, lets just hope this causes him some lost work. Im not going to see anything from any of this but hopefully it will make others think twice before using Blue Design Studios for their design services.

Given the amount of crap i have gotten in the last 2 years over this crap i think its only just and fair that Andrew receives a small portion in return, wouldnt you say?

Regards,

Lee

Wow I just took a nap still don't know what is going on and 2 pages already :eek7

Do you deal with a designer if they want payment upfront?

so they didn't use the colors you required, and we can see how grainy things are.

i dunno - i don't expect to pay for designs i don't like. plenty of designers have managed to meet my requirements, but if you make a design in a totally other color scheme, you can 100% expect that i won't be buying it.

i don't know the guy at blue, but i wouldn't have been thrilled with these.

If they`re well known........50% up front is no biggie.

We usually give sharky 100% upfront because we know his work is of a high standard, same with Webin they have excellent work to, BDS was also supposed to be a well reccomended designer :(

Regards,

Lee

Splash pages look good.. I like the 2nd and 3rd ones..

banner and main layout not that hot.. especially if you paid big $ ..

By looking at the navigation bar.. it seems outsourced...

:2 cents:

nothing wrong with asking half upfront imo, designers seem to get burned a lot by clients not paying and simply dissapearing.

On the other hand I had a client who asked for a paysite last week and I came up with 2 diffrent setups for him. He didn't like it so we agreed on refunding half of the ammount he paid upfront and we went both our ways without hard feelings. The guy had in mind very clearly what he wanted but it was hard for me to get it in a design, nothing wrong with that but it can be a bitch for a designer.

Things like this happen and in no way I would have came up with 15 diffrent revisions. Bitching about it for 2 years isn't making either of you looking good :2 cents:

There is a professional trade organization in the graphic design field called AIGA (The American Institute of Graphic Artists), which represents over 15,000 accredited professional graphic designers. The "total bullshit" (as you call it) position that I set forth is based upon AIGA's fair practice guidelines.

If you would like to learn about AIGA and fair design practices, their web site is www.AIGA.org - I have linked a section titled:
A Client's Guide to Design:
How to get the most out of the process, which some of you may find beneficial to understand how the graphic design industry actually works (as opposed to how you wish it would work).

Several people obviously have a misconception about design services. In a perfect world, every client is 100% satisfied with every design. In the end, that doesn't always happen. The client is still liable for payment (that's why many professional firms charge 50% upfront to new clients).

I'm not interested in continuing to argue with anyone, especially if they refuse to take the time to understand how the design industry actually operates.

Since I don't see either party changing their position, I can only conclude that:

BDS did the work, and did not intend to rip-off European Webmasters (which in another point I made, still only exists in name...why is that?).

European Webmasters is guilty of contracting for a service which was performed, and refuses to pay for it.

If anyone has been ripped off, it's BDS.

ADG Webmaster

These are Lee's comments on the design
 

Some of you have commented on the color scheme, this is what Lee said in feb 2004:


As it stands we are looking to get a design similar in layout to www.gaywidewebmasters.com although we want to keep the existing color scheme on European Webmasters for this new design.

These are Lee's comments on the design
 

Lee told us he liked the design - if Lee had any quality concerns when the design was done, he certainly had a funny way of saying it, this is what he told me after we did a range of versions for him to choose from:


#3 is the one we like :)

Couple of small changes though that will need to be made.

1) Please select your country to enter needs to go.

2) The navigation on the bottom, can you have that changed to graphics in a similar style to that on the index1 version however, we still need the flags to remain where they are and also to be in their own cell as they are now so we can change them around.

3) Also on the logo itself can you move the logo text further up in the arc and then move the logo further down the page, does that make sense?

I think once thats done we're good to go on the splash page :)

These are Lee's comments on the design
 

And here we have Lee listing some of the changes he wants - once again no mention about quality a year and a half ago:


Few changes that need to be made to the main page design on EW.

Can find a screengrab of these marked changes at:

http://www.webmasteradvertising.com/ewsample.jpg

1) Logo needs to be smaller.. its just to big atm

2) Header height needs to be made smaller again, just to much of the page being wasted by the header right now

3) The cut corner needs to be removed, just looks naff

4) Navigation should form part of the header itself like it does on www.gaywidewebmasters.com makes it easier for us to use ssi on the site then

5) Dont really like that effect as a page opening

6) Needs to have some kind of footer to close the page off instead of just 'ending'

7) Text there should be graphical as a part of the actual image, prefer it to read 'Hot Sites'

8) Text again should be graphical as (7) above, prefer it to read ' Industry News'

9) Need to have some sort of background shading instead of just a white space to put text in bro.

10) As it stands the way the page is cut wont make it possible for me to fit an annual spot like we have on the directory + forums of GWW, that needs to be changed so we can put a 740x60 banner rotation between the page header and the main body of each page.

11) Page needs to be wider, prefer it to be 740 pixels in width

These are Lee's comments on the design
 

And here you have it, the last thing I ever heard from Lee before a hurricane one year later caused him to not contact me ever again

the map on the main page logo in the top right still needs to come out of the brown background more
other than that i think we are done

did Lee tell you that he choose the colors? He was very happy with them at the time :thumbsup

Next time ask for an upfront payment ;)))

Lee provided the layout and text - did he forget to mention that?

Where are those changes BTW? :1orglaugh

It still looks crap no matter what you say, who did you outsource the work to?

Regards,

Lee

Now lets address the quality shall we?

Would you say the quality of that design is your usual standard? A simple yes or no will suffice :)

Regards,

Lee