Comments on: Cookie Cutters Are for Kitchen Use Only

By: pat roles

pat roles — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:58:46 +0000

Great article and response!

By: Liz

Liz — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:07:40 +0000

Our overall concern is that businesses should take the visual aspect of their branding seriously, and not hastily accept generic designs.

The affordability aspect is an especially good point. Although small businesses should not assume they must use the biggest, most expensive branding firm; with some research an affordable designer can often be found.

It’s true that our blog is currently based on an existing theme, but we made changes to customize it to fit with the design of our company website. At the time we were new to WordPress and wanted to see what the process was all about. In fact, the frustrations of dealing with someone else’s template reinforced our preference for original designs. As we become more adept at working within the WP functionality framework, we are better able to customize designs to a client’s specs.

By: Neil Drori

Neil Drori — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:42:54 +0000

It’s not the cutter that gives the cookie its taste, its what goes in to the batter.

There are a great many designers and lots of great examples of creative, attractive and interesting web sites but not all the great examples come from great designers.

Then again, there are lots of terrible examples of web design and lots of self proclaimed designers and these are also not mutually exclusive.

Start ups and small businesses typically do not have the capitalization to hire professional design talent to come up with an “original” design and then continue spending money on updates, expansions and redesigns which are all necessary if a web site is to stay interesting to its audience. Their limited resources are needed for a great many things like developing great products.

Does that mean that budding entrepreneurs who want to use the internet should stay away until they can afford to hire a “pro”?

Great designs and slick branding are wonderful things but they are NOT the exclusive domain of the professional designer. Terrific products and ecstatic clients are however, exclusively the result of talented and creative entrepreneurship.

I say 3 cheers for the cookie cutters (on-line templates, simple WYSIWYG design tools and the like). They provide the means for lots of bakers to get their tasty treats into the hands of hungry fans.

By the way, your blog is built on a Wordpress template……If you live in a glass house, you shouldn’t throw stones.