Have you ever heard of the Bakkie Brigade? No, it is not a modern day white supremest movement from Orania; the Bakkie Brigade is a term that we used a decade or two ago, to refer to the crowd of “entrepreneurs” who bought themselves bakkies and became builders overnight. They were everywhere. The only requirements were that you should have held a tool of sorts in your hand before (or at the very least know where to buy one) and that you must be in a position to afford a bakkie (normally paid for with the money from the nice “package” that came with early retirement and making way for a previously disadvantaged individual). Typically you’d start off as a handyman and before long you’d realise that being a handyman doesn’t go all the way where paying the bills be concerned and that that nice package surely isn’t going to last if you keep on drinking like this. Next logical step is to take on small alterations/renovations and before you know it, you’re building for real and quietly wonder what happened to your retirement intentions (like most intentions they lead to questionable destinations).

The latest craze then (it would seem) is to become a webber. WTF is a webber? A webber is a person who builds web sites off course. We’re not talking about your everyday, garden variety geek here – we’re talking about bakkie brigade drop-outs, medics, marketing students, hell anyone who owns a PC and Frontpage/Dreamweaver (the cracked version) or that knows of a good template site or two. They’re everywhere. In some cases it is just a case of “It looks so bloody easy, why should I pay a designer to do this?” and before you know it (with a portfolio that encompasses one webshite and a logo, homemade in Word or similar design application) we have another webber on our hands.

The problem that I have with this is simply that:

• these “web development companies” price at way below the industry standard to help get their portfolios going.
• the design quality (in most cases) is sub-standard.
• implementation and markup is not standards compliant.

This creates problems, in that:

• established designers/developers either have to compete for business with these companies/individuals at unreasonably low tariffs – devaluing the service as a whole or have to be in a position to compete at the top end of a very niche market.
• companies/designers have to re-educate clients about the value of brand identity when they are already pissed at the industry because some incompetent half-wit has already done them for a scrap of clip-art and a nice font (the name of which starts with an A normally) that was forced onto them as a logo – or worse, you actually have to design them a site that fits in with that crappy (less than)corporate identity.
• web standards (that sounded so catchy when your poor client was first dazzled with the lingo by aforementioned half-wit) and design quality have already fled out the back door on a very long sabbatical and you have to charge the client twice what he paid said half-wit for a company webshite, to create an accessible, compliant website.

…in short – this crowd only screws with the market long enough to screw it up and then leave behind an industry in shambles.

Design is not easy. No one (not even the most talented) gets it right 100% first time, but we keep on trying. We dedicate long hours to keeping an edge, learning new coding/programming languages, experimenting with new techniques, keeping abreast of the latest web trends, developments and standards, ensuring that we give our clients every bit of their money’s worth. I’ll be sure to post a picture of these ass-clowns backsides as and when they leave town in their droves – until then, I guess hope springs eternal … either that or I’m buying a fucking Bakkie.