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Details - can't see the forest for all the trees

I have spoken about the details as a topic and their importance within web design/development elsewhere but just to continue on the same topic I read this article at A List Apart today which delves further into the importance of details when presenting creative concepts to clients, and getting it 100% right.

Now, all of the tips given in that article are sound and reasonable, and I agree on pretty much the entire article, but I also know from experience that what Joel Spolsky describes in his classic Iceberg article is completely true as well, even to this day.

It is obviously the combination of knowing both those two contradictory facts that creates a problem for developers. Most non-developers have a real problem understanding the complexities, thinking and planning that goes on behind/before/during development. -"How hard can it be? It is all THERE!! " *pointing at screen with pretty Photoshop mockup*

When it comes to web/marketing led development those pretty mockups from the designers quite often is what sold the project to the client in the first place, so there is rarely a way around this, the projects are most often only given go-ahead after visual designs have been presented. Too often the question "what does it look like? " is treated as more important to "what can it do? " or "which business problem are we solving? ".

I think this is because these presentations mostly are held by marketing people in the agencies, and the audience often is the marketing department of the client. They like pretty pixels. It makes the product feel more tangible. "Brand exercise" has become synonymous with "where is my logo placed in relation to the other things on the screen, and what prominence does it have? ", and quite often forgetting that brand loyalty can be built by providing an awesome service that actually helps people to do things (apart from crying of happiness by looking at the clients logo) BUT that will take some time to actually develop/realise.

If it doesn't exist already someone has to build it from scratch. Quite often that someone is working in my team and he/she will need time chipping away on lines of code, which doesn't take the creative much further visually…it can even appear to have ground to a halt because "nothing new seems to be happening! " (and even more commonly, as the development takes time the client thinks it is alright to do changes to the designs whilst waiting, often without realising that adds even more development time).

Also, I often say "my team takes designs and from them they create experiences " but that is only true if there is an experience to be had in the first place. Surely said brands "do " something. Can't they "do " it, or something in line with that, online? Here's a thought: if you can't think of something you actually can do/give to your clients, are you ready to have a campaign/site/service/advertising?

Pretty much all the big brands online are based on good services first and foremost. I'm pretty sure Google (Search, Maps, Mail, Notes etc), Scrapblog , Twitter, Flickr, Upcoming, YouTube, Netvibes etc didn't start their life spans as pixel perfect Photoshop mock-ups but instead started as a wild wacky idea and some experimenting from bored (or very lucky) developers somewhere, who were given a challenge by someone wanting to solve a [business] problem no one had thought about previously.

I'm not saying fun/entertaining marketing/advertising (only) exercises doesn't have their place, they do (and luckily we get to do quite a few of the good ones at work thanks to daring clients), but I AM saying the request "Make it more Web 2.0/Interactive please " is tricky to implement unless said exercise actually DOES something. "Shall I Ajax it up a bit then eh? " when it isn't needed surely can't be the best way to spend money for the client. We can of course do it. Should we?