ROOFExpress

There have been speculations about it since I joined Aeon Technologies. But till now, I have been maintaining balance between both things. However now its time to officially announce that I would be leaving the active management of DesignMyWork and 13^th March 2010 would be my last day as the CEO of this company. PrintMyWork affairs were already transferred to Salman and Shigrif back in October 2009. The reason of leaving DesignMyWork is somewhat the same as of PrintMyWork. Though being a techie, I am an admirer of design and beauty, yet admiration of great designs and art work doesn’t add any value to the company. I want to enjoy whatever I want to do professionally and somebody who dreams about innovative products was finding it really difficult to adjust in services of low cost projects. Yet the experience of jumping into an industry of which I had no idea was truly marvelous and I thank all my employees, partners, friends and mentors for being there when I needed them. The tenure taught me the designing issues, HR and Financial issues, problems in the BFA/MFA curriculum here in Pakistan as well as managing the Design HR. You surely cannot treat a designer as a software developer and apart from that awesome designers are really scarce these days. This venture would certainly help me in future with my professional life.

The problem with design business in Pakistan is that a design which might be awesome for one would be pathetic for the other and as Steve Jobs says that “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new”. Also that “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.

Most of the time people called us and said “2 Din Mein Website Banna Dein” without even realizing what pain one has to go through while making an original design. Even if you see our website, we did a wild experiment with it. Everything was developed from scratch. Even the music was specially produced for the website. But most of the clients don’t understand and perhaps the post http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell on OatMeal explains it beautifully.  Also we were being tagged as a web design firm and that’s why we have been very selective in taking projects. We tried to maintain our focus on original graphics designs. Our initial idea was even to provide the IPhone Developers & Application Builders with original designs and music as most of them are currently using the ones copied from web.

Now that I am becoming busy day by day, its becoming increasingly difficult for me to manage things. I am shedding off most of the extra affairs, volunteer activities as Saad Bhai, Khurram Bhai, Adil Bhai and Irfan Bhai advised me to concentrate on one thing instead of putting my legs in multiple boats. This also means that I would also be reducing my frequency of guest lectures in universities. I have one plan on mind at the moment and I want to concentrate all energies on that and Aeon Technologies.

DesignMyWork is however still the brand of ROOFExpress. I have not yet finalized to sell it off or to keep it with ourselves as a freelancing/full time firm but all I know is that I am done with it.