Taking a step in the right direction

I finally am taking baby steps towards the kind of work I would like to be doing more of at least in the IT field: web and graphic design. Today the order of the day is a welcome page for a hair salon and spa. I drove to the salon a few weeks ago to take pictures and to meet with the client. I was pleased with the way I handled this client meet. She took me on a tour of her place. She was still putting in final touches and was in fact hard at work at sewing these very curtains that are in the background. I'm finding that like everything else, the hardest part of this task is not at all the technical aspects of the work. It's actually quite easy coding. The hardest part is figuring out what Agni wanted, what is her look, what would she like the website to evoke. It's unbelievably harder to arrive at these answers than one would think. Starting off with the question like What do you want the website to look like? turns out not to be the best take off point. You often get the default answer: I don't know. Something unique. Well unique doesn't really tell us a whole lot. But ask them which one is more their style: Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel and you get more finite answers. Her answer was Pier1. Not in the selection list, but still a heck of a lot more information than going for ubiquitous uniqueness.