• Who are you designing for?
• Are you putting your client’s needs first?
• Is showing off the project in your portfolio a motivating factor?

You’d like to think that most designers are ethical. And they’ll keep their focus entirely on client needs.

But we’re all human. And sometimes, we add bells and whistles to a project for the wrong reasons. We may not even be aware of what we’re doing.

It comes down to those little decisions we make during the design process. Sure, they can enhance our portfolios. But they may not have a positive impact elsewhere.

Thus, understanding our motivation is crucial. Are we focused on our clients or ourselves? How can you tell the difference? Let’s try and identify who that fancy feature is benefitting.

Look What I Can Do!

I’m fascinated by all the cool trends sweeping the web. Sometimes a new feature will grab my attention. And I simply can’t wait to use it in a project.

Parallax scrolling is a prime example. It’s a widely used effect. But I’ve yet to add it to one of my projects.

Then, I found myself working on a website that seemed like a good fit. It included a stunning hero image that would wow users. So I implemented it.

Technically speaking, the result worked well enough. I beamed with pride when thinking about my accomplishment. And I know that my client will love the aesthetic.

The reality was different. My client wasn’t thrilled about the feature. They correctly pointed out that the effect was distracting to users. It took attention away from the page’s goal of driving conversions.

It turns out that the effect made the site harder to use. It didn’t help visitors find what they were looking for any faster. If anything, it got in the way. So, what went wrong?

Looking back, I was focused on the wrong thing. I used parallax scrolling just because I could. And it didn’t improve the finished product.

I wasn’t happy with myself. This was like a child being mischievous to get a parent’s attention. It may work. But not without annoying someone along the way.

Features Should Have a Purpose

Don’t get me wrong. We can still make use of cutting-edge features. But the feature needs to serve a purpose. Whatever we implement should solve a problem or improve the user experience.

Microinteractions, for instance, can be a great way to guide users along a path. They can make processes more intuitive. And animation can call attention to an important piece of information. It’s all about picking the right time and place for using them.

We run into problems when adding features without defining their purpose. Think about what a given feature should accomplish. Is it just for showing off? Or will it benefit both users and your client?

Web design is nothing if not a “me too” industry. We often use these elements to prop up our ego and income. Plus, none of us want to appear to be behind the times.

But we may come to a different conclusion if we’re honest about the project’s needs. Many (if not all) of these extras can likely be left out.

A good rule of thumb: If it doesn’t add anything useful to the final product, it doesn’t belong.

What about Client Requests?

Web designers aren’t the only ones adding bells and whistles. Our clients often request these features as well. So, what do we do in these instances?

It’s a tricky situation. We want to keep our clients happy. But we also need to think about best practices. And we owe our clients an honest assessment.

Therefore, the same philosophy should apply. Discuss feature requests with your client. Be sure to mention the pros and cons of implementing them. Most importantly, try to define their purpose.

It may be enough to change their mind. And if not, at least you tried to put the project’s needs first. You can’t win them all.

Design for Your Project, Not Your Portfolio

Great design exists to make things better. However, getting there takes a lot of thought and some soul-searching.

In the end, it’s about finding the right solutions for the task at hand. Having an impressive portfolio means a lot to our success. But doing right by our clients means even more.

With that in mind, it’s OK if your portfolio is missing those trendy features. Maybe you haven’t found the right time yet. There may be an opportunity to implement them down the road.

It’s more important to help clients solve problems and achieve their goals. That will mean more to your chances of future success than anything else.

The post How to Balance Client Needs vs. Your Portfolio appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

It’s also not a good thing for your eyes. If there’s no focal point, the food can overwhelm you, and you’ll find yourself lost in a vortex of scary, calorie-filled nightmares.

You’re not going to process your eating experience; you’re simply going to start at the least offensive corner and chow down until it’s all gone and your stomach’s about to burst.

That’s why, when you go out to nicer restaurants, the chef portions out your food in small amounts, so that you can take your time and absorb not just the actual eating but also the sensory experience – the sights, the smells, even the sounds. Yes, people. Food is complicated.

Today, I’m going to talk about simplifying your designs using the very same principles a chef uses to ensure that you have the most pleasant eating experience possible.

And just like you’re much more likely to return to a restaurant that serves you an experience rather than a mess, your users will be more likely to do the same when your designs are clean, strong, and simplified.

Focus In

We humans are programmed to make things complex. In the field of cultural anthropology, there’s overwhelming evidence of this fact, as societies around the world have progressed over the millennia from simple (think ‘hunter-gatherer’ type societies) to complex (modern “post-industrial” countries).

It’s in our DNA to want to add on rather than take away, which can make the average designer’s job pretty difficult.

From your end as a designer, it’s generally quite hard to be objective about which information or design elements are “necessary” versus which are not. Getting a second opinion can help sometimes, but if the person you’re asking is not a seasoned designer, they might not have the experience to tell you what’s not working and why.

When I’m working on a project that’s gotten too out of hand, I usually stop and take out the notes I took at the beginning of my process.

The mind maps, diagrams, and lists that illustrate precisely what my main focus was supposed to be for the project. It’s inevitable that you’ll lose sight of your main focus at least once during the design process.

That’s okay, as long as you refer to your notes and refresh your memory. Designing around your main focus helps you to be more discerning about the content you include in your design, as it makes it clear what’s directly related to that main focus and what isn’t.

Use the Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle is something that’s been getting quite a bit of attention in recent years, thanks to personal development gurus like Tim Ferriss. But just in case you don’t know the basic idea behind it, here’s a quick run-down.

The Pareto Principle, or the “80-20 Rule,” as it’s sometimes known, basically states that 20% of any given element is responsible for 80% of the results, and vice-versa.

Designers love the 80-20 rule since it’s so applicable to the design process, particularly in those areas where information or sales are at the heart of the design goals.

While you’re designing your product, website, or other deliverables, here are two important questions to ask yourself so that you don’t “over-design” those elements that don’t need it and so that you can keep your focus on the 20% of the elements that are the most important:

1. Who, specifically, is most likely to benefit the most from this design element?

I’ve talked at length about narrowing down your career focus to zero in on one or two specific markets.

This question is one you can ask yourself at any time during your creative process. If you devote time to researching exactly the target markets you’re best equipped to serve, you’ll have a much easier time finding and understanding the needs of clients.

And when it comes time to simplify your designs for this target group, you’ll know exactly what they’re looking for, how they look for it, and how to provide it to them simply.

2. How can I deliver the most value to this group of people using the least number of steps?

As an extension of the above idea, your process will become much simpler when you begin focusing on the number of steps it will take your users to get from your design to the information or product they’re looking for.

It’s helpful to write it out in a literal list; start with the key action step on your website, brochure, poster, etc., and document exactly what needs to happen from there to make the sale.

Once you’ve done that, the path usually becomes very clear in terms of what’s actually needed to get the user to their destination, and what’s not.

Smart It Up

A lot of the advice you may read about simplifying your designs might make it seem like designers think their users are the stupidest people in the world.

Skim a few articles and you’ll see what I mean – everything is concerned with making the important elements as obvious as they can possibly be so that the user doesn’t have to use their brain for anything.

It can actually make you start to feel a bit sorry for the average user at first since designers seem to think so little of them.

But if you understand the underlying principles behind this philosophy, you’ll begin to realize that not only do designers not think their users are stupid, they’re actually being very smart about creating an experience that caters to the needs of the very top of the user “hierarchy.”

It’s not that you should automatically assume that people are stupid. Rather, your assumption should be that everyone is smart – each of your users is far too busy living productive, interesting lives to waste time where they don’t need to.

Once you embrace this mentality, it will become easier for you to zero in on exactly what makes these smart, productive, interesting people tick, and how you can help them absorb the exact information they need to go on about their awesome lives. This has the added effect of allowing you to go on about your awesome life as well.

Your users should be able to get to the specific information they need with as little effort as possible.

Whether that involves less reading, scrolling, or interactivity, make sure you keep your focus on the actual steps required to encourage the biggest results from the least amount of action.

The post Why You Should Simplify Your Designs for the Smartest User appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Why am I talking about pie on a design website? Well, because I think that designers, of any kind, can learn a lot from bakers who skip over the fancy trimmings to give people what they want most – an uncomplicated plate of minimalist goodness.

Apple pie has endured through the years because it’s something people easily understand. In the same way, a simple, classic design that doesn’t require your audience to think too hard to understand the message will still be relevant after years of fancy fluff and bad trends have come and gone.

Apple pie is something you can’t really mess up – unless you start adding things that don’t really need to be there. It might not be easy to create the perfect design, but simplifying your “recipe” of features and information is one of the most important steps toward creating the best user experience possible.

“Pare” Necessities

The best recipes for apple pie, in my opinion, are the ones that keep things basic. In culinary terms, this allows the flavor of the main ingredient – apples, in this case – to shine. The apples are the “selling point,” so to speak. When you sit down to design a website, flyer, or brochure, make sure your audience knows exactly what they’re looking at.

In America and most of Europe (with a few exceptions), apple pies are covered with a crust. This crust is traditionally either flat or plaited into a lattice, and it sends a signal to hungry folks that the fruit they’ll find inside is probably going to be apples.

Make sure your selling point in a design is as clear as the apples in a pie. Determine exactly what your users are looking for and what they want. Ask them, if you can. The more testing you can conduct before publication, the higher your probability of creating a design that speaks to your users’ specific needs.

If, for example, you’re designing a clothing website, do your users want to search based on the types of clothing (shirts, dresses, shoes, etc.) or the types of materials (silk, cotton, leather, vinyl)? The only way you’ll know the answer for sure is if you ask.

Getting feedback from friends and acquaintances is a time-honored way of gathering “market” research in the initial stages of a design. Ask them specific questions about their experience – is something missing that they’d like to see? Can they digest the information they need clearly and without any assistance? If you’re bound by confidentiality agreements (or you have no friends), it’s perfectly acceptable to ask your client to produce this research for you or enable you to do it yourself.

This will probably be a terrible pun/cliche combo for both this article and this topic (forgive me), but Apple is the leader in the area of simple design and streamlined user experience. The Apple website and store are specifically designed to lead you, the user, through the buying experience with as little hassle and stress as possible.

The product images are big; the text is short and obvious. Additional information is available at the click of a mouse, but if you don’t click the links, you never need to worry about it. You’d better believe that the web design department at Apple spent hundreds of hours figuring out the things their users wanted – and needed – to see in order to complete the sale. And well, cliches just mean that something is extra-extra true!

Sweet Reduction

There are plenty of things you can put on top of a pie: ice cream, sugar, whipped cream, syrup, cookies, cherries – the list goes on and on. Some people might think this makes the pie taste better, but in my opinion, if you have to add that many extra things to your pie to improve the taste, you’re starting from the wrong end of the plate.

Similarly, extra bells and whistles usually only serve to clutter up a design and obscure the fact that it wasn’t very good to begin with.

I’m not saying you should never add, say, an extra column, widget, or typographic treatment if you really need to, or even just really want to. But it’s important to start with a good “base.” Make sure the fundamental message of your design gets through loud and clear. Don’t give your users extra options they don’t need or aren’t looking for.

Don’t make it harder for them to get to where they need to go. Make your users’ main goal your top priority, and add in the “toppings” only once you’re sure the main event is a treat. And hey, toppings can be delicious. My favorite is apple pie à-la mode!

Ask Grandma

You know what they say: if your Grandma can’t figure out how to navigate through your design, it’s too complicated. Elderly people tend to have less patience, ability, or desire to sift through tons of unnecessary information. That makes them perfect starting points for determining exactly what’s needed for your design and what’s simply taking up space.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re testing a design for a web template store. Is your objective clear (instant download of PSD files)? Will it be easy for your customers to find exactly what they’re looking for? Is the font size large enough for most people to read? Is there too much text? Too many ads? Is the shopping cart/payment method simple to find and navigate through?

Simply put: is there anything standing in the way of your user getting exactly what they want? If so, Grandma might just get up and head down to the record store. (Assuming there still is one in her neighborhood!)

Remember to run your design past your grandmother (or your uncle, your great aunt Matilda, or anyone who’s not so “tech-savvy”) and see if she gets it. If so, perhaps she’ll bake you a nice apple pie!

The post How Simple, Classic Design Should Work appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Even people who have no idea what the original design was even used for will discuss its beauty, simplicity, and timelessness.

What goes into creating work of that caliber? Today, we’re going to explore some possible explanations and try to get an idea of how a designer might go about creating timeless designs.

Will It Be Timeless?

Some things might seem as though they will be instant classics. Then, without warning, they fade into obscurity and no one ever mentions them again.

Why does this happen? No one really knows for certain, but there are some possible explanations. The most important, in my opinion, is that the general public – not just the design community – either stopped caring about the design, or never cared enough in the first place.

Design is meant to change the way people interact with one another in the world, not just designers, but everyone. If it fails to do so and generate influence beyond the scope of the original brief, it will never become the classic it could be.

Glitch Mona Lisa by Dan Svetlichnyy

Design Marketing Problems

Public opinion is fickle, but it can be greatly influenced by the right advertisement. Brands like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Microsoft didn’t get to their current level of market dominance by chance.

Even great art like the Mona Lisa has been heavily promoted to be recognizable to a modern audience.

There were plenty of contemporary works that were just as popular in their day, and even some that were more so. But it was marketing that propelled the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the statue of David, and other iconic works of the Renaissance to last as long in the public memory as they have.

To Trendy To Be True?

As I’ve said in the past, if something feels like a trend, it probably is. I’m not simply talking about phenomena that are currently all the rage, like neumorphism or previously flat design.

I’m talking about things that merely look cool without any underlying fundamentals to ground them. Such trends are destined to be one hit wonders, fading as the design world moves on to more solid ideas.

A good way to spot a trend that’s being milked purely for profit is to determine what the most respected members of the design community have to say about it.

If the ‘movers and shakers’ of design are constantly lambasting the trend then there’s a good chance it’s simply a throwaway fad. However, if they don’t have much to say or are even incorporating it into their own work, it’s probably a winner.

Neumorphic Radio Player App by Alexander Plyuto

No Good Designers Left?

A lot of designers complain that the current crop of design professionals are too caught up in trends and technology and are ignoring the fundamental principles of good design.

These designers tend to be older and may even feel a bit left out as the world seems to be embracing a completely foreign approach to design.

This happens every generation, with the old-timers complaining about ‘today’s kids’ and their apparent lack of respect for the profession.

I’m sure the designers from the 1940s and 50s griped about ‘whippersnappers’ in the 70s and 80s with their Rapidographs and floppy disks or…whatever.

It’s true that there are a lot more designers actively working now than there ever have been in the past.

But the number of talented designers who have a solid understanding of the fundamentals has not diminished. If anything, it has increased due to the larger pool of designers out there.

The likelihood that at least a handful of these designers will produce something lasting is very high, even though one might have to wade through a lot of junk to find it.

Rapidograph & Notebook by Harry Diaz

Timeless Doesn’t Equal Boring

Think that classic design is boring and behind the times? Think again. Every single designer is influenced by those who have come before them.

If you choose only recent, contemporary designers to be influenced by, you’ll only be regurgitating the most recent trends, which could hasten their demise and make all of your work look horribly dated.

Try heading to the library and flipping through examples of classic designs by the greats of the 20th century. You might even be surprised at how often (and how badly) those designers were ripped off by later copycats.

The post How a Designer Might Create Timeless Designs appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The restaurant has been around, in some form or another, since ancient Rome, and its function – to bring people together over a conveniently cooked meal – has changed very little in all that time.

There’s another benefit of restaurants that specifically applies to designers and other creative people, and that is to stimulate your creativity. That’s right – it’s been proven that socializing improves your intelligence. Not just academic intelligence either – interacting with friends and peers actually helps to make you more creative.

When you go out with others, you’re exposing yourself to an influx of new ideas that can’t help but positively influence your creative process. And food is a natural bonding agent, which is why so many creative ideas are born around a lunch or dinner table with other designers, artists, musicians, writers, et cetera.

Today, I’m going to explore the idea generation process familiar to so many designers who eat out with friends: the “awesome idea scribbled on a restaurant napkin” process.

It’s very high-level stuff. No, really! The lowly napkin sketch (or scrap paper or ledger pad sketch) has been used by everyone from babysitters all the way up to top creative executives at Microsoft and Walmart to bring to life important ideas that change the world, or at least bring in more profits.

Some experts say that the business sector is too dependent on language to express ideas that really should be expressed using visuals (i.e., sketches). That’s good news for us designers, but how exactly do we adapt it to our working process to make things easier for ourselves and our clients?

We designers all know the advantages of sketching: it’s a way to sort out our preliminary ideas and eliminate the ones that aren’t right for the job.

Of course, you don’t have to sketch on a napkin, but any kind of sketch is more useful than just thinking about the idea, because it requires you to use a different part of your brain.

Image Source

When you think, or read, or write, you’re nurturing the connections your brain makes between the different thoughts you have (called ‘neural pathways‘), and increasing your brain’s “elasticity.” When you add drawing to that process, you’re exercising important motor skills that can actually feed your creativity.

Personally, I prefer to sketch on paper. Why? Because it allows me the opportunity to step away from the computer for a brief moment and collect my thoughts on something I can touch and hold in my hands.

That’s important to me, and to a lot of designers whose work almost always ends up on the computer one way or another.

We humans respond to things that are interactive, and that allows us to make a direct impact on something. Ever wonder why more and more vending machines are see-through, rather than opaque?

The working mechanisms of those machines are engaging to our brains – we love to put our money in the machine, and literally see our desire (to have a refreshing beverage or snack) being fulfilled right before our eyes. It’s fun.

And guess what? Your clients are the exact same way.

Image Source

If you’re a designer or art director redesigning a company’s brand identity, how do you make sure everyone there understands the creative vision you have?

Well, you could tell them. But most people aren’t going to take notes and will end up misinterpreting what you said at some point or another.

You could show them a presentation, which might work for some people. But I think that printing out handouts of your sketches, and walking people through them is the best way to involve them in the decision-making process.

Sometimes, sketching can be used to effectively communicate ideas to people – designers or non-designers – in ways that far surpass, say, a PowerPoint presentation.

Think about what you’d rather have in a department meeting: a dry, preachy collection of slides, or a sketchbook to work out your ideas about the company’s creative direction?

Just like a clear-windowed vending machine allows us to see the effect our money has on it, involving people with live sketching gives them a democratic insight into how design decisions are made.

It can turn a lofty, complicated mess into something that’s easy for everyone to understand. And we all know that an informed client is a happy (and oftentimes repeat) client.

You don’t want to just talk at your clients and lecture them about things that are going to go over their heads. Your clients aren’t stupid (well, hopefully not).

They are running a company, after all. Clients like to feel creative, or at least like they’re contributing to something to the creativity of their businesses. And what better way to make grown adults feel powerful and in charge of something than by handing them some paper and making them draw like grade-schoolers?

All joking aside, people love that stuff. It creates a feeling of harmony and democracy in the company, as anyone, from the janitor to the CEO, can make a sketch.

As Lou Levit explains in his article, How Sketching Will Take Your Design Process to the Next Level, sketching allows you to “dig deeper” with your idea process, uncovering more design solutions that often work much better than the initial ideas you start out with.

Image Source

Another downside to simply absorbing information via presentation is that it tends to lead your client through the design process with minimal challenge to their own imagination.

Because of this, your client may not really understand your reasoning behind a more nuanced design solution, and may fight you on it. Presenting sketches is one way to quiet those feelings of misunderstanding. The more your client can see of your process, the more likely they are to trust your judgement.

The key to engaging your clients with sketching is to think of your design meeting more like a restaurant date with friends. Obviously, you should probably keep the celebrity gossip and alcohol consumption to a minimum, but the general feeling of creative camaraderie should be the same.

Engage your clients with spontaneous sketches, draw things out for them that you might otherwise just dryly explain, and observe the difference yourself in their level of understanding, engagement, and trust.

You don’t have to make them draw too, though, as I mentioned before, many people do love that. But just like passing around a napkin at the restaurant table to your friends can result in weird and wonderful new ideas, incorporating sketches in your meetings with clients can propel your projects to heights that you never would have expected.

The post The Idea Generation Process of Scribbling on a Napkin appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The woman leaves the room for a moment, and when she comes back, she is dismayed to find that the children have all begun scribbling on the walls.

There are squiggly lines of color everywhere, ruining her pristine, white paint job. Imagine you are this woman. What do you do next? Do you praise the children’s artistic contribution to the decor? Or do you grab the nearest sponge and start scrubbing frantically before the company comes over?

If you’re like most moms, the answer is obviously the latter, but why? Is it because you want to tyrannize the kids? Infringe on their self-expression? Probably not.

More likely, you just want to maintain a sense of order in the house. Three toddlers running amok with crayons would quickly become chaotic. And in a world of chaos, no one is happy; neither you nor the children, even though they were the ones who started the madness.

Defending Design Simplicity

Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said that “perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” That’s a nice quote, but what does it mean in the practical sense?

Sure, it’s telling us that simple is better than complicated. Most of us know that instinctually. No one wants a pen that’s also a steam iron, a soap dispenser, and a toaster oven. But how do we avoid ending up with one? Here’s a secret: it doesn’t just happen.

Source: Quote – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Most people have an idea of the perfect simple, elegant solution to their design problem. The downside is, so does everyone else who has the same problem. Put them all in a room together, and you’ll have no consensus, but pandemonium.

Everyone will contradict each other, and sometimes even themselves, in pursuit of the “ultimate” solution that will be universally beneficial.

In one of the greatest paradoxes of human nature, when everyone has a say in what they think will make everyone happy, the result – invariably – is that no one is happy.

The underlying imperative of de Saint-Exupery’s words is that there must be someone in charge of a process who makes the single, final decision.

There must be one person – or a small, unified group of persons – who will ruthlessly prune the savage garden of the horde, creating a result that is not what anyone said they wanted, but what is truly needed.

They must be able to think globally rather than provincially. They must be willing and able to ignore what people say and focus on what is objectively best.

They must lead, and they must be vigilant about it. Any slack during this crucial moment, the final verdict will unravel the entire operation, resulting in a quagmire of confusion that will suck everyone under.

In other words, they have to act like Moms.

Don’t Make a Mess

People like to believe they’re an important part of a decision making process. And they are – just not quite in the way they think.

A consumer’s role in the design process is both less and more important than it often appears. It’s less important because what people tell you they want is almost always irrelevant.

That might sound harsh, but it’s actually a good thing. Recall the earlier example of the multi-purpose pen. Everyone you question will tell you something slightly different about what they “really” want in a pen.

Some people will want a pen that can light up. Others will want a pen that does arithmetic. Still, others will want one that can write underwater, or that is made out of living plant fibers, or that will give off a heavenly aroma of freshly baked cookies.

If you’re a reasonable sort, you’ll want to take everyone’s ideas equally seriously. It’s only fair – the customer is always right.

Plus, you might think all those ideas sound equally as cool – who wouldn’t want a pen that can do all of those things? In magical unicorn land, it would be perfect, a must-have item. But here’s the thing about the real world: when you add features, you get mass, and mass equals mess. Let me repeat that: features = mass = mess.

And a mess is completely at odds with de Saint-Exupery’s words of wisdom above. Nobody likes a mess. That perfect pen dreamed up by your well-meaning consumer test group would be the size of a wine bottle and weigh as much as a brick.

Sure, it would have all the features everyone asked for, but who do you think is actually going to use it? What people say is irrelevant.

As a designer, you must be prepared, like a good, caring mom, to give them what they need.

A consumer’s big, important role to play in a design process – their time to shine – is in demonstrating what they really, truly need in a product. Contrary to the things people say, what they need is extremely important. It is only through solving a need that any designer can hope to have a career. But how do you tell the difference?

If you can’t trust people to tell you what they need (and you can’t), how can you possibly figure it out? Should you guess? Do you simply create things arbitrarily, assuming you instinctually know what everyone’s needs are?

Of course not. That’s just as careless as adding too much mass. Do you embrace your inner creep and watch them intently, observing their habits and formulating an ideal solution based on what you see?

Well… yes.

People love to tell you how iconoclastic they are. Everyone else is one way, but they are different because (fill in the blank).

The truth is, the majority of human beings on this planet are remarkably similar in behavior, even people who might superficially be categorized as “different.”

True deviations from the norm are often frightening – sociopaths and murderers – or patently obvious mental or personality disorders. The rest of us – natives and immigrants, extroverts and introverts, liberals and conservatives, iOS users and Android – we’re all more alike than we typically care to admit.

And when we come together to form a market for a product, our actions as a unit usually prove it. We demonstrate what we really want, what we need, by how we behave; what we buy, when we buy it, how we pay for it, or even if we pay for it.

This is the meat of good design, the thing that makes it revolutionary. You must indulge your inner creep, or your inner mom, and let your market speak to you not with what they say, but with what they do.

The post Avoiding Design by Committee appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Technically, creativity and commerciality can’t exist without each other – you need funding to continue designing, and there would be nothing to design for pay without creativity.

Is there a difference between so-called “commercial” work and work that’s done purely for the joy of creating? Should they be separated?

A Jumble of Confusion?

Should you risk confusing potential clients with a mish-mash of work, or should there be a clear separation of commercial work and weird, creative stuff that is less commercial?

Personally, I think that the best potential clients for you would benefit from seeing the full extent of your creativity. It allows them to more accurately judge whether you’d be a good fit, not just for a one-time project, but also for future work, and any fun opportunities you might miss out on if they only see you as a one-dimensional designer.

But what will it do to your personal brand to mix styles? As I said, it can be a good thing to be weird and creative, because clients may take notice of your creativity. Personal projects are very important to maintain as a designer.

They can help you open up new avenues of creative inspiration that you may never have discovered had you only stuck to your client work. I’ve heard many stories of people being hired for amazing freelance and in-house jobs simply on the basis of a great personal project that got a lot of traction.

Too Weird To Appeal?

On the flip side, you may feel that your personal projects are really, really out there in terms of appeal, and might do more harm than good if you combined them with your professional work. The question becomes: can your personal work actually be too weird to associate with your commercial projects?

Well, yes, it can.

There is such a thing as too much disparity between what you do for clients and what you do for yourself. If that’s the case, just keep them separate. You can make a new brand for your weird stuff, and keep the commercial stuff in its own space.

Analytics & Tracking

Keeping things separate makes it easier to track what’s working to gain you clients, and what’s not. Every piece of work you publish online, personal or professional, is going to contribute in some way to people finding out more about who you are as a designer.

You want to always make sure you’re sending the message you want to send to anyone who is watching. If there’s non-commercial work mixed in with commercial work, it can confuse things as far as tracking and analytics goes.

This goes for any kind of work that you don’t want associated with the work you present to potential clients. Say you did a piece that you’re really not proud of, maybe just for the money or for some other reason. You can’t stand to look at it, but you’re afraid to remove it from your portfolio for some reason. Time to get rid of that thing!

If a potential client sees it and wants to hire you to do the exact same thing, what are you going to say to them?

Never include work that you hated doing in your portfolio, because you’ll often find that that is the exact thing clients will want to hire you for the most.

Don’t believe me? Just do a few more crappy projects and you’ll see for yourself.

Be Like A Mullet

You may have heard of the joking description of the mullet haircut popular in rural areas in the US: business in the front, party in the back. Sometimes, it’s good to organize your design work like a mullet. Yes, I’m serious.

Put your professional work that’s relevant to meeting the needs of your clients front and center, and place your “fun” projects that you work on simply for your own enjoyment on the back burner, to be shared with your friends and other designers who are interested in seeing it.

Even publishing work under two different names can help make the separation clearer to everyone.

The post Separating Your Personal & Commercial Design Work appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

For example, if your client is late to a meeting, you would probably assume they got stuck in traffic. It’s a simpler and likelier explanation than, say, assuming they got temporarily abducted by aliens and had to fight through an endless maze of plant monsters to get to the meeting on time

That’s a prime example of the kind of over-thinking that many designers are prone to. We’ll go over the importance of ditching the unnecessary when developing design concepts, and why it’s so hard to do in the first place.

Not only will you be a stronger designer when you insist on simplicity, but your clients will be much happier with your work as well.

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Considering New Options

Here’s a scenario that I think perfectly illustrates how designers can use Occam’s Razor to de-clutter their designs. If you know me, you know what I’m about to say: something about food! Okay, so, you and a group of friends go out to eat at a buffet-style restaurant, and you begin piling up a huge assortment of food on your plate. Your friends are giving you funny looks, but you explain that you’re really hungry and will be eating a lot.

However, when you finally sit down to dig in, you get overwhelmed with the variety of options in front of you. Where do you jab your fork first? Decisions, decisions. Your friends are having no trouble polishing off their smaller meals and going to get seconds. It occurs to you that you didn’t have to put everything you were going to eat tonight on your plate at one time. There was a simpler solution right in front of you that you didn’t even consider. Oops.

Design works the exact same way. No matter what you want to accomplish in a design, there is almost always a simpler way to do it that will obtain the same result with less distraction and clutter.

Deconstructing a design concept to its bare elements while still maintaining the integrity of the design brief allows you to solve clients’ problems with the power of economy. Always go out of your way to make things less complex, because…

Complicating Things Is Natural

I’m not sure why so many people think that simplicity or minimalism in design is easier to do than complexity. But it’s a pretty depressingly common thing for a non-designer to think.

I’ve personally worked with many people who just did not understand what it took to create a simple design layout. And I didn’t even try to strangle any of them. They say in entertainment that you can never be too rich or too thin. Well, in the design industry, you can never be too patient.

Back when I did the in-house grind, a co-worker once told me that whoever created the SPAM logo was: “just a slacker. I mean, how hard is *that* to pull off?” He was under the impression, like many non-creative professionals, that it was somehow “easier” to create something simple like the SPAM logo because it wasn’t as complex as, say, directing a customer service staff of 50 people (he was a VP of Operations).

Getting A Close Shave

Having designed “simple” logos and directed staff teams, I can say with a fair amount of authority that, if you’re doing it right, the latter is far easier than the former, and here’s why.

As a designer, the most important thing you can deliver to your clients is a way to funnel their core values into a working system. That includes the visuals, of course, but visuals are almost near the bottom of the list for design requirements. Sure, anybody can put some plain text in a box. But the knowledge of whether or not that’s appropriate for the project you’re working on is what makes you the design expert, and not your client.

Always remind yourself that design is about solving a problem and communicating a core idea to your user. Whether it’s a squeeze page on a commercial website, or the can opener in your kitchen, all design should strive to use the fewest amount of elements to make the easiest user experience possible.

If you find yourself stuck in a heavy jungle of clutter, walk away for a minute and ask yourself what simpler way you can use to achieve the exact same effect you’re striving for.

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The DNA Of Clutter

Nature is predisposed toward complexity. That means that, in general, simple things get more complicated over time. Single-celled organisms evolve into multi-celled organisms, and so on. Evolution is not the most efficient designer, and sometimes nature’s solution to a problem is to just evolve something else to solve it.

Then, once the need for it is gone, it just sort of sits there. That’s why we have an appendix, tonsils, and other weird remnants of things we once needed for survival, but now… not so much.

And it’s not just us. There are plenty of examples in the animal kingdom of species that have vestigial, or formerly useful, limbs, organs, behaviors, and instincts. They aren’t useful anymore, but, thanks to Mother Nature (also known as the worst art director in the universe), they’re there to stay.

What this all means is that we humans are built from the ground up to take simple things and make them complex. Think about a nomadic people’s village versus a modern metropolis in the West or East Asia. Huge difference in complexity, but all human civilizations started out the same – very simple and basic.

To make something simple from something complex is against our very nature. This is why Occam’s Razor exists in the first place. William of Ockham, the 14th Century English scholar who first came up with the idea, knew that people had a tendency to think up fanciful solutions to problems that only needed a simple fix. Try this explanation the next time you encounter a client who doesn’t think design is a “real” job.

If you struggle with simplifying your designs, remember that it’s not really your fault. It comes with having a human brain and seeing things in many layers. But through your designs, you can constantly challenge yourself and your users to take the simpler road.

You won’t always end up with the world’s most elegant solution, and that’s okay.

But by reminding yourself that there’s always a way to do it simpler, you can ensure you’re always communicating the clearest message.

The post Taking the Occam Razor Approach to Design appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Today, I’m going to share some tips on how the tools you select as a designer can help improve your creative process, and aid you in creating work you can really stand behind.

You’ve Gotta Have Standards

Do you know why so many chefs and cooks prefer wood over other materials? Well, it’s much the same reason many designers prefer Macs and software by Adobe: it’s the industry standard and using it makes your life easier in more ways than one.

Now before you say it, I know there are plenty of professional designers who are perfectly happy running Gimp or other non-standard software on a PC or Linux computer. And their work is just as awesome and up to par as any “Mac person’s.” But, for many designers, the benefits of having a standardized way to communicate with clients, other designers, and/or other departments outweigh the little idiosyncratic advantages of marching to your own drum.

Something else to remember – which might seem insignificant at first, but bear with me – is that you have to consider the technological “culture” into which you’ll be entering as a designer. This applies a bit more to in-house designers than freelancers, although freelancers working for a long-term client may experience the same thing.

My last in-house job was in a PC environment, and there was quite a strong anti-Mac sentiment among my peers. They “tolerated” me propping up my MacBook Pro on my desk alongside the office PC, but they definitely made their feelings clear. I thought it was funny, but a more sensitive person might have gotten their feelings hurt.

People can get mighty serious about their tools. And, as many of you out there have probably noticed, it can get ugly if you’re not careful. If you are totally in love with your tools and wouldn’t consider changing them for the world, by all means stick with them.

But if your peers or clients have a different opinion, be prepared to put up with a lot of their ranting and raving. And preaching and lecturing. And complaining and… yeah. You get the idea.

The Forest For the Trees

Nothing makes you feel like a “Real Chef” like gripping the handle of a huge, weighty, wooden spoon. It may seem a bit cliché, but I encourage you to try it the next time you’re in the kitchen. You can thank me later. Cooking enthusiasts, like designers, can get pretty hardcore about their wooden spoon choices.

Some people look for spoons that can handle stirring all the ingredients in the pot with ease. Others look for good scraping ability – the ability to remove food off the bottom of the pot so it doesn’t get stuck. And of course, you have to have a spoon you can use to taste your food while it’s cooking.

The debate on which wooden spoons handle all three of these tasks the best is endless, fierce, and sometimes a little scary. But enough about that. Consider your own tools as a designer. If you’re a pro, or aspiring to be, odds are decent that you use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or a combination of all three. Why do you use these programs?

Well, like I said, they are the industry standard. Being able to communicate ideas in a standard format across different people’s systems is an extremely valuable asset.

But there are other factors to consider as well. Believe it or not, some professional designers get by just fine using software that competes with Adobe on factors like price, interface preferences, and software size and speed. As powerful as a program like Photoshop or Illustrator may be, a lot of times you just don’t need all that power.

Some designers might actually be better off trimming down to something sleeker and less clunky. I’m an Adobe user myself, but, well…sometimes, for certain projects, other tools do the job just fine. I’m totally serious.

Beyond The Pale

Alternatives to Adobe software are plentiful, and they are used every day by pro designers. Some are free and open-source, others are web-based, and others may have a simpler or more familiar interface. Again, there are many reasons a designer might choose a non-standard tool, many of which may not be immediately obvious.

Web-based software might be perfect for frequent travelers, for example, while a more familiar interface might increase a designer’s speed tenfold. If you happen to be in the market for alternative software, do your research and figure out what your number one priorities are.

Now Leaving Digitopolis

But wait! Computers may be the fastest and most efficient tool to use, especially in the world of web design, but you know what? Sometimes you don’t want to be fast and efficient. Sometimes you want to let a design simmer slowly over a low fire, stirring it occasionally with your spoon until all the flavors meld together in an exploding cacophony of deliciousness.

What I mean with all the food metaphors (besides the fact that I might just be really hungry) is, perhaps you’re one of those designers who think better off the computer than on it. Computer screens are made up of billions of little glowing pixels, and staring at one for hours on end can be draining on not just your eyes, but your creativity as well. Paper and other non-digital surfaces don’t have that problem.

There are plenty of designers – yes, even web designers – who take the hand-crafted approach to assembling their work. Paper, cloth, yarn, and yes, even food, can be used as tools in your design arsenal.

Canadian designer Marian Bantjes, for example, continues to create a stir with her unique designs that feature sugar, tinfoil, fake fur, glitter, flowers, and other unconventional materials.

Choose Your Weapon

Remember, choosing the right tools, just like choosing the right wooden spoon in the kitchen, is a completely personal process. You can listen to someone else rave about the wonders of one tool versus another, but at the end of the day, it’s just a tool.

The decision is yours and yours alone, and a tool can only go so far in helping you with your working process. It can’t create the work for you, nor can it improve any weaknesses you have in terms of technical skill or design sensibility.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with eschewing the computer, even if it’s only for a little while, in favor of a more experimental approach. The great thing about experimenting is that you can take bits and pieces of the stuff that worked and add it to your regular design process to put a new spin on things.

So, if you really want to play around with paper and scissors and glue for your next project, go for it. As long as you solve the problem put in front of you by your client, it won’t matter how you got there.

Your client will most likely be impressed by your individuality and willingness to take risks, which, if you play your cards right, could lead to more challenging and higher-paying work in the future.

So dig around in the toolbox. Try them all. See what works best for you, and what will become your own personal “wooden spoon” standard for finding solutions to design problems.

For the record, though, a heavy, olive-wood spoon with a long handle and a rounded bowl (not too large) is as close to cooking tool heaven as you can get. According to this cook, that is. Bon appétit!

The post The Personal Process of Choosing the Right Design Tool appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

But if you simply disappear off your clients’ radar once the work is done, you’re missing massive opportunities for more work, as well as testimonials and referrals to help your business.

There are some important things that most designers never do when ending a freelance project, and today we’re going to go over what they are and why you should always do them, no matter what.

Wrap Up All The Loose Ends

The most important thing you should do when ending your project is to make sure that your client is 100% set to move forward without you. This means providing them with a package that includes everything they will need to manage on their own (site logins, full-resolution files, etc.)

It also means providing them with ways to solve any problems they might have without having to call you, in the form of FAQs, troubleshooting guides, or checklists.

Despite what you might think, it’s actually a waste of your time to have an old client call you for help with minor stuff that you could have easily provided for them in an email or spreadsheet. It’s unprofessional to hoard all the knowledge of how to use the goods you’ve created for your client in your head, making them come crawling back to you to obtain it.

You might not think this is what you’re doing, by neglecting to provide your client with information, but this is the way it comes across.

Keep Them Warm

People are much more likely to purchase services from people they’ve worked with before, so you already have that working in your favor. All you need to do is keep the line of communication open for when you need it again.

We’re all guilty of letting a relationship fade away, then finding ourselves wishing we hadn’t. But you can’t just pop up out of nowhere after months or years of not communicating with a client and ask for more work. The relationship needs to be kept warm in the meantime.

Luckily, it’s easier than you think to do this and make sure your clients never fail to think of you when they need high-level work done by a professional they trust.

It does you no good to drop off the face of the earth and never talk to your old clients again. You never know when a former client might be handy as a reference or provide some other career-boosting aid. You can’t just ignore someone for months and only contact them when you need something.

For clients, you definitely want to maintain a relationship with, make a minimum contact of one email per month. You can send them a brief update on what you’re up to, letting them know subtly that you’re still interested in referrals.

You might think you’re important and unforgettable, but you’re really not. You’re replaceable just like anyone else. In addition to your main client (as in, whoever signed your paycheck), send regular emails to any team members you worked with who you want to maintain a relationship with.

They’ll be more likely to let you know about any new projects or opportunities that might be of interest to you. Let them know what projects you’re currently working on (of course, never reveal any confidential or sensitive info).

Be Of Service

Always be thinking about how you can help your former clients, even though you’re no longer working for them. Send them information or introduce them to others you think might be able to help them. Just because you’re no longer getting paid by your former client, it doesn’t mean that you still shouldn’t try to help them in other ways.

Send 3-5 emails throughout the year that offer some kind of value – a link to a useful article, an offer to introduce someone who might be helpful, whatever – before you go asking for something.

A great way to instantly add value to any type of professional relationship is to become a connector. What that means is, if there’s someone you know whom you know a former client would benefit from knowing, don’t be afraid to make the connection and introduce them to one another. Your client will be grateful and you’ll be on the top of his or her mind the next time a juicy opportunity comes up.

It’s far easier to keep a current client happy than it is to gain a brand new client. You should always strive to acquire new quality clients; however, it’s possible to get trapped in a never-ending cycle of finding new clients and totally ignoring the old ones.

This is the worst thing a freelance designer can do – it means you’re spending valuable time generating new leads instead of designing, which will ensure that your portfolio work never develops or makes any interesting progress and you never get picked for the cool, high-level jobs you want.

But if you can retain most of your current clients, staying in touch with them so they never forget about you when they need more work done, you’ll have the opportunity to live life at a more leisurely pace (well…for a freelancer, that is) and spend more time designing.

Now that you have finished this project, here are five questions you should ask before starting your next.

The post Those Things You Must Do When Ending a Freelance Design Project appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.