The truth is, there are a million excuses we all can use to avoid making the necessary choices and sacrifices we need to in order to truly succeed. However, sometimes those excuses are actually legitimate.

Sometimes we really do need to figure things out first before we acquire our first clients. And, sometimes we really ought to quit working on an idea that’s clearly going to be a failure.

The trouble is knowing whether our excuse is actually legitimate, or whether we’re just stalling. We’re going to explore some of the ways you can tell the difference, and start finishing everything you start.

Thinking It Over

In almost everything we do, there’s a lot to be gained from having a thought process that’s separate from taking action. Putting effort into the planning stage of a project is essential to ensuring that it will be a success.

Just like you probably wouldn’t just walk onto a stage in front of hundreds of people and start talking without having a speech prepared, it’s rarely a good idea to jump into something feet first and hope you swim instead of sink.

Take the time to really evaluate whether you’re ready to take action. Does your idea seem half-baked? Is it the best solution you can come up with for the problem you’re trying to solve? If you’re the type to act first and think later, make sure to slow down and visualize the actual end of your project. That’s right – pretend that you’ve already achieved your goal.

What, exactly, does that look like? What deliverables have been created? What is the reaction of your client? If the reality doesn’t match up with the hopeful scenario in your head, it’s time to recalibrate what you’ve been doing and start again.

Taking Action

This is where many of us get choked up. You’ve planned and planned for ages, and you’re sure your project is going to be a smashing success. Yet, for some reason, it’s extremely difficult for you to actually get started.

Maybe you’re missing some essential component, or you feel your skills in a certain area aren’t quite up to par. Whatever the excuse, it’s keeping you from actually taking that first step.

Believe it or not, there’s an easy fix to this common problem. It involves setting clear deadlines to action. Even if you haven’t completely thought everything out, it helps to just put something out there and get feedback from others.

If you’re working on a long-term project for a client and you find yourself struggling with making decisions, see if you can communicate with them more regularly and get their input. Or better yet, go find some of your client’s target audience members and ask them what they think of your work so far. Does it resonate with them? Which parts are the most successful?

This kind of “on the job” market testing is a great way to plan your work and take action at the same time. You don’t need to be 100% ready before you release your work to the world for evaluation.

Often, the ideas and suggestions you get from showing people what you have will help make your work even better than it would have been otherwise.

It’s better to do something – anything – that’s “good enough,” than it is to do nothing and wait for absolute perfection. You’ll learn more after you begin than you ever will by research and planning alone.

If You Don’t Succeed, Quit?

In a word, yes. Part of being successful is knowing that, many times, you are going to fail. If you want to succeed on a regular basis, you have to develop the foresight to know when to abandon an idea or project that’s not working.

The reason might be that you ran into complications that you didn’t plan for, or simply that you’re just not interested in making time to complete the project. It’s just as important to figure out what you actually want to work on as it is to make the decision to work on something.

The last thing you want is for a project you only feel so-so about to simply yield mediocre results, resulting in months or years of work for no big payoff. It’s much better to fail at something quickly – recognizing a failure when you see one.

If you’re working on a project and you can’t bring yourself to meet your minimum goals every day (30 minutes of writing, an hour of looking for new clients), perhaps it’s time to admit to yourself that what you thought you wanted to accomplish isn’t really working for you anymore.

Give yourself a hard deadline and evaluate your progress. If you haven’t taken any firm action within two or three weeks, then it’s important to be honest and ask yourself whether you actually want to finish this work.

Sometimes the answer is “no” – and that’s perfectly okay. We all miscalculate our enthusiasm for an idea from time to time, and there’s absolutely no shame in starting over if the interest suddenly evaporates.

Again, set a concrete goal (I’m going to finish this piece in three months, etc.) for taking action. Decide that you’re going to do everything that needs to be done to achieve this goal by your deadline. If it doesn’t happen, then you’ll know it’s time to move on and try something else.

A New View

Sometimes what we need is a new perspective. Determination is important for seeing a project through to the end, especially if it’s a personal project like a side business that no one is paying you to complete (and which may not yield financial results for years).

If you are burnt out on a project, but are absolutely sure you want to do it, it’s probably time to draw back from it a bit and look at it from a different angle.

Maybe all you need is some choice feedback from a trusted friend or mentor. Or perhaps a day spent brainstorming and gathering more inspiration will inject new life and vigor into your work.

The post How to Let Go of That Failing Creative Idea appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Often, designers simply jot down those excess ideas in a notebook and file them away somewhere, but that’s boring and unhelpful.

The truth is, there are far better ways to deal with your spare ideas. Here are some suggestions on what to do with them.

Give Yourself A Deadline

If you really want to finish something, force yourself to make time for it.

We often have more time than we think we do, so if an idea is really burning a hole in your desk drawer or hard drive, it’s time to pull it out and make time to finish it. This may require reorganizing your to-do list, and letting go of other items that are less important.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether this project is really worth the sacrifices you’ll need to make in order to finish it. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but you’ll never know for sure unless you actually schedule time to analyze your priorities.

Combine Them With Other Ideas

If you’re anything like me, you come up with approximately a million and one ideas every single day. Over the course of several years this can add up to… well, a lot of ideas.

Often, these ideas might be compatible with one another, in ways that you might not expect. You can always combine ideas if you don’t have time to do each one. Sometimes this results in an even better idea.

Combining ideas is actually a well-known brainstorming technique, in fact, because the juxtapositions can open up new creative pathways in your brain and put you on the path to your best idea yet. Or at least something that you will actually want to finish.

Give Them To A Friend

Ideas are free; you can’t legally copyright an idea. But you can still give away some of your extra ideas that you know you’re not going to get to anytime soon to someone else who might use them in the near future. They might know exactly what to do with the idea, and will be grateful that you’ve helped them develop their creativity a bit more.

By the way, if you’re worried about having your idea ripped off or stolen, don’t be. Your friend won’t implement the idea the exact same way you would, so there’s nothing to worry about.

Also, consider this: if an idea isn’t good enough to be stolen, it’s probably not worth doing in the first place.

Drop Them

Sometimes it’s better to just admit that you’ll never use an idea and move on. Holding on to old ideas can actually hold you back creatively. You want to be fostering the development of new ideas, not hanging on to old junk that’s never going to be realized.

You might be surprised to discover, after a few years have gone by and you’ve managed to drop an idea, that it wasn’t even that good of an idea in the first place.

This has happened to me many times, and I consider it a good sign. As your taste develops, you learn to detect bad ideas more easily, and you’ll no longer be stifled by those ideas you’re not completely sold on.

Logo Sketch Ideas by Ian Barnard

Whatever You Do, Take Action

Ideas are useless unless you act on them. Don’t forget to check your backlog of ideas often to make sure you’re not simply stockpiling them for a “rainy day.”

Whether you combine them, power through them, give them away, or drop them, always make sure you’re keeping things rotating in your creative process.

Shaking things up, shuffling ideas around, arranging ideas like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle is a great way to get your creative juices flowing, even if you never end up doing anything with the idea.

The post What To Do With All Those Spare Creative Ideas appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

That’s pretty alarming, but even more alarming is when you’re the designer chosen to create content for one of these entrepreneurial turkeys. It can be really tough when a client suddenly runs out of money and has to default on your payment for a project. Yes, you can sue them, but unless business suddenly picks up (or they have incredibly wealthy parents), you’d probably be wasting your time.

Knowing how to spot a business idea that is not going to work, or how to tell when a particular business relationship looks rickety and on the brink of collapse is an important skill for any designer to learn, particularly if you work with new startups.

The Good, the Bad, and the Crazy

There are a lot of upsides to working with new businesses – the energy and enthusiasm among the members of the team is contagious, and if you’re a designer getting in on the ground floor of a successful venture, you can find yourself in a very enviable position within the company in just a few years. However, if things go south, it can turn into a nightmare if you didn’t see it coming.

It’s helpful to know something about business yourself if you plan on working with startups. There are plenty of books to read, but in my opinion, the best way to learn about business is to start one yourself. Not only does it make sense financially for designers to have a side business, but the knowledge you gain from doing so will also be extremely valuable in your future dealings with entrepreneurial clients.

Technically, if you’re a freelancer, you’re already running your own small business, but even if you’re working in-house, it can be extremely valuable to learn the ins and outs of business. Even if you fail – especially if you fail – you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t, and why.

Be wary of business ideas that sound too strange or that don’t seem to make any sense. Does the idea sound just a bit too perfect, unique, and lucrative? Watch out. Anything that sounds too good to be true probably is.

Also to be avoided: businesses that don’t have any real competition or market equity. If the waters are too quiet, that’s a bad sign. It usually means that there’s no market for what the business is selling.

Perhaps counterintuitively, business ideas that seem to be unoriginal or that are jumping on a current trend actually have a better chance of doing well than unique businesses with little or no competition. Why? Because popular industries are more profitable, for obvious reasons. More people interested means there’s more money to be made.

This is why nobody is attempting to come up with a completely new, original alternative to the automobile – they work with what’s already popular and what already makes money. Reinventing the wheel is usually more trouble than it’s worth (except when it’s not, but chances are you won’t encounter anyone who manages to pull it off successfully).

Stop, Look, and Listen

Something every designer needs to know to avoid getting tangled up in business disasters is how to properly observe a potential client. It can be difficult to tell in the first meeting with a potential client whether their business will be a flop, particularly if you haven’t been freelancing for long.

But if you allow someone to do the majority of the talking for at least 5-10 minutes, you will learn more than perhaps you ever wanted to about that person’s behavior, management style, personality, and feelings about their mother-in-law.

People love to talk about themselves, and as a designer on the lookout for danger, this can be your best advantage. Listen far more than you talk – ask questions that encourage the client to reveal more information. Interview your potential client as much as they’re interviewing you.

False Friends

Sometimes, a business seems perfect. The idea is solid, the market is strong, and competition is at a healthy level. These kinds of businesses can catch you off guard the most when they go south, because everything seemed okay on the surface.

But chances are, even these surprising failures have warning signs that show themselves well before you ever sign on to do any work. This is where it’s helpful to know the signs of detrimental management – why certain business owners and managers are successful and why others seem to cause chaos and turmoil wherever they go.

When meeting with a prospective entrepreneur client, take careful note of their demeanor and speaking style, specifically how they talk about their current or past employees or freelancers. If someone is trash-talking their people or uses too much personal praise (as opposed to team-oriented praise, which includes the entire group), that’s something to be wary of. It doesn’t always mean the company will go belly up, but it certainly won’t help matters.

Another type of red flag is clients who seem to have no regard for any type of budget. One of the top reasons many businesses fail is because of a lack of strict budgeting and an excess of profligate spending. If your small business client asks for work that you both know will cost an exorbitant amount of money, they’re probably not going to be a long-term client.

Moderation is what you want to look for when shopping for steady, repeat clients. You want someone who is financially responsible (but not cheap) and understands the budgeting required for a small business to be successful past the five-year mark.

Conclusion

Even if you don’t personally get caught up in the financial fallout of a bad business sinking to the bottom of the ocean, you want to avoid attaching your name as a designer to too many failed commercial ventures. It doesn’t look good on your resume, and once you encounter a genuinely successful startup, they will take one look at your track record and immediately draw conclusions about your involvement in each fiasco.

You may have had nothing to do with the company taking a nosedive, but your name was thrown into the mix, and that makes you a suspect. They may even see you as a “bad luck charm” – people are more superstitious than you would believe.

Successful businesses don’t want to invite freelancers or employees who may bring about failure. So it’s important to cultivate your intuition when it comes to bad businesses.

Learn how to spot bad ideas when you see them and avoid becoming the opposite of a designer rabbit’s foot!

The post Dealing with Terrible Business Ideas from Your Clients 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.

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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.

After I fumbled through my presentation, my teacher pulled me aside and said that I’d had the best ideas out of everyone in the class, but gave the worst presentation. I was too shy, and I didn’t inspire any confidence in my audience. My presentation had no “pop,” and thus it was boring and forgettable. I earned a disappointing grade as a result.

As a professional designer, I’ve since had it reinforced again and again that, when it comes to ideas, it’s all about how you present them. A good presentation can force people to take your ideas more seriously and assign more value to them.

Dress Your Ideas For Success

Here’s a sad but true fact: people are much more likely to be interested in your work if you “dress it up” nicely. If something is presented poorly, it will be perceived that way, regardless of its actual value. If you’re uncomfortable presenting your ideas and selling a client on them, take classes and read books on presentation and public speaking.

It might be awkward, but the effort you put into presenting your ideas and making a genuine connection with people is going to make the difference between an obscure designer and a breakout superstar.

Technical craftsmanship counts as well. Don’t cut corners. Spend the extra time to make your design as crisp and perfect as possible. I know people say that the perfect is the enemy of the good. But I say that the sloppy is the enemy of the great. When you were younger, your parents probably told you to “dress for success.” That’s true not just for your appearance, but for anything you create which represents you professionally.

Anything that has your name attached to it also carries the strength of your reputation on its back. Don’t unknowingly develop a reputation for shoddy, third-rate work.

Gotta Have A Gimmick

There’s a classic musical number in the 1962 film Gypsy, about burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee, in which young Rose is educated about the key to burlesque success by her fellow strippers.

It’s obviously meant to be funny (and it is), but there’s a powerful marketing tactic embedded in the song: whatever you do, make sure it gets people’s attention, because if it doesn’t, you’ll never make the sale.

Theatrics and flair count for a lot. We are visual creatures and we respond to the pretty, the flashy, and the attention grabbing. For example, a color photograph is going to get more attention than a black and white one (unless the black and white photo is the only one among a bunch of color photos), and a video is always going to get more attention than a still image.

This is even more true nowadays, when we’ve all been inundated with showy, blinking ads and fast-moving media offerings. It takes even more to catch people’s attention these days, but that’s where your problem-solving design skills come in handy.

Using Your Sixth Sense

The more senses you can engage for your viewers, the better your response will be. Visual, sound, motion, color – whatever you can incorporate that will create a holistic experience and engages your audience as much as possible.

Obviously, this needs to be calibrated according to the specific niche you’re designing for, but basic human psychology doesn’t change. People will certainly retain more information about your content the more experiential and interactive it is.

Make It Count

Everything – and I mean everything – about your design project should tell a story, from the colors to the photography to every single word in your copy. If there’s anything that isn’t contributing to the story you want to tell, take it out immediately.

Again, it’s important to make sure your clients understand why a design choice is the right one or the wrong one. The closer you are to the money, the easier this will be. It’s quite easy to convince a client that your solution will help them get more customers, and thus make more money.

Customer Service Counts

Excellent customer service can take a restaurant from mediocre to amazing. In the culinary world, they say that presentation is three-quarters of a meal. That means that you are 75% more likely to enjoy a plate of food if it looks nice.

That sounds like a lot, but think about it: would you walk into a restaurant that had greasy, spoiled-looking food sitting out on its counters, and be filled with confidence about whatever they were about to serve you? Or maybe the food looks fine, but the waitstaff is surly and inattentive, ignoring your questions or calls for service. Would that whet your appetite? I didn’t think so.

As a designer, “service” should be at the forefront of your mind at all times, even if you don’t think it’s part of your job description. You’re performing a service for your clients, and that includes the little details that make you stand out from your competition.

Thank you notes, extras and freebies, offers to help out whenever you’re needed and add value to your client will all help keep you at the top of your client’s mind when they’re thinking about hiring or referring someone.

The post Presenting Design Ideas is All About Presentation appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

To many designers, this is the kiss of death, but I’m here today to tell you that it doesn’t have to be. We’re going to explore some unusual but very effective ways to get those creative juices flowing again so that you can get back in the flow of things and continue to wow your clients.

Creativity in Routine?

Here’s a fact about the human brain that you may not know: every single decision you make throughout your day will have a negative effect on your ability to successfully complete a task. That’s right – whether it’s choosing which color to make that dropdown menu, or whether you should wear that green shirt or the blue one, every time you’re forced to make a decision, you lose just a bit more mental energy.

This is why you may find yourself burnt out by lunchtime if you begin your day by answering emails or answering silly questions from dense clients. Those small decisions have used up a huge amount of your energy for the day. Sure, you can recover some of it by eating a nutritious lunch or having a quick nap, but you won’t be quite as productive after noon as you were before.

Adopting systems and routines that automate a lot of your daily decisions can help tremendously in recovering some of that creativity you thought was lost forever.

Consider taking a full day to plan the little things you know you will have to do for the week, even down to what color shirt you’ll wear. Try to batch your email responses if you can – it’s not a crime to cut and paste responses if they’re relevant and get the point across.

The more things you can automate, the more you can turn your focus to the work that truly matters.

Getting a Jolt of Energy

Starting a new project can be very intimidating. And yes, I’m about to use yet another of my famous food analogies, so get ready.

Have you ever been to a restaurant, and the waiter hands you a menu that’s absolutely terrifying? I don’t mean it has teeth or it growls at you or anything like that. I mean, there are so many items on the menu, and the descriptions are so lengthy that you almost lose your appetite and want to run back out the front door?

Too much choice can do more than confuse us – it can just about ruin our experience and make us want to hide while we try to process everything in front of us.

For me, it seems like the more freedom I have with a design project, the scarier, more confusing, and more impossible it becomes to get started.

Of course, freedom in my design work is something I’ve strived very hard to achieve, and I’m very fortunate to have it. But sometimes, with a big, hairy project deadline looming over my head, I almost wish I was a student again, with rigid assignments and a limited scope as to what I could work on.

What’s the solution to this problem? I’ve found that doing something spontaneous to get my blood pumping and my creative energy flowing helps tremendously. Exercise is the most obvious choice here, and I don’t need to tell you how many ills it can help cure besides creative block.

However, there are other options, such as spending quality time with friends or loved ones, working on something else, like a personal project, or, my personal favorite, cooking.

Calm Those Jitters

Sometimes, your problem isn’t that you’re frightened into submission by your project. Rather, you’re inundated with too much energy, which can manifest as nervous fidgeting, hair-pulling, or procrastinating by doing meaningless busy work.

This can be just as maddening because you’re not exactly sure where to begin, and you know you should be doing something productive, but you just can’t figure out what.

You may not realize it, but your brain is like clay. Whatever approach you decide to take for your work will leave an impression on your brain for next time. So, if you react to a challenging project with stress, nerves, or excessive anxiety, you’re saving a copy of that reaction in your brain’s hard drive, which will automatically pull up every time you’re faced with a similar dilemma.

In this case, you need a solution that will burn off or diminish some of that excess energy. A calming activity, such as meditation, walking, journaling, or reading, will help soothe your brain and help it focus on the task at hand.

The post How to Get Those Creative Juices Flowing Again appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

If something is not working – whether it’s a word, a sentence, or even a whole page or chapter – any writing instructor worth their salt will tell you to simply remove that part from your work and start again.

Too often, we will labor over work that we know, deep down, is flawed, but that we somehow hope against hope that we can fix. Sometimes we can. But the majority of the time, that hope is completely in vain.

We’re going to uncover a few strategies creative professionals can use to quickly do away with all those bad design ideas, and move on to the good ones.

To The Scrap Heap

We’ve all done it. We’re happily working away on a project, everything is going smoothly – then we hit our first snag. A color choice that seems off; a piece of copy that isn’t quite hitting the right notes with our target audience.

But, instead of stopping immediately and performing emergency surgery, we decide to let the “illness” fester and grow until it becomes a giant, looming monster with a mind of its own, threatening to overtake the entire project. Don’t worry, though; it’s okay. You didn’t know that tiny little thing would grow into such a big deal. Or did you?

Listening to the Little Voice

Most of the time, we know when we’ve just planted a bad seed in our work which will inevitably bloom into a hideous flower. We can see the crack in the facade hours, days, weeks or sometimes months before it spreads.

We all have a little voice in our heads that tells us ‘nope, this isn’t going to work’ right when we make the first fatal mistake. Whether we choose to listen to it is a completely different story.

If something isn’t working, it’s absolutely imperative to scrap it and start over as quickly as possible. If you don’t, you only end up wasting more time and prolonging the inevitable. I can’t tell you how many projects – both personal and professional – that have taken far more time to complete than necessary simply because I was too stubborn to abandon a poor decision.

Speed Is The Key

Of course, I’m not suggesting that this is the easiest path to take with your work – far from it. It can be painful to suddenly dump something you’ve been laboring on and start over. Like ripping off a bandage that’s stuck to your skin, it can sting to do what needs to be done.

But it’s infinitely preferable to just get it out of the way than making the process slow and messy. If you don’t think so, remember back to a time you tried pulling a bandage off slowly, rather than quickly.

It hurt a lot more when you did the former, didn’t it? When revising your designs, quick, sharp, and ruthless is always the better approach.

Use A Sharp Blade

The next time you feel yourself becoming stubborn about something that isn’t working, try getting up and walking away for a few minutes. Longer, if you can – a few days can give you a remarkably fresh outlook on just about anything.

Ask someone you trust for their opinion; chances are that they will confirm what you already know to be true. If you’re getting a second, third, or fifteenth opinion, and they’re all telling you the same thing, you’ll know that it’s time to get out your scalpel and make the cut.

Cutting into your work hurts no matter what. We’re very possessive of our creative output, and we can agonize over “hurting” it or removing any parts. Unfortunately, there’s little you can do about that feeling. It’s part of being a creative person.

But a clean cut is easier to bandage and heal than a jagged one. In culinary school, future chefs learn that cutting one’s self with a sharp knife is much better than doing so with a blunt one. And by ‘learn,’ I mean, we slice our poor fingers so many times that we never even think of picking up a knife without sharpening it first.

Immediate Relief

Once you start over and dump whatever isn’t working, you will immediately notice the benefits of doing so. Your work flows more smoothly, and you begin making interesting connections you couldn’t before.

You gain clarity and creative insight, and typically you’ll finish your work much quicker than you expected. Maybe you’ll even finish ahead of schedule and surprise your client or yourself.

I’m sure you can think of at least one project you’ve been stalling on that will almost certainly pick up momentum once you eliminated whatever you know isn’t working. I know I can.

Killing your bad ideas isn’t something you learn once and then forget about. It takes constant vigilance to catch yourself whenever you feel any reluctance to “perform surgery” on your work.

We creatives can be stubborn, refusing to listen to our intuitive voices of reason when they attempt to steer us back on the right path with our work. We insist we can fix what’s not working not by removing it, but by working it to death, forcing it to bend to our almighty will.

This is almost always a terrible idea. The sooner you can learn to face facts and be honest with yourself, the smoother your workflow will be.

The post Doing Away With Bad Design Ideas & Moving on to the Good Ones appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

In fact, most designers have more ideas than they know what to do with. Yet, most jealously hide their ideas, paranoid that someone will “steal” them and do something that will undermine their own fame as a designer.

Today, we’re going to explore some important reasons why it’s stupid to worry about anyone potentially stealing your ideas.

Ideas Mean Nothing

First of all, success is 99% execution. The sweat and hard work that go into making a design a reality is really what matters – that’s the important part. Only 1% of success is the idea. Ideas are useless on their own. We all get them – they only mean something if you make them happen. You can have ideas that are sort of ‘blah’, and yet still dominate your field through hard work.

The good news is, people who steal others’ ideas don’t realize this. They think it’s the idea itself that is valuable. But the truth is, a mediocre idea executed well is worth a lot more than a great idea executed poorly. So, if you have good ideas, and you work hard to turn them into something, you can always generate more ideas and have success as a designer.

Telling People Gives You More Ideas

Sharing your ideas will usually foster the development of new ideas. If you’re creative, that is (which you are; why else would you be reading this?). The person you share your ideas with can give you an outside perspective and some much-needed feedback about whether your idea is actually as good as you think it is.

You can also brainstorm together with others to come up with a myriad of different ideas, each one stronger than the last.

If you only have one idea, though, that’s a bad sign. It’s important to avoid ‘one-itis’ or fixating on a single idea to the exclusion of all others. You might be completely convinced that that one, single idea is the end all, be all thing that’s going to make your career, but it probably isn’t.

Success is a culmination of the little things, the daily triumphs we make each time we complete a new project that we’re proud of. So go out there and make as much work as you can.

Provide Value to Others

When you share ideas, you help the entire design community. It’s important to give back to your fellow designers who might be struggling with the same issues you did once upon a time. I’m not saying you have to give away all of your “trade secrets” (although even that’s not as taboo as it used to be).

But talking out an idea and letting others transform it in their own unique ways can inspire you as well. You might see a completely different approach to an idea that you hadn’t considered before.

Someone Else Probably Thought of It Anyway

Exactly what it says on the tin. Ideas occur simultaneously to different people all the time, often without them even knowing it. This is why some work can look strikingly similar without the designers even having heard of each other. Great minds think alike. That’s the reason you can’t legally copyright an idea. We humans are just too similar in our thought patterns.

The key is taking an idea that other people might have already explored and doing it in your own unique way, using your experiences and skills as a designer to put an unconventional spin on it. As the saying goes, everything has been done before, but not by you.

Finally, keep in mind that ideas are rarely stolen wholesale anyway. Usually, someone takes bits and pieces of ideas from various sources (or they should, anyway). As we saw earlier, everything is a remix – not a direct copy.

Very few designers who have any pride in their abilities at all will actually want to steal your idea entirely. Those are called hacks – they’re very easy to spot, and the design community doesn’t normally tolerate them for long.

The post Stop Worrying About People Stealing Your Ideas appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Those details are important because they can greatly impact the project’s scope, budget, and outcome. Without them, we’re left to simply guess and hope we made the right decisions. We may also be leaving quite a bit of money on the table.

The trouble is that unless your client is incredibly tech-savvy, they could have difficulty in providing fully-formed ideas. For instance, they might need a shopping cart. But they may not have thought about how it should work or what kind of results to expect.

Web designers can’t afford to work based on these sorts of vague requests. Instead, we must help our clients understand what they need and how it will impact their projects. This is the first step in the information-gathering process – before we even think of determining the eventual requirements.

Let’s look at some ways we can help to fill in the blanks and round out our client’s ideas.

Getting a Broad View of What’s Needed

Early on, clients tend to paint a picture of their project using broad strokes. In some cases, they may only mention what they consider to be the most important aspect. That could be the aforementioned shopping cart, a news-oriented site with multiple authors, or perhaps that they want to accept event registrations.

Generalities are a fine place to start the conversation. But there are likely more ingredients involved. A website is more than just its standout feature, after all. And these additional items could be just as important from a web designer’s point of view.

Take our news-oriented site as an example. That general description doesn’t tell us much about the types of content to be published. Nor does it give us any clues regarding the target audience. Oh, and it would be nice to know how the client plans to make money from the venture.

With that in mind, it’s important to get a full picture of a project. A few good questions may be all you need to find out. But it’s not always that easy.

Some clients may not have thought that far ahead. Thus, they may have to do some soul-searching before understanding the full scope of what they want. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get them started on the journey.

Learning about Budgets and Timelines

Once you and your client have a basic grasp of a project’s concept, it’s time to dig into expectations. There’s still not enough info to provide a cost estimate. Thus, this next stage is more about defining some general parameters for the budget and timeline.

It’s also where any grand ideas can meet a dose of reality. A client with a tight budget may not get everything on their wish list. The same goes for those that need their website launched within a short period. If they fit both profiles, well, that could be an issue.

That’s not to say the project won’t get off the ground. Rather, it will require some adjustments. Either increase the variables to match the needs or scale back the expectations. Something has to give in this scenario.

But what if a client has no particular budget in mind? That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It provides an opportunity to discuss flexibility. You might, for instance, offer a broad price range. This will help them get a clearer picture of what it will take to accomplish their goals.

It’s also important to note a client’s willingness to listen and adapt. This can be a good indicator of how your working relationship will fare. Someone who refuses to give an inch may not be the best fit. In contrast, a client who can rationalize their need to change is likely to be a more productive partner.

Help Projects off to a Great Start

There are so many details that go into building a website. The look and layout are only one part of the story. Technical items such as hosting requirements and back-end functionality are also of great importance.

But we can’t get to the nitty-gritty of a project without first understanding a client’s basic needs. They must provide us with a broad view that we can use to hammer out the specifics.

As such, those first conversations between the client and designer are pivotal. This is where we’ll gain an understanding of a client’s thought process. In addition, we can ask questions to help fill in the blanks.

From there, we can formulate accurate cost estimates and move on to the fun of turning ideas into reality.

The post How to Help Clients Round Out Their Ideas appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

So you go into autopilot mode. Out comes Open Sans for the 14th time. Out comes that web framework you’ve used 33 times already because you know clients love “the flat look.”

Idea-Less Designers Have Become the Industry Standard

While there is nothing wrong with cutting some corners and borrowing a few graphics from other designers (even our past work), I fear that this unmotivated, “idea-less” web design has become par for the course in the world, instead of a once-in-a-while exception for that freebie project for your Uncle Bernard.

We have let ourselves become mindless workers on a production line, not fountainheads of ideas. Everyone and their mom can tell us how to design and we don’t even have the energy to ask “why?” The modern web designer has become a follower, not a leader, because our work lacks the conviction of thought, research and imagination behind it. Our only motivation is the carrot of a paycheck dangling in front of us.

We have lost the sense of adventure that we had when we first began designing. There were no limits to what we could (or at least thought we could) do. No grids or theoretical “folds.” No cross-platform compatibility or page load time. Just your imagination.

Though all these technical concerns are of course, real-life issues that we must take into consideration to design properly, I believe that they can turn into crutches for a defeated designer. We are too afraid (or lazy) to spawn a design based not on someone else’s template, but on what a design should be based on: an idea.

We Have Lost Our Will to Fight… and in Turn The Desire to Create

But somewhere along the line we lost our will to fight for our ideas… so we stopped coming up with new ones. We became willing to just complain over and over about nonsensical feedback (“make it pop”) and being prodded at the point of a gun into designing interfaces that make us doubt if we even want to continue in this profession.

When this feeling of helplessness sets in, we find ourselves consoled by the fact that every other designer in the world is probably going through the same thing. In the end, we have a fresh chuckle at “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell” and move on to the next destined-to-be-damned project. At least we have a job right?

However, if you as a designer are content to simply paint with Photoshop in a corner of the office somewhere, your role will become greatly diminished in value… and easily replaced by someone who can paint prettier pictures than you.

A successful designer is motivated by more than time and money. They strive for excellence. And in the design world, excellence is measured in ideas; that spark of creative brilliance formed in the human mind which finds its way to paper and screen.

You can start by treating every project as a fresh chance to create something extraordinary. Extraordinary in the sense that it is the product of your imagination and ingenuity, fueled by an idea. Creativity is birthed in your head, not in Photoshop. You can be more than a producer of graphics if you are not afraid to think for yourself and go with what you think. Your training, experiences and talent should be driving your mind, not just your mouse.

You Are What You Make Others Eat

An employee at a fast food chain can’t get very excited about their product because they are not putting much thought or care into it’s creation. There is no originality or diversity, only the same set of combo meals over and over again. He couldn’t tell you much about the food he is making, because frankly, he doesn’t care about it.

How can a client be excited about a product that its creator is not thrilled to show? If you want people to appreciate your work, then you need to put more work into its creation.

Think of a professional chef at an acclaimed restaurant. He is exhilarated by the food he prepares. He has chosen the ingredients carefully, testing out various methods of preparing and presenting each dish. He speaks of spices and sauces with an intimate knowledge, showing his keen interest and sincere passion for his craft. He is confident that his food is exquisite, because he knows the steps it took to make it the way it is.

In the same way, a design that is born from an original idea and honed to neat perfection will give you confidence and passion for it. There should be reasons for every “ingredient” in your work.

You hand-picked Open Sans after scrutinizing its every letter, comparing them side-by-side with two other typefaces. You created that textured interface from scratch by photographing linen paper and pixel-by-pixel editing a carefully selected portion of it. Every aspect of the design looks the way it does because you intended it to be that way. You have no problem talking about your work, defending it from stupid criticisms and meaningless edits by the idea behind your choices. There are no accidents. No cop-outs.

Care More About Your Design than Your Client Does

I always like to say that a designer should care more how a design looks than the client does. Why? It is not your money that is paying for it. But it is still very much about you. It is your time, your energy, your thought, your emotion that goes into a design. Your name is on it, meaning that your reputation will be effected by it. Most importantly, your confidence, your self-respect, and your pride and joy in what you do everyday is at stake.

Even if your ideas are rejected or changed drastically, it is not you who is missing out. You have done your best and presented an excellent product that you can be proud of. You have grown as a designer and have gained valuable experience in your field. Eventually people will take notice and you will be given fresh opportunities to “idea-ize” for more appreciative candidates.

Autopilot off

But it begins with you calling a halt to your own apathy. Turn off the autopilot by putting away the templates and starting with a clean white page where you can be free to create something new. Pay less attention to flash-in-the-pan trends that everyone is doing and more attention to the minute intricacies of type, color, and shape so that you can set yourself apart from the ordinary.

Most importantly, when you know you have a great idea: stick with it. Commit yourself to see it to completion and defend it against those who may not understand it yet. And if designing “combo meals” at a “fast-food” company is not giving your ideas a chance… then perhaps it is time to change restaurants.

The post What Has Happened to All of the Web Design Ideas? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.