Lessons I've Learned as a Designer (Thus Far)
When I spend 10+ hours a day sitting in a cubicle or standing on the muni, I make sure I'm never home on the weekends, rain or shine fog or foggier. In fact, I barely even get to cook dinner, let alone eat a decent meal that's not take-out. As a result, there are things I once enjoyed that I no longer do — like blogging.
However, my body has decided to break out in hives after white river rafting on Friday, so I've come home to my parents' to lounge around in a college tee, enjoy the Southeast Bay sunshine, and spend quality time practicing Gilbert's "dolce far niente" — in other words, eat popcorn and blog.
Considering that such sweet idleness has become a luxury, I figured I might as well share some insights I've gained over the last few years as a web and graphic designer and clarify some questions internet lurkers muster up the courage to email me. Within the past year (as some background), I've worked with three main clients and taken on a few more short-term (1-2 month-long) projects, before deciding to sign-on as an employee in April for one company I really enjoyed working for (in-house since September). Since that time, I've illustrated a Top 3 word game on the iPad (and dabbled in a few other iPhone apps), designed and coded up well over 50 landing pages and websites, and done seven book talks (unrelated to design but equally enlightening). And for the curious, I’m currently spending all my time illustrating an educational iPad wonderland/gameworld set in the woods.
1. Design is an iterative process and I never know how much I suck until there are considerable changes. With significant improvements, there are previous iterations to compare to, and that’s when the “oh man, that really was ugly...” kicks in. You see, I think designers are blinded by their own pride and dedication, just as parents always think their babies are the cutiest/prettiest ones in the world. Be able to let go of your first design (which you’ve put all your time and energy into) if someone else says it can do better. This is one of the most humbling experiences a designer can learn to embrace and there is always room for improvement.
2. There's more to design than aesthetics. Although you can (and should) incorporate self-expression, design isn't art. In fact, there are probably more constraints than there is room to improvise. Trying to imagine the user flow of an application that doesn’t yet exist can be difficult, which is why you have to build a version and just test it then tweak it. A/B test your landing pages over and over again and you’ll realize how important copy-writing, placement of images, even button size and color are to your design. When unsure, I like to surf WhichTestWon and find justifications for why a page or form should be designed in such a way. I learn the most surprising things from A/B tests results.
3. Designers should try coding up their designs, otherwise, they're just artists. One of the biggest problems I see when people come to me with their "start-up's mockup idea" (asking for feedback) is that, whoever is visualizing all the Photoshop flares and bubble gloss effects doesn't understand what’s feasible with or without CSS and how to optimize a website. They even imagine buttons and tabs as images, which is usually unnecessary and tacky. If only the designer knew that you could achieve rounded corners, box and text shadows, gradients and transitions with just CSS, he'd design the PSD template more practically, and make questions like, "Is this layout supposed to stretch full-width or be bounded in a box?" more clear.
4. Acquiring the "web 2.0 look" (or are we at 3.0?) takes a lot of time seeing and proactively searching for new inspiration. It also requires learning the newest CSS3/HTML5 tricks and keeping up-to-date. Just as music tastes are acquired through experience, I feel like design is the same way. When someone says "I like his style", perhaps she means I like his visual acumen and the visual database he's built up for himself to draw inspiration from. 1999 designers have a much different aesthetic than 2009 designers, and different audiences (age-wise and globally) have different notions of what “looks good.” I make sure I read up on Smashing Magazine's articles and browse through sites like Awwwards and CSSline, every once in a while. You'll soon realize that something "fresh" looks really appealing (a new font from the Google font directory, perhaps? a neat new jquery trick?) and something "old" or just overused starts to look boring. Something "fresh yet familiar" seems comforting and trustworthy (and many clients like to request that a site looks like Successful Startup A mashed with Awesome Startup B — neither of which will be Digg). Web design is constantly changing.
5. Never assume everyone will understand what you already know and adopt as second nature. This is particularly true for UI/UX design. For example, we designed the Word Seek start screen to show four tiles in a row (forming a bar close to the bottom), spelling out "P-L-A-Y", with a translucent right arrow overlayed. To start the game, you swipe from left to right, just as you would unlock any Apple mobile device — but many people don't make this connection and email us asking for help just to start the game. It's our fault, not theirs. As another example, I once designed a single-page layout with visually separate sections for "about", "contact", etc. and a navigation bar on the top that jumped to each section. My boss replied with, "Can we repeat the navigation bar on each page? It's kind of hard to figure out how to go back..." — I guess scrolling up or down wasn't as intuitive as I thought.
That's it for now! Time to play with my dog, whom I don't see much anymore. (6. Get off your ass from time to time!)
