Being Better In 3 Easy Steps Design Edition
I do believe there are three solid ways you can improve your designs, with simple changes to your mindset. I have learned that shifting focus, drawing new inspiration, and taking time to rethink a situation have made more of a difference for me as a designer than anything. These things don’t necessarily have to apply to design, but that is what I do, so that is what I wrote about.
Forests & Trees & Yada.
As a designer I focus so much on details and each pixel being placed perfectly. Each shape having crisp edges, beautiful text, and a harmonious color palette. Which is important and any designer should. However I never feel like I take enough time breathing in the bigger picture. I’m not just talking about all of the details making a whole. I’m talking about taking the time to visualize not just design, but the operation of it.
How will it be used? Do the elements of the design ask to be interacted with? Am I being critical of this as much as I should be? It is my design after all. I really have to force myself to think like the user. Some of the greatest UXer’s out there understand people as well or better than they understand the web (or whatever platform they are designing for). Wire-framing is great, but you can often improve interaction so much in the design and build phases. Lately I have been combining the two. I begin building while I am still in the design phase. A hybrid between build in Photoshop and build in the browser if you will.
Taking the time to see the elements in their natural habitat help me to make better design decisions. I try to take time after laboring over details to really put the final picture into focus. This has helped me to make better design and interaction decisions and have more fun designing too. I have to challenge myself to look beyond the trees and the forest.
The road less traveled!
Chances are you are reading this indoors. Chances are you are used to getting inspired by the screen you are reading this on. This is the biggest challenge for designers I think. We spend so much time admiring others work in our craft. We obsess over another designers details and execution. It seeps into our subconscious. I don’t think anyone sets out to rip a designer or for to follow the flood of a specific trend. It happens because we are involved in a medium driven by inspiration. All art is. We are all inspired in some way by sights, sounds, touch, and emotion. The challenge is to add some inspiration from outside of our tiny design pool. To quote Chef Auguste Gusteau from the Pixar film Ratatouille
There is excellence all around us we need only stop and savor it.
The challenge is to notice something you have never seen before on your way to the office, or the coffee house, or wherever. Starting out this is surprisingly easy, we are oblivious to so much in our lives. Take photos of everything interesting put them all someplace that you can draw on for inspiration. Use the world around you, especially the outside world around you to really inspire you. If you don’t travel much, absorb it all when you do. Take a camera, use your cell phone. Shoot everything, photography allows you to have a big picture view while simultaneously capturing all the detail. Start making your personal inspiration gallery, and try reducing the amount of time you spend browsing inspiration websites.
On second thought.
I haven’t met a designer not guilty of this. We have all, if not directly to another designer, ripped another designers work to shreds. What if we all took a second look, and gave a second thought to another persons work? Not every designer is on the same place in this journey. What if the designers you admired ripped into your work? Chances are they won’t because many have already learned a valuable lesson:
We are all still growing.
It is so much easier to write off someones work as terrible than to take the time to help someone improve. Now I am not saying to go giving design advice to everyone on dribbble. However there are many designers who enjoy constructive feedback and many who enjoy a fresh pair of eyes scrutinizing their work. If you have a tip that has made work easier for you, and it changed your design habits when you began using it, chances are no one will be pissed if you share it. Example: the little snap to pixel grid check box for the shape tool in Photoshop. How amazing was that the first time you checked it? All of your shapes lining up in pixel perfection. No more nudging, glorious! Take a second thought to really understand another piece of work and remember no one likes to be judged, but everyone likes to grow.
This applies in the opposite fashion as well. Taking the time to accept someones criticism rather than immediately writing it off has helped me tremendously. Sometimes there is great value, sometimes not, it is always easy to ignore nonconstructive comments.
19 Responses to Being Better In 3 Easy Steps Design Edition
Pingback: Tweets that mention Being Better In 3 Easy Steps Design Edition | Dan Higbie -- Topsy.com
Dan, thank you. This is inspiring.
This is truly inspiring.
Great read, Dan. I especially love the trees page :)
Great article and great design. I didn’t know the pixel snap tip so thats for sharing!
Beautiful. And well said.
(FYI your Post Comment button is invisible because its #2A2A2A on #2A292D)
Brian, thanks.
Also I fixed the comment submit issue. Thanks for pointing that out.
Dan, this article (and entire site) oozes quality!
I completely agree with all of your second section — drawing inspiration not only from the screen, but also from the world around us is the way forward. A lot of us spend a lot of time getting sucked into showcase sites and fall into traps of ripping stuff.
Look forward to your future articles.
Thanks everyone. I am overwhelmed at the response this article has received. Thanks for taking the time to read.
Good article, and excellent presentation! Love the paralax effect and how it changes your logo+menu.
(Your comment-section could use a little work though)
Jan Paul, thanks.
I am continually developing this site. I like having a place where I can test ideas and get user interaction. So things like the comment form aren’t final, and probably never will be.
Pingback: [The Typekit Blog] Sites we like: Polldaddy, Designers & Books, Dan Higbie « Immertia
Nice stuff Dan. The scrolling effect is really nice.
I am reading this indoors. Not just indoors, but in a windowless office surrounded by noisy computers and office mates. I’m a sitting example of the guy that needs to get out and look up and around. I get out quite a bit, but not seeing the world is tough. A beautifully accomplished site and well written article like this makes it alright ’til lunch. Nice work.
Nice article content wonderfully executed. Really fun experience with this article. Thanks!
Hi there! This Post is quite nicely art-directed, well done! I hope won’t mind my nagging, I only really want to contribute to the discussion of what good design must be.
I’m not alone in thinking that good design rather than good art is about creating an environment for users rather than for oneself.
A designed experience is at its’ best as easily consumable as possible. Of course we all know that when something is pleasant on the eye it’s also easier to consume, but that doesn’t imply that it is usable. Sometimes pretty can stand in the way of useful. And that’s my criticism about this page. To go into more detail:
1. About 50 pixels below the top of my browser window, there must be an invisible div of some sort which blocks me from selecting any input or textfield in that area, which makes the comment-form harder to use.
2. It was a tad hard to read this post as the background interferes with the text quite a lot! The parallex effect is nice, but there are areas where I want to focus on the text rather than the effect. One example is the Nav-bar to the left, the other is the body text. Again it’s another question of balancing pretty and useful.
3. Simple is beautiful. Of course it’s possible to make beautiful complicated websites and in our profession it ain’t rare that we need to work on big structures, but I think it’s good to keep it simple. I find a very good approach to achieve this is to think that every element on one’s page has a function that it serves.
I hope those ramblings helped a tad! No harm intended!
Good Night and Good Luck!
Julian,
Thanks for your comment. I appreciate your honesty and sharp eye for detail and usability.
Not to make excuses as I intend to address each of the issues you brought up. This blog currently has no real direction, as I am still discovering what I want to do with it. Each post is an experiment of sorts. Not to say that it should come at the cost of usability. In the case of this particular post, it required a lot of change to my default structure and in turn has created some usability issues. It is these cases that make me most happy to have this experimental playground of design and thought, as it gives me the chance to become better.
Thanks for bringing these issues to my attention and I will work to improve them.
Very simply written, yet creating a huge impact. I am presently working on a tricky design problem and your article gave me tips to think fresh.
Thank you Dan.
Great tips.
I guess you could say where I feel that I lack the most or where I feel the most “down” is yeah when I see the work of others as great and feel that mine is crap.
It’s this urgency to get to that level like, right away. Don’t know how to explain it.
Btw. I had a tough time commenting here. Love the layout, but the button, doesn’t work?