There is always something to learn, whether you think you know it all or not. I will never forget the time that some kind soul sent the head designer at Last.fm a copy of “Photoshop for Dummies” after a massive site redesign that 50% of people seemed to hate. Jokes aside, here are a few points that every designer should remember, both in their work and in working with others.
Don’t Hand Over a Mess …
Being able to select each layer in turn with the arrow cursor in Photoshop isn’t an excuse for poor housekeeping. There is nothing worse as a front-end dev than having to pick through a morass of ill-titled layers: layer 56, layer 55, layer 54, layer 1, layer 17. When you can group clusters of related layers together, rename them and delete any unused objects, there is zero excuse. Do not expect colleagues or work partners to deal with the problems of your inability to execute clean files.
Perfection …
If you want pixel perfect designs, then firstly, good luck. Making anything match in an identical fashion across all browsers is nigh on impossible. Secondly, no two computers or people are the same. If you want your designs pixel perfect in dimension, then you need to provide guides and rules in your files that help clarify the exact dimensions. Into this you must remember that your horizontal widths can be fixed whilst you can rely less on using fixed vertical space and must anticipate that both user generated content and copy to sit perfectly within it and not break the design. Colors will vary too, whilst images, by default, will end up getting compressed, and zooming in at 1000% view to see how lossy they are, unlike any other web user out there, is not worth the effort, nor energy in getting upset about it.
Rose Tinted Glasses …
Don’t make the mistake of designing through blunt headed vision. The reality is that any design can look perfect with preened and pruned swathes of lorem ipsum, but take that design into the real world and those tweets, comments and client entered blog posts will jar in your design. They will make it look crap, and they will break it in every way possible. You need to have the depth within your design to be able to both anticipate and handle that. Making a manicured design that falls apart deserves little consolation when it all goes pear-shaped, and using content from the real world is the best strategy against this.
Use Conventions …
Don’t make the mistake of small time web designers out there, and that is to re-invent the wheel every time you design a web site. Actually think about your users, not just your visual eye. What makes a good designer isn’t the philosophy behind the design, it’s the usability of their web sites. Elegance and usability are not entirely mutually exclusive, and their are plenty books out their to help inform your design decisions and processes, so get reading!
Informed Choice …
When working on large sites that have been around for a long time, don’t just slap together work based on your own broad assumptions. Get your fingers dirty actually looking at the stats for the site. Figure out how visitors are using it and what their paths are through it. My recent review of a book web site showed that visitors were most looking at any combination of 3-4 pages, and that there was little point in redesigning the site, other than to make the experience for the “typical” site user easier by providing quickest access to those pages through the global nav point.
Accessibility …
Access to anything starts with the design. Don’t design for 1. Make sure that you think about everyone that might use a site when you design it. It’s no wonder that governments have to legislate for accessibility, and equally no surprise when you hear stories of impaired web users suing organizations and winning due to the complete lack of accessibility on their sites. Remember to use contrasting colors, not shades upon shades of the same ever so slight colors. Not only will they be lost from one computer screen to the next, users will likely not even notice them, and anyone with a visual-impairment definitely won’t. Beyond this, think about making space for text links and other accessibility-friendly elements.
The Right Balance …
If poor site design and badly executed files are your MO, then you need to get with the programme and start designing with more than yourself in mind. Designers are not artists with singular styles and patterns, they are paid to be able to execute to brief, with changing visuals, not generate constant knock-offs of the same thing. If you want to be a great designer then you need to remember to find the right balance between your mind and the real world.
Web-head & art collector, living in East London and huffing on the fumes of the planet since '78. Here are my thoughts.
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