Everyday you wake up and follow the same routine. You put your clothes on the same way and only brush your teeth at certain times. When you start a design you go and look for inspiration and from that inspiration you start to come up with ideas. The logo goes in the upper-left corner, the navigation goes across the top and depending on what type of site you are designing, you either have a large image or two columns laid out nicely.

You know you could make the footer really cool with tons of information and you have to make sure that all the ways a person can subscribe (RSS, Twitter and email) to the site are in the upper-right corner. You could try something new, but what’s the point? These are all conventional methods that have been around forever and you know that your audience is use to them so there is no reason to change.

When it comes to client work there is absolutely no reason to even try pushing your limits anymore because every time you have tried in the past they shot you down. They want what their competitors have. You think of a great idea in your head and scrap it immediately out of fear of rejection.

Ads? Well, we all know what to do with them. Stick them in the sidebar, stack em up and collect the money. That is the only way to go about it and since that is how businesses pay you, why should you bother changing it? God forbid you move them around on different pages or just use one ad slot to show advertisers that this is a better way to get attention. Industry practices are your practices.

Maybe you are one of those designers that has reached the point of no return where you don’t even try to experiment anymore. Maybe your imagination has gone out the window. Design shouldn’t always be fun and you shouldn’t always have fun doing what you do for a living. When you first started you had a ton of crazy ideas of things you could do on the web, but eventually the system broke you down. Over time you started to conform and that uniqueness went away. I mean honestly, what is the point of trying something new if nobody accepts it?

Having a hard time designing for yourself? Keep a list of frustrating things clients won’t let you do-then do those things on your own site.

@chriscoyier

However, what would happen if you designed a page and looked at every element on it and decided that it was done wrong? What if you went to a competitor’s site and figured that even though they were a success, it could be done better? Do you think then you would look at your design and try to find ways to improve it even if you are following conventional methods? Maybe then you would throw out the conventional and play with the experimental.

There are times when the conventional method is the best method. I can’t tell you when that is or if that statement is even true. Perhaps it is only the best method because someone hasn’t come up with a better one yet. When “designing” this site (which is in a constant state of development) I had a hard time of coming up with a logotype. You see, I’m not good at picking fonts or laying out typography. I tried a number of different fonts and I didn’t like how any of them looked when they spelled Drawar. I figured the brand and identity of the site would show through the experience that the audience has here.

40,000+ people have come to the site in 30 days and nobody has mentioned a thing about it. I’m not sure if people notice it or they just don’t care, but maybe you don’t always need to blast your audience with what site they are on. Can’t they usually tell from the title bar anyways? There are no rules of design, just best practices that can be stretched, twisted and molded into your own creations.

What holds us back from pushing certain boundaries? Probably the fact that we don’t want to miss out on gaining more people or pissing off our clients. How many people do you chase away though because your site is no different than the rest? How mad would your clients be if they knew they weren’t getting everything you could offer? Sometimes it is okay to assume that everything that has been done before is wrong. This is how Apple thinks and exactly the opposite of how Microsoft thinks.

I Think I’ll Put The Ad In The Footer, Below The Copyright

idsgn

How often have you redesigned your blog and said you were tired of a two column layout, but stuck with it because it was the “right” thing to do? Plumbers have to do their job a certain way because plumbing is not about finding new ways to solve a problem. A pipe is broken so you fix it. Same with auto-mechanics. Designers though are given the ability to solve problems any way they want and yet most of them choose to solve the problem someone else’s way. Why put yourself in a creative profession when you are never creative?

It can be scary pushing your own limits. Nobody likes to try something and watch it fail, but instead of going back to the norm when it fails, why not try to see if you can make it work? How many success stories can you think of where someone said they did it exactly like the other guys and won? Want to see a site that is doing things differently both conceptually and from a design point of view? Pictory. People will like it and they will copy it. They won’t win.

You aren’t bigger or better than Smashing Magazine because you tried to be exactly like them. You will never be as successful as Zeldman because you followed his lead. To steal from Tyme White, Digg clones? See ya.

Face it, you probably aren’t a designer because you make 90% of your job copying, when 90% of your job should be imagining. You wonder why you and your designs get drowned out and like to believe that the web is just too crowded, when in reality you just aren’t original. Everyone started where you are now and the leaders have always been the ones that innovated. They saw their own way to do something and followed that path. You figured that adding a slight curve to what has already been done would put you on top. It didn’t work and it shouldn’t have.

Seriously, when was the last time you pushed the envelope and tried something different?

I know, I know, after all this reading you are still going to tell me that sometimes you just have to do things the way people want you to do them and I agree. Can’t revolutionize every piece of work you do (or can you?), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least think about it. All designers, developers, online apps, etc. are fighting for their place on the web, but all of them are the same so the only thing they are fighting for is last place. When everyone has a knife, the guy with the gun will probably win.

In 2010 make an effort to push yourself and if you have to play it safe with clients, work on your own projects that let you do what you will. It’s okay to look around to see what others are doing, but that doesn’t mean it should be the way to go about it. We have reached a point of design saturation on the web where doing it right means you need to look at everything differently.

The goal of Drawar is to establish a brand that stands out from the rest of the design community. With so many sites and people around doing what everyone else does didn’t make any sense. Write articles/entries that come from your own mind and not that of other’s. Create designs that showcase your imagination and not something you learned in a book or saw in a gallery. 90% of the industry is more talented than I am and yet I get offers from people looking to see if I will design their sites, write articles for them and how they can work with me in the future. Develop an ego and understand that if you really believe you should be successful at whatever you are doing then you have to do it your way.