It is said that great design is able to bring out an emotion from the people that come across it. This may be more realistic with physical objects than websites, but the idea still holds true. Most aspects of getting a design right are pretty easy to implement. Making sure the proper white space is being used, choosing the right colors and selecting the right font can be done with a little bit of research and some trial and error. However, there is one element of design that is missed so often by designers that you have to wonder if they are even trying to achieve it and that is delivering the message. This will always be the most important element of any design that you do. The message that your design gives will resonate through the minds of your users. If your design delivers your intended message then you have succeeded. If your design supersedes your message and hides it, then the design has failed.

Too often the main goal of a designer when working with a site is to make the site look good. While that is important there is plenty of evidence around the web that shows that a beautiful design doesn’t always guarantee success. eBay will probably never win any design awards, but their design does the job of delivering a message to their audience. What fascinates me about Bing is that there is so much emphasis on putting a cool image up that you have to wonder if the real message of being a better way to search gets lost.

We know Google won the previous search engine wars because they offered better results, but don’t you think their design helped them out as well? When you go to Google, the message is very clear, the site is all about search and nothing else (debatable, I know). When I go to Bing sometimes I forget that I am even supposed to type in the box to search or what I am going there to search for and I am pretty sure that is not the message they are trying to deliver.

Over the years people have questioned (myself being one) why Google hasn’t redesigned, updated, or added to their spartan design and I realized that their message hasn’t changed. They still want their audience to know that Google is all about search and nothing else and that is the message the site still delivers. It is a hard feat to pull off. They could be making a ton of money by allowing an ad or two on the home page, but they probably feel it takes away from the message and in doing so could lose them more money by having less people use them.

Two totally different messages being delivered although the sites share the same concept.

It is argued that the rise of Facebook and the fall of MySpace was due to the fact that Facebook profiles had a less annoying design to them. However, I know a lot of people that hate Facebook for that very reason. If you really take a look at the designs of each you can see the different messages they are trying to deliver. MySpace is more about the individual and their personality. In contrast, Facebook delivered the message that it wasn’t about you, but your connections with others.

The problem of not delivering the correct message is apparent in companies when they try to expand to other areas that do not fit their business model or stick with their intended “Mission Statement”. The message is your mission statement. It is the path that you wish to travel. Sometimes it is safe to veer off the path, but be careful because if you go too far you and your users may get lost.

When designing any site, you must always keep the message at the surface. Once you lose track of the message then you lose track of the design. Sure the design might be nice, but if it is not effective then there is no point. When you add an element to your site like an image or border, question whether it enhances the design and message or does it take away from them. If it takes away or does nothing then why did you put it there? I am not saying that you should question every second that you design because there are times during your design process where you need to let go and create. Great things can come from that. However, after you let yourself go, look back and see how you can bring the message across in a better way.

Theme/Template Sites and Clients

If you haven’t already, I suggest you take a second or two after reading this article to check out this discussion on theme sites and trends in the Drawar forums.

I understand why people buy themes for their sites. They are usually cheaper than hiring a designer and when you like the way something looks it is hard to resist not getting it. However, how much of buying a theme involves what the individual who is buying it likes versus what the actual message of the site is?

How often do you work with a client and you feel they are trying to impose what they like on a website over what the message of the website is? They want Flash here not because it helps to deliver the message, but because they saw it somewhere else and it was cool. They need a background with a solar flare and dark gradient because that is what they believe the people like.

A small controversy arose when Sabrina Dent admitted to using themes for client work. Her reasoning made sense and apparently she disclosed it to her clients so from a professional standpoint there shouldn’t be much issue. However, you have to wonder if the right message was being delivered to users of the clients’ websites that were made with a theme. I’m sure the themes were customized in a way to try and deliver the message, but if given more time would a custom design/layout have been more effective in delivering the message?

If the most important element of success to a website is getting the message across, then how vital is it to have a custom design? I know this is a scary thought to many of you that make your living from designing websites, but how many successful blogs out there are nothing more than default templates or themes you have seen elsewhere?

Who Cares About Design?

Seth Godin could probably care less about the design of his website just as long as it helps in getting his message across. It’s successful and not very visually appealing. It’s not like he couldn’t afford to hire a designer, there just isn’t a need for him.

Before everyone starts to riot here you should know I believe strongly in great design. But what is great design if it isn’t delivering a message? If the purpose of design is to help us solve a problem then the message helps us to understand what the problem is. There is a reason you have seen so many people write articles on how important content is to the design process lately.

How often do you come across a t-shirt with nothing but words on it and yet everyone wants one? How important of a role does design play versus the actual message being delivered?

So many designers spend so much time trying to prettify everything without realizing why they are actually doing it? Are you really enhancing the message or are you simply putting lipstick on a pig?

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama had a clear message of change. He probably could’ve succeeded without the help of design in delivering this message, but how great of a role did design help in enhancing the message to the masses? How much of an impact did this poster alone have on the public?

Design encompasses a lot of individual components brought together to solve a problem. The message is simply one of those components, but without it the solution that the design is trying to offer can get lost.

If you are freelancer or a designer that runs their own studio you know how important it is to get potential clients to believe in the services that you offer. It isn’t enough that you know you are capable of doing the job correctly. If they choose to go with you and enjoy your work enough hopefully they decide to tell others about the great job you did. Nothing beats word-of-mouth marketing.

Whether we like it or not, web design is a crowded field. There is absolutely zero barrier to entry because it is a discipline you can learn as you go along. Some people try their best to learn and improve while others simply want to collect a paycheck. What other industry has potential clients telling you that their little cousin can do the work cheaper? You hope that you don’t encounter that many clients like this and the ones you do take on respect the prices that you set as you feel they reflect the work that you will perform. However, are you really charging correctly for the work being performed?

We all have bills to pay and mouths to feed. When a client approaches you with a budget of $500 and you know that you can’t do your usual work within that budget then be honest with them. Let them know that either you can’t do it at that price or that you can do it, but can only do $500 worth. Don’t short change yourself and certainly don’t short change them by saying you can get the job done when in the back of your mind you are thinking differently.

Back when CSS was just starting to hit the mainstream, a large number of frontend devs were still coding their clients’ sites in tables knowing that future revisions would take more time than if they were done in CSS. Is not offering the best option the way you want to go about making money? Most clients won’t care if their site is done in tables, CSS or Assembly language. They just want a site that works and all their customers will love. However, when they go for their next redesign do you want their future designers to see the mess that was created or being told they will be charged more to clean up the mess that you left? Just because a client might not care about how you do stuff under the hood or is unaware of the consequences it doesn’t mean you should leave them hanging.

When was the last time you checked the compliance of a site that you built? I’m not going to go into a standards debate, but do you at least try to make your client’s site pass as many standards tests as possible? Drawar has issues passing these tests due to the Facebook and Google widgets being used, but I only know that because I checked. I checked because I want as many people as possible to use the site within the means that I have provided. Do you want that for your client?

Although we like to share stories of how the guy down the street is undercutting us on price, there are equally horrifying stories of designers overcharging for services. Running your own business is one of the greatest ethical tests you will encounter. Daily you will come across an issue where the end result will define how past, present and future clients look at you. How do you want to be perceived? What ethics will you maintain?

I can’t help you define what your ethics should be. Maybe you can post them on your website to help build a trust between your client base and yourself. Just understand that too many people have been burned by designers who didn’t do what they said they would. Being a great designer means nothing if you don’t have great ethics to back up your skills. Figure them out now and stand for them no matter what.

First the scientific definition of a brand.

Brand is the image of the product in the market. Some people distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service.

Wikipedia

A brand isn’t a logo. A logo is merely a symbol that represents the brand. Your corporate identity, the stuff found on letterheads and signage, isn’t a brand either. A brand isn’t the product or service that you make. So if a brand isn’t all of these things what is a brand?

A brand is how an individual feels about a company. It’s an individual’s feeling because a brand is defined by how an individual feels about the brand, not what the company wants an individual to feel. Sure companies can’t control how an individual feels, but they certainly can influence the feelings of an individual by properly communicating the qualities that make their brand special.

Have you ever had a client come up to you looking for design work, hoping that you could design them a strong brand? Maybe you thought you could, but you were wrong. Brands can’t be designed. They can be planned. They can be maintained. They can be groomed. You just can’t design one from scratch because brand isn’t design. Design can be part of the brand though.

This is a logo. This isn’t a brand. By all means the Coca-Cola logo could be a goat and as long as Coca-Cola made soda that people enjoyed the brand of their company wouldn’t change much. The reason for this is because the brand of a company, product or service is the experience that it provides. If you bring up Ford Motor Company to 100 people, I guarantee all 100 of them won’t give you the same answer. Some will be indifferent, some will hate the company and some will love it.

The AIG brand isn’t a logo. You could put a million smiley faces on the logo and it wouldn’t change my perspective. The brand to me is one of greedy executives taking money they didn’t earn and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Logos Do Matter Though

By the way I am sounding one would think that logos don’t matter when it comes to brand image, but that isn’t the case. If you have worked hard to build a strong brand then a great logo can go a long way in helping users maintain a connection with it.

People around the world are well aware of this logo and companies can only dream about creating a logo as memorable as the Nike Swoosh. You would think that it took months of research by a team of designers and brand experts to create it. However, the story tells a different tale (was that a pun or a horrible misuse of the English language?).

In fact, the Swoosh was created by Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University.

Davidson met Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, at Portland State University in 1971. At the time, Knight was teaching an accounting class at the university to supplement his income from a small sporting goods store he owned. Knight wanted some marketing collateral material designed for his business, and so he hired Davidson to sketch a few logos.

According to Nike’s account of the story, Knight wasn’t initially that keen on Davidson’s graphic design. He adopted the logo anyway, saying “I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” Davidson charged Knight $35 for the design.

Graphic Design School Review

If that story doesn’t give you hope then I don’t know one that will.

Is the Drawar brand the computer monitor with a heart? Some of you might recognize the logo and the brand that you associate with it is whatever experiences you have had with Drawar in the past. Every site and blog has a brand attached to it whether the owner knows it or not.

• Hong Kiat
• Webdesigner Depot
• Web Design Ledger
• 1stwebdesigner

Here are four wildly popular design blogs. I’m aware of all of them and there is a good chance that you know them as well. They receive a good amount of traffic and I’m sure a good deal of revenue as well. However, each of their brands is no different from the next. They all represent the same thing to me. I can only hope that when you think of Drawar, that the feelings and ideas that come up differentiate it from this group.

In no way is that a knock against those sites as they are doing well and I can only hope that one day Drawar reaches the level of success that they have achieved. However, if any of them were to build a service or product and hope that they can push it out by leveraging their brand would do you think it would be effective?

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have Smashing Magazine who recently published a book that has done really well. You have to attribute part of its success due to the brand that Smashing represents. When they started Smashing Magazine I’m sure there was an idea of what they wanted from their site, but over time the brand became something organic that they are now able to utilize. Their logo is recognized across the design community.

So why do I feel that a good logo helps? With so many ways that we interact with companies and their products today, logos are used everywhere and humans still like to see aesthetically pleasing things. The Apple logo looks good on everything. The Google logo? Not so much.

Brand Is Differentiation

Competition on the web is fierce and it seems that to differentiate themselves from the crowd many companies simply add feature X without any regards to their brand. When making any changes/additions to your site, products or services you should always end up asking how will this hurt or help your brand. If it doesn’t help it in anyway why should you proceed with it? It’s very difficult to add a new feature today that your competition can’t add tomorrow. Features aren’t what will separate your company from the crowd, your brand is what will do it.

To end I would like to provide you with a definition of brand from my friend Mark.

Boiled down to its ultimate simplicity, a brand is really nothing more than a promise.

Fulfill that promise consistently, the brand remains strong and gets stronger. Break it, or have one that’s too vague in meaning and you’re either heading for trouble or going to have a real hard time of getting started.

That isn’t a logo, that is everything you or your company represent.

As a designer or lover of design you might find yourself asking not what is design, but what makes a design great? How often have you gone through a gallery and looked at some great designs and told yourself that you are going to open up Photoshop or a browser and do the same thing right now only to find that when you are done the end result simply doesn’t match what you were expecting?

Drawar in my mind has a good design, not a great design, but one that is good enough. Good enough however really shouldn’t be the goal we are trying to reach with a design. You can call it User Experience, but I just like to refer to it as the experience. When I go through Drawar I still recognize that I am on a webpage. Maybe you see it differently and in a better light, we all have our different perspectives. Although the experience of Drawar is through the discussions and community, it would be nice to have the design further enhance the experience that the site provides overall.

Navigating a design project gone wrong is like surviving a wilderness disaster: it takes strength, courage and cunning to make it out unscathed. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of survival. I’ll discuss a few tips and tricks that will help steer you to safety.

Awareness is Critical

To survive a design disaster, it’s critical to be aware of your terrain, in control of your emotions, and prepared for potential obstacles.

Know Your Terrain

Knowing your terrain means having a solid understanding of your client and project environment. What type of client are you working with? What are his/her goals and pet peeves? What is he/she expecting from you? Are you on track to meet your deadline? Understanding your terrain will help you make better choices through the process and keep you from making the same mistake twice.

Stay Calm

Emotions play a pivotal role in great design, but they should be kept to a minimum when things go south. Blaming your client for “just not getting it”–or yourself for not being good enough–will only cause your temperature to rise. When you find yourself getting emotional, take a deep breath and a step back so you see things clearly.

Plan for Falling Rocks

You don’t want to be caught off-guard in the wild, or during a design project. One way to avoid surprises is to simply plan for obstacles: a client changing strategy or pushing out the schedule, for example. Building ample time into your schedule or explaining up front that returning to strategy late in the project will increase the budget are two ways you can gracefully manage falling rocks.

Progress is Everything

You now have a good understanding of your environment, control of your emotions, and a clear plan. You’re out of the red zone. The next step is to get yourself out of this predicament entirely.

Take Decisive Action

Every time you face a new challenge, prepare to make a decision and quickly act on it. Same goes for when you’ve made a mistake–instead of hiding your weakness, take responsibility and let your client know right away. Then, take steps to fix the problem. These decisive, small course corrections will make you stronger and keep you moving forward.

Celebrate Your Successes

In a survival situation, hope is crucial. Unfortunately, losing hope is easy when angry clients or deadlines loom. Reminding yourself and your team of even minor successes will keep you uplifted through long stretches of suffering. Be sure to celebrate with clients, too–even a simple “thank you” at the conclusion of a difficult project phase can work wonders.

Read Signals and Signs

Every time you get stuck, open yourself up to subtle signs and signals that might usher in previously unseen opportunity. Have you glossed over an idea your client really loves? Have you taken full advantage of all the tools at your disposal? Keep an eye out for those unexpected gems.

Play

Allowing yourself to play games and experiment with new patterns, rhythms, and ways of doing things often leads to new techniques for survival. For example: If you’re used to computer wireframes, try whiteboarding. If you’re used to your office, try a co-working space. Experimenting helps you generate new ways of doing things, and have more fun.

Find Beauty

Even disaster can have its bright spots. Have you learned something about yourself? Have you found a fixable hole in your process? Finding beauty amid chaos keeps you in a positive frame of mind and reduces the chances you’ll fall into despair.

Reality Check

The human brain is shockingly good at manufacturing stories that support unfounded guesses and assumptions. To keep your imagination from hijacking reality and sabotaging your chances of walking away from your design disaster, you must keep a firm grasp on reality.

Embrace Rock Bottom

You’ll probably hit a wall once or twice along the way. Fortunately, these low points have a silver lining: rock bottom is where you see things for what they really are. Your design just isn’t working, for instance? Scrap it. When you get to this point, take responsibility for the failed design and start over. These moments show your sincerity and intentions and can inspire more constructive feedback.

Let Go of Your Fear of Failure

People don’t like to think about failure (or getting fired or losing a client). The result is often denial and ignorance–the very culprits that ultimately cause what you hope to prevent. Confronting the possibility of failure will force you to deal with the reality of your situation.

Don’t Be a Victim

If you rely on someone else (your project manager, another designer) to come along and save you, then you’re not just in trouble–you’re really lost. You’re sure to fail with a victim mentality, so remember: only you can save yourself.

The Final Steps

You’ve got a solid plan, the right attitude, and you understand the full weight of your situation. It’s time to dig deep and drag yourself home.

Sprint to Safety

The journey’s never done when you think it’s done–there are usually a few more obstacles just before you touch home. You also tend to lower your defenses when you see the finish line. So be prepared to work even harder and sprint through those last few steps.

End On a Positive Note

Once disaster has been averted and you’re past the finish line, don’t forget to check in with your client to see if they need help with the transition. Leave them with a good impression–your last meeting will be the one they remember most.

First you should go over and read Jason Lynes’s article No one cares about your website. There are a couple of messages he seems to be trying to get across and many of them seem to blend in with each other, but for simplicity’s sake I will quote the final paragraph and assume that is what we are working with.

Which means, your stupid website doesn’t matter. We, our customers, clients, and partners, are taking our websites way too seriously. It’s just a website! Figure out what information your users need, and figure out how to get it online without screwing it up.

My point is, stop taking yourselves so seriously. Yes, make your work beautiful. Do whatever you have to do to keep your designer title and still sleep well at night. But stop thinking you’re God’s gift to the internet, and stop mulling over design decisions for days and days when the most basic solution will do just fine. It’s just a website, and it’s going to be alright.

If only it was that simple. While I agree wholeheartedly that the point of design should be helping people accomplish tasks there is another aspect of design that often gets overlooked and that is the emotional design of things.

When I tried to answer the question of what is design, one of the points I brought up was the role emotion plays in design. It seems that whenever I design something, I know the feeling that I want the user to have, but is it possible to force a specific emotion from a user through design? My initial answer to this question is no, but after I do some exploring maybe I will change my answer.

Emotional Design

In the article Why I Hate Your Web App I sang the praises of Tumblr’s design. I decided to try it out today and opened an account and let me tell you the whole process is a beautiful thing to behold. The design of it all is amazing and you can see why people become so attached to the platform. If the design was anything less spectacular I don’t think the service would be as popular. It would still be popular, but not as much or have such a fanatical following. The design of everything makes you want to use Tumblr and become attached to it. It connects to you on a emotional level from the very second you begin to use it.

Pure aesthetics.

Granted, if the service sucked or was difficult to use, the design wouldn’t make any difference in the world, but from what I have seen so far it is the perfect blend of form and function. They understand that design does matter. Does it matter to the point of pulling your hair out and causing stress? I don’t think so, but it mattered enough for them to put a bit more emphasis on it than competing services.

I don’t think Jason is saying that design really doesn’t matter, but that it is merely part of the overall picture. When it comes to a website the aesthetics, information design, usability and content all play a role in how users perceive the site. From all of these they develop either positive or negative emotions towards the site. For community sites, the role of the community probably plays an even bigger role than the previously mentioned categories.

Take a second to think about these rivalries and how much of a role aesthetics play.

• Bing vs. Google
• Facebook vs. MySpace
• Posterous vs. Tumblr

I know these aren’t exact matches as each of them do something a little bit differently, but if you don’t believe that aesthetics play a role in how some people choose which one to use then you are mistaken. We use aesthetics as the trait to base our decisions for a lot of things. Cars, furniture, clothes and even potential mates. Can we overcome horrible aesthetics to attract people to our websites? Of course we can, but why would you want to make your job any harder?

How many articles on design blogs do you come across today where the validity of the article is trumped by the look of the site itself? Aesthetics play a role on a design blog because if they aren’t at least aesthetically acceptable to your own eye then how can you find a way to trust the content on the page? There are so many bad websites out there that if your usability and experience design were equally as bad, but you had better aesthetics, you would probably win out.

Back to the original article that got this whole conversation started. While reading it I couldn’t help but think a number of times how I would change the line-heigh, headings, and a couple of other aesthetics on the site. I’m sure that is just because I have a thing for design.

The look of something always matters, it just depends on how well the other characteristics of the design fit together that determine how much the aesthetics matter.

Tumblr pages, sexy.

I recently got done reading Dave Winer’s post on complexity and the web and it was fitting that it came not too long after the fiasco over at Read/Write Web. If you missed what happened over there the story goes like this. Read/Write Web posted a blog entry on Facebook Connect. Somehow, this became the top result in Google for ‘Facebook login’ so hundreds of people went to the site expecting to be able to log into Facebook, especially since RW/W has a Facebook Connect button on their site. Check out the comments and you will see.

Much of the blogosphere laughed at these people and called them idiots. How could they possibly mistake a blog for Facebook and why didn’t they just type ‘facebook.com’ in their browser? Little do web geeks know that a large amount of the web’s population use the web in this way. Google or another search engine is their address bar and that is how they navigate around the web. Instead of insulting them, we need to understand that these people make up a large portion of the audience we are trying to make money from.

How many times do we get upset when we see a simple website or service become popular and think that we could’ve done that ourselves? There is a reason that often times you find me and others preaching the benefits of simplifying things. Although the iPad isn’t out yet, there is great debate about whether it is powerful or complex enough for regular users. Most people don’t want complex, they just want to get tasks done.

How easy do you make it for people to get stuff done?

I’m going to look into the steps that we all have to go through to complete many of the daily tasks we do online. To kill any repetition I am going to assume these steps will apply to everything (italics mean the step might be optional):

1. Turn on computer.
2. Login to computer.
3. Open browser.

I think everyone I know online has a great idea for a web application or website with some functionality behind it. We all believe that we have that one killer idea that if only we had the time to get it done would make us millionaires. Looking at some of the successful startups in the past, it’s amazing how often one thinks that they could’ve created it just as easily.

• Tumblr
• Flickr
• Twitter
• Facebook

Does any of those look like sites you couldn’t at least emulate the basic functionality of in no time at all? When a web service, web application or website makes it big, there are always those in the crowd that say they could create the site over a weekend because they don’t understand the big deal behind it. Yet, if they attempt to duplicate the success of the thing they are implementing they fail miserably.

Maybe you are working on the next big thing right now and can’t wait to put it in the hands of users. Maybe you have already put your hard work in the hands of the community and they just weren’t as receptive as you had hoped they would be. Here are reasons that I hate what you created.

No Community

When a website is based around a community it sucks to go to it and there is no community to be found. I know how difficult it can be to create a community out of nothing, but it is even more difficult to keep my interests if a community doesn’t exist. In a weird twist of fate, if you can somehow develop a community it will help overcome some of the other issues that you will see below.

Reddit is a great example of this. It never had the shiny design that other sites in its genre had, but it developed a strong community that made you forget the look of the site. You go to Reddit for the community, not to be impressed by the latest technology or design.

In contrast there is undrln which I personally use and love, but it gets harder and harder to go back to the site because the community is so small. I want to love the site and use it and get everyone in the world to join in on the fun, but if they don’t then I am left alone and that defeats the purpose of me using it. Just goes to show communities don’t build themselves. Get out there and market your stuff.

A major problem behind any person that comes up with an idea that involves lots of people using it is that they just assume that because they are excited about the idea that others will be equally excited. It doesn’t work like that unfortunately, otherwise we would all be a part of every online community created. Focus on a small number of core people and build out from there. Trying to get everyone at once never works.

I Can Only Use Your Site When I’m On Your Site

Could you imagine how small Twitter would still be if there were no applications for it? The ability to use Twitter without actually having to go to Twitter is what makes it so appealing to me and others. Some websites are mean to be visited, like Gmail, while others like Twitter become valuable when they let their data roam free.

Some sites do well because they offer the best of both worlds. I don’t need to visit Flickr to experience it or to use my photos, but if I want the benefit of the community I need to visit the site. Twitter on the other hand gives me absolutely no incentive to visit it. I’m sure that has worked out as a blessing and curse for them.

Facebook offers you limited ways to interact with the site outside of it, but most people don’t mind going to it. If there really is no incentive to visit your site and the data doesn’t need to be protected, then please give me a way to use the site without having to be there. It doesn’t mean I will never go back to the site, but sometimes I just need to get something from the site and don’t need to experience everything about the site at the moment.

What Is It You Do Again?

This is usually a problem because the people that code these websites are also the ones writing the copy. Not too long ago I read an article, Why Tumblr Is Kicking Posterous’s Ass, and while I’m not going to go into why the site is using the wrong metrics, it did bring to light how they differ in explaining themselves.

posterous is the dead simple place to post everything. just email us.

posterous

The easiest way to blog.

tumblr

You might think that there isn’t much different between the two, but to me the difference is huge. On Tumblr when I see the tagline, it lets me know exactly what the site was made for. If I want to blog easily I can go there and do it.

Posterous shares much of the same functionality as Tumblr and in some ways is superior, but what exactly does ‘post everything’ mean? Humans don’t like everything because it isn’t specific and although the site really does let you post everything it doesn’t help explain itself better than Tumblr.

Your Competition Is Better

Let’s face it, you think you created the next great thing, but you didn’t even create something that is the best in its category. My sole email account used to be on Yahoo! Mail. Gmail came along and simply offered a better product. There was no reason for me to switch emails and you know how hard it can be for some people to let go of things they had forever, but Gmail was so far above and beyond Yahoo that I had no problem making the switch.

Initially I saw no reason to switch to Reddit from Digg, but eventually I found that Reddit simply offers a better user experience overall and I haven’t turned back since. There were plenty of places to host your photos before Flickr came around, but Flickr simply offered more than the rest.

I know the 37signals mantra of less being more is favored amongst many, but sometimes you have to offer more. If you can’t do that then you have to offer better and that better has to be much better. It can be a better community, better functionality or if all things are even, a better design.

Sweet, Another Registration Form

When the signup form is short and sweet I have no problem signing up. However, that doesn’t mean I want to signup and have to remember another login/password combo. With Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect and OpenID, I don’t have to worry about logins anymore. More and more sites and services are implementing them and if you do as well you have a better chance of converting me. I’m not saying it is mandatory, but by giving me the option of using one of these services you have already taken away another step for me to access your stuff which is a very good thing.

Tumblr offers a simple signup form that doesn’t intimidate users and invitingly gets them to fill it out. Ironically, posterous offers the option of using Facebook Connect, but you wouldn’t know that from the homepage. Instead, I am being told that to use the site that I am already on, I need to go back to my email client and send the site something (…or everything). It’s hard enough to get someone to your site, why not let them use it immediately when they are there?

I Forget About You

How many sites have you signed up with, used for a couple of minutes then completely forgot about? You know when sites report the number of users they have and you think to yourself that 90% of those users have to be people that registered and never returned to the site. If there is a way you can remind people to come back to your site or make it easier for them to keep track of what is going on then implement it. Nothing should be holding you back. We have enough things going on in our lives to try and remember about your hot new toy.

Maybe you offer RSS feeds for everything or email alerts or SMS alerts. In some way you can’t trust us to remember to check back in with your site, we need you to hold our hands. Build us a virtual leash.

The Design Sucks

During our great discussion of what design was it was assumed that design was more than just the way something looks so don’t get snooty with me when I say the design sucks. You aren’t a designer, you are a programmer, but that is no reason to make things harder to use. Reddit is ugly as sin to me, but I love it because it is easy to use. Gmail? Definitely not the epitome of aesthetics, but it gets the job done in an easy fashion. Tumblr? Sexy and easy to use. When you can pull that feat off your chances are looking pretty good.

You have to remember that you have been working with your service since day 1 so you know how to navigate around it. Everything is second nature to you so you won’t view the site as a new user would. Get people you know to try it out and see what they think. If you aren’t too lazy, apply some A/B testing and by all means continue to iterate. That doesn’t just apply to code, but also how people interact with your site. Drawar has been up less than three months and I have probably made over 100 changes to how the audience works with the site. The changes haven’t been dramatic, but I continue to tweak till hopefully one day I get the right formula.

It’s also good to be a bit superficial. Your odds of converting new users is greatly increased if the aesthetics of your service are top notch. Looks aren’t everything, but there is no reason you should handicap yourself with something that doesn’t look good.

If you are in the process of creating a new web app then think about why people won’t want to use your site. Think about why you don’t use other services. It’s not an exact science and there is still a large chance you will not reach the epic proportions that you always dreamed of, but at least you can better your odds. And really I don’t hate your Web App, I just don’t see a need to use it.

If you do any type of development work on the web then you understand what frustration is. It can come from clients or it can come from a browser not rendering a box the way it should. Either way, frustration is simply part of the job description. Triumph is also part of the job description and although at times it may seem that there are more downs than ups, when there is an up, it erases all the feelings the downs caused previously…usually.

Here are the moments that cause me to experience some Ups.

In their book, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, Hunt and Thomas refer to something known as the “knowledge portfolio”. They call it a portfolio because they believe it should be invested in over time. You should always invest in your portfolio so that it grows and never becomes an excuse for holding you back. In the computer industry, or any industry for that matter, if you are not growing you are not moving. I can say this because I have experienced it. Between 2007 and 2009 I was a bit careless about pushing the skills that I needed to build websites and it has come back to bite me in the ass as I am having to relearn old stuff and learn new stuff at the same time.

High School Students, College Students, and Recent Grads

This part of life can be difficult as many people struggle to get their career jumpstarted. You may think that life has put you inside of a Catch-22. To get a job you need experience, but to gain experience you need a job so you think. There are plenty of opportunities to gain experience in the world you just need to know where to look. Too be honest there are so many laid-off professionals that if you do not increase your knowledge portfolio you will more than likely not succeed at all in competing with them. Add to the fact that more and more companies are outsourcing design and development work overseas.

For many of us out there I believe the secret to success lies in open source software. Go to GitHub and there you will find thousands of chances to gain more experience and increase your knowledge portfolio. There you will find over 100,000 individuals who in most cases are willing to help you get better. Web designers this is your chance to jump on board and design their websites for them because most open source projects need the help of a good designer or any designer at all. QA people can help test the products. Technical writers can write the documentation. There is always something to do because programmers can’t do everything (even though they sometimes try) themselves.

You can always start on your own projects as well. It can be frustrating working on something for free when you are struggling for money and that is why you should continue to look for work while doing something on the site. The project doesn’t have to be a way to make money. It can be something quick that you can add to your portfolio. Design and development work isn’t only impressive to businesses when it is paid work, they like to see you take the initiative to do things on your own.

The Unemployed

Follow the advice given above. Stay active in your profession even if you do not have a job. Let your future interviewers know that you have the desire to work and that you love what you do by participating in Open Source projects or your own projects. If you are a designer you would be surprised on how many clients you could get through a blog. No employer likes to see a 6 month gap between jobs because that could be a sign of someone who does not mind staying complacent. Even though you are not getting paid, that should never stop you from doing what you love.

You should also start a blog. You would be amazed at the amount of contacts you can develop from it. Yes they can be time consuming if you try to spend too much time on it, but take an hour a day to write. You don’t have to complete an article in an hour, but every day make some progress in completing something you can publish. I have already received a number of emails concerning development work although I am not looking for any and the amount of contacts I have developed in such a short time is nothing short of staggering to me.

For everyone

Always try to learn something new or improve on what you already know. Programmers this should be easy because I think very few individuals can truly master a programming language. Even better, you should learn another programming language that might help you with future problems. In the past I have done development work in Perl, Ruby, C# and of course PHP. Although I wouldn’t call myself proficient in the first three, the experience of using them has helped me grasp programming challenges that I encounter quicker.

Before I started Drawar, I never really had any plans to get back into development, but since I dabbled in a couple of small projects on my own I was able to keep my knowledge up to a usable level.

For designers and front-end devs, everyday there are new examples of individuals pushing CSS to its limits. There is always something new to learn in CSS. Also try to get better at information architecture, design, and document design. You will build better websites from your new knowledge. Increase your understanding of usability. Find out why eBay and Amazon succeed where others fail (and it is just not first mover advantage). Do not stop learning or think you have done everything you can.

It is okay to become a jack of all trades, master of none, because all of these skills will give you a broader perspective on how to handle different scenarios. The top guys in the industry never stop pushing themselves and it is no wonder they continue to pump out great stuff that others could only wish to achieve. The best are the best for a reason. Not because they were born with the knowledge, but they continued to push themselves to new heights never seen before. With the Internet and Open Source, this is possible for any individual.

Make learning a habit.

Do as the quote above says and you will find yourself a better programmer, designer, architect, doctor or whatever. Continue to learn because you love what you do, not because someone told you to do it. We have so many resources at our disposal that there are no excuses to not push yourself or learn something new.

The best way to learn is by doing. I wanted to write better. So I started a blog and wrote. I am learning better ways to express my ideas and opinions. Every time I write here it is a learning experience. I write what I think I know and by the time I am done writing I find that I might not know as much as I thought. I am learning and I am loving it. Knowledge is one of the few things people can not take from you. Cherish it and continue to help it grow. Most importantly, take the time to share it with the world so that they may grow as well.

Buildings that serve a purpose and enhance the beauty of the environment around them are created by artists disguised as architects. Buildings that are hideous and need to be torn down are created by architects. The difference is that the artist takes pride in what he is doing. He understands that his work will be viewed by many people and therefore stakes his pride in the building. The architect knows that he got paid to finish something within a timeframe and therefore could care less about how people see his building. In fact he does not even think the building is his anyways.

Hackers act the same way as architects. They gather bricks and cement and throw them together and call it a house. Although it works, it will more than likely not stand the test of time. As a programmer/front end developer you should not see your code as a means to an end. It should provide a source for others to look at and revel in its beauty. Beautiful code has more to do with the functionality of the code and how it works than the actual look of it. I want to get lost in the beauty of its design. I want to see how simple you make complicated sequences appear. A quick example is the Towers of Hanoi done using recursive functions. There are plenty of ways to go about this problem, but the recursive approach shows you how code can be an art. Although very rarely you see recursiveness used in large designs you must marvel at the simplicity of the design to such a complicated problem. To me simplicity of design is beauty.

In What is Design? I answered the question by saying:

Design is the process of finding the most elegant answer to the question of ‘how do I?

Does this not apply to code as well? We might not find the most elegant solution initially, but after a couple of iterations one would hope we would finally get there.

Statue of David

A lot of programmers are given code that is not theirs and they are told to refactor it or make it work better. This is the greatest time for showing that programming can be an art and probably an even better time to wish that every programmer treated their code as an art form. It is like someone giving you a marble statue of something that appears to be a man and when you are done with it looks like David.

If you tackle your code as an artist then you are putting an investment into it. You are putting yourself behind the code so that the code represents you. A lot of open source projects need to take heed and listen. Just because you start a great idea for a project and start an account on GitHub it does not mean you will draw in the legions of the open source army. No doubt you will draw interest, but if your code is a catastrophe and the design is horrific then that interest will die quickly. Beautiful code and design lasts like great pieces of art. There is a reason Ruby on Rails remains popular and it goes beyond the fact that 37signals hypes it.

Programming is an art because you are creating your own masterpiece. You are creating your own exhibit for the world to see. Artists don’t paint just so they can keep their works to themselves. They paint because they want the world to enjoy what they enjoy. Why should coding be any different? Of course if you are writing a small program for yourself, write it however you want. I write small little programs that serve my purposes, but I also design them as if I were letting the whole world see them. For some reason I can’t let bad design and ugly code get in my way. I take pride in what I do because I take it seriously and I wish others to take me seriously as well.

#right_column {
	position: relative;
	z-index: 1000;
	padding: 0;
	top: -101px;
	float: left;
	width: 250px; }

	.portfolio {
		margin-bottom: 10px; }

		.portfolio a {
			display: block;
			padding: 36px 15px 0 72px;
			height: 30px;
			text-decoration: none;
			font: normal 12px "Lucida Grande", "Verdana", sans-serif;
			color: #19a0d1;
			margin-left: -11px;
			text-shadow: rgba(255,255,255,.8) 0 1px 0;
			-webkit-text-shadow: rgba(255,255,255,.8) 0 1px 0;
			background: transparent url(images/portfolio_icon.png) 2px 8px no-repeat; }

			.portfolio a:hover {
				text-decoration: underline; }

A question that doesn’t seem to have one right answer. Maybe that is a good thing and maybe that is a bad thing. Either way, it is a question that you should ask yourself if you are involved in the process of design. It doesn’t matter if you are the actual designer or you are the person that employs the person doing the design, design is important and if you are going to be part of the process you have to understand your own idea of it.

What is design to me? Like design I think it’s best to break the problem up until you find the simplest solution. So to answer the question maybe it’s best to take a design approach to it. This might mean looking at what others are saying about design. You can see how people responded to the question on Twitter to the right. The Wikipedia definition of design of course doesn’t keep things as simple as a 140 character response.

Design is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system.

Wikipedia

That sounds like the engineer’s definition of design.

Now that we have what everyone else feels design involves, lets see what else the problem involves. The design of a website contains the information architecture, colors, white space, typography and resolution. So is design information architecture? Is design colors? Of course web design involves all of these so you can say that each of these falls under the umbrella of design. However, there has to be a better answer than simply listing what can be shown on a webpage.

When looking at a physical object that you like, what aspect of its design draws you to it?

I love the design of the Apple iPod as do many people I’m sure. What do I like about it? I like the curves. I like the screen. I like the way you interact with the iPod via its dial. So from this we could say that design is how we interact with something. Maybe design is how we interact with a product or how an object interacts with its environment. However, I feel that design means more than that.

Digging even deeper we sometimes like the way something is designed because it is easy to work with. Making something easy to use is a by-product of great design. We don’t like to think too hard to solve a problem. Nature is the greatest problem solver of all. Looking at a plant, every piece of it can be justified. Nothing is extraneous, everything serve its purpose. Are all plants aesthetically pleasing? I don’t think so, but to me aesthetics is an opinion. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.

Going back to the iPod example, what many people love about the iPod is that it solves the problems of storing large amounts of music and listening to it in an intuitive fashion. Although for some features, like turning it off you might have to read the manual, the overall usage of an iPod is pretty easy. They say the quickest way to get from Point A to Point B is a straight line and in many ways the iPod’s design encourages that. So in this case maybe we can say that design is the process of finding the quickest way to complete a task.

What about emotion?

The main issue is that emotions have a crucial role in the human ability to understand the world, and how they learn new things. For example: aesthetically pleasing objects appear to the user to be more effective, by virtue of their sensual appeal. This is due to the affinity the user feels for an object that appeals to him, due to the formation of an emotional connection [with the object].

Wikipedia

If you take this into account, is design the ability to evoke emotions from the person interacting with it? It can be, but in nature rarely are there emotions used when one object is interacting with another. The design of how humans breathe has nothing to do with our emotions, although I’m sure we would all be sad if we lost the ability to do so. I believe that trying to evoke an emotion in some designs is very important, but it is not essential and as I have already stated emotional design isn’t included in all design.

Now we don’t have to worry about including emotions in the definition of design, but that doesn’t mean we should forget the important role that emotion plays in the designs that we create daily.

The Answer

Now that I have established some guidelines of what I feel design does and doesn’t include I can come up with a better definition of what design is to me.

Design is the process of finding the most elegant answer to the question of ‘how do I?’

Paul Scrivens

How do I ensure the Twitter responses on the right are visually separate enough so that the reader can easily scan them? How do I create an article layout that encourages the reader to actually want to read the whole article? How do I open this door? How do I get oxygen into my lungs?

You can have a number of answers to each question, but one answer will be more elegant than the rest. One answer will be the simplest solution. You might not get to that answer the first time around, but that is why we redesign. Don’t redesign just to do something new, redesign because you have a better answer to the question.

Is my answer the correct answer to the question of what is design? I have no idea, but I know it makes perfect sense to me and it’s the answer that helps guide me whenever I start a new task. Don’t hesitate to really think about the answer yourself, you may be surprised at what you come up with.

Yesterday, I read an entry about the death of the homepage on websites and I remembered that I had written about the same topic many years ago. The basic idea is that a large percentage of your visitors will be coming from links from other sites like Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, and Reddit, so they won’t be hitting your homepage directly. Because of this, some people tend to think that it makes your homepage less important. I have to disagree.

The homepage is probably the most important page for your regular visitors and as your site grows, the percentage of this userbase grows as well. If the homepage is dying then what is there to replace it? Nothing, because logic says there has to be some page available when they hit the root of your site. I thought about this for a second and figured that if you didn’t want to have a real homepage on a blog you could make your latest entry the homepage by default. Jason Santa Maria almost does this by making the homepage only show his latest article. I’m sure other people have already designed their sites like this so don’t think I am that much of a creative genius to come up with the concept myself.

With the amount of people that are starting to jump directly to internal pages on your site, it just means more care needs to be taken in how you can get them to browse other pages of your site. Many people do this by having a related posts section or fill their sidebars with other sections of their site. Since I don’t have the statistics behind these things I don’t know how effective they are, but from personal experience I don’t recall clicking on too many related posts sections and I only browse the sidebar if I am happy with the content that I came to read. I don’t like the sidebar distracting me from the reason why I am on the page.

It seems as though in their quest to achieve more page views, owners of websites forgot that they are trying to get people to read or view the content on their site. Is the value to a TV exec having people flick through channels every three seconds or having them sit through an entire program? Could you imagine reading a book and on every page there was a sidebar with tons of information that didn’t relate to the content of the page? I’m not saying that books and websites are the same, but I like to think that we can provide an experience similar to that of books where our visitors can read content without being prohibited by a categories sidebar.

If you have read an entry by Dustin Curtis then there is a good chance that you enjoyed the experience. I say experience instead of entry because going to a page there is an experience. There is a unique design to the content and when you read an entry that is all that you are reading. He has ads on his site, comments and a colophon, but while you are reading his content he allows you to only focus on that. In a perfect world, this is how the website reading experience occurs to me. However, I understand the need to make money so ads fill your sidebar and you really want people to bounce around your site because that increases page views. A mistake we make though is that we assume it works, but many times it just works because we are the only resource for the visitor to use. Once they find something better that offers them a greater experience they will bounce.

To prevent this from happening requires a new way of envisioning your internal pages and re-evaluating the goals of your site. Do you really care if people read the content on a page? You don’t think a sidebar filled with data distracts them at least subconsciously to the point where they can’t focus? Maybe I was wrong all along and list posts could generate some decent discussion if they weren’t on the same page fighting for attention with a ton of other things.

The Homepage As The Sitemap

In the discussion of news sites one of the issues I pointed out was that instead of trying to find a way to present all of their content they needed to find a better way to guide their readers deeper into their sites. Looking at the homepage of Dustin Curtis on the left, he doesn’t hide the fact that the homepage is nothing more than a door to the rest of his content. This design works well for a site that has an article every couple of weeks so don’t think I believe this is the perfect setup for every website out there. However, the purpose still holds true to the point of this article. Maybe homepages are no longer the great destinations they once were and now they are simply portals to the rest of your site. Yes, every site is a portal now.

This doesn’t give you free reign to think like the mega corps and try to post a link to every page on your site. You can’t force a visitor to explore your site, you can encourage them and many times that will fail. If they are intrigued enough to do so because of what they have seen on your site then they will do it. If they don’t want to they will bounce faster than a Digg user.

Looking at Smashing Magazine you can see how they are trying to move from a blog-type homepage to a portal and pulling it off successfully isn’t easy. Rarely do portal-type pages lend themselves to a two-column design, but the conventional wisdom for blog designs is that the homepage should look exactly like the rest of the pages. You need to stop thinking like that and assume that every section of your site deserves its own design. Does this require more work? Of course it does, but it enhances the user experience if it is done correctly. Maybe some sections benefit from the exact same layout and I’m not telling you that everything should always be unique, but at least give it some thought. Too often we fall into the trap of finding a layout and running with it everywhere.

Do you think a traditional blog-style homepage would work well with Drawar? I could have the articles on the left and the sidebar filled with the links, news, forums and gallery, but could you imagine how crowded every page would seem then? The homepage itself is already crowded to me and I’m looking to improve upon it shortly so it’s hard for me to see how I could fit all of that in a sidebar without distracting from the main purpose of a given page.

My friend Mark Fusco likes to remind me that the experience of a website is more than just the design. It is also the content and a number of other factors that bring it the total end experience to the user. It is quite possible to provide a good experience to users by having sidebars filled with adds and a large amount of extra data. I only know this because sites have been doing so for years and many of them are very successful.

Do you think the homepage as we used to portray it is dead and that it is time to re-evaluate how we look at the design of them?

Over the past month I have come to understand that although many people understand the basics of design and are really striving to better themselves as designers, a good majority still don’t know the basic principles of the other side of the coin when it comes to freelancing or running your own design studio and that is business. I have pretty much been on my own for the past eight years and although I don’t run a design studio, I do have plenty of experience dealing with clients and trying to grow a business.

First off, it is hard and always requires work. I want to get that out there because running a business is like gambling in a casino. When you envision yourself in a casino all you can imagine are the times you win and the large amounts of money you can bring in with very little effort. Truth of the matter is the odds are stacked against you and short term success doesn’t equal long term success. The odds are stacked against you so even though I do believe in positive thinking and remaining optimistic, you have to keep reality in check and understand that most businesses are setup to fail.

If you are contemplating going out on your own or already are on your own you would be wise to ask yourself a couple of questions.

What You Do and What You Don’t Do?

Simply saying “I do web design” is not enough. You have to figure that every client is looking for something different and many times they will assume you can do everything. Before you get into a situation where you start to get in over your head ask yourself these questions and hopefully your answers will help you narrow your focus.

• Do you only do front end design in Photoshop?
• Do you do front end design and code (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript)?
• Do you do front end and back end?
• Do you do SEO?
• Do you maintain the websites on a server and therefore become tech support for server issues?
• Are you a copywriter?

To truly be great at your business you have to understand what you are willing to do and won’t do. I used to have a bad habit of wanting to do everything by myself not because I wanted to, but because I could. The problem with this line of thinking is that you soon start to notice that you place your focus on all the things you don’t like to do and you begin to hate your work. If you really don’t want to do any XHTML/CSS then you need to find someone who will do that part for you.

Yes, that might mean less money up front for you in the short term, but over time if your focus is only on doing the parts that you love you will find more enjoyment in the long run and eventually the money will follow. There are still plenty of other aspects in your business that you will need to handle that you probably won’t enjoy as much, but everything can’t be 100% fun.

Who Are Your Customers?

Everyone is not the correct answer. If you try to be everything to everyone you end up being nothing to anyone. You can narrow down your audience in a number of different ways. Maybe you only wish to serve one industry (medical, legal, small business) or a geographic area. You could narrow it down to businesses with budgets over $10,000. However, don’t mistake the fact that narrowing down means you are reducing your revenue.

By meeting the needs of a small audience you provide more value. The greatest form of marketing is word of mouth marketing and people usually do so within their own groups. Focusing on a small audience allows you to better understand their needs and how you can meet those needs better than anyone else. Because of this you can become the go to person in the industry that everyone looks to.

Make sure you are very specific about your target market. If things start to go well for you, you will find that you have the option to choose whether or not you want to broaden your audience because people outside of your audience will begin to contact you. However, if you don’t know who your target audience is then how do you know who to market to?

What Makes You Different?

There are literally thousands of people around the world looking to do what you do. If you go through the Gallery and view the websites of design studios you will notice that many of them have the same copy. Everyone likes to create beautiful and usable websites. Everyone codes to web standards. These things don’t separate you from the rest. Even trying to use price as a means of differentiation isn’t a good way to go because you will probably be focusing on how cheap you are and there is always someone cheaper.

Drawar itself is a business and if you have visited the site over the last month then hopefully you can see how I have positioned it to be different than other design sites on the web. You know you can find some great designs, resources and conversations every time you come here. Unfortunately, that makes the site very different than what you usually get with sites in the community.

To standout in the market you have to emphasize what makes you different. If you can’t figure that out then you understand the initial problem at hand.

Do You Have Cash Flow?

At the end of the day the most important truth your business has is whether it is bringing in money. People might say you are a great designer and your employees might rave about working for your company, but the truth is that if there is no money coming in, then there is no business. You need to be bringing in cash to stay afloat. You need to be making a profit so you can keep cash in hand to help your company grow.

It is called the bottom line for a reason. I am not saying that you should sacrifice your integrity or morals to increase the bottom line, but the best businesses in the world understand the importance of keeping cash flow in the crosshairs.

Until recently, before they made deals with Google and Microsoft, Twitter was a great service, but a horrible business. Businesses have cash flows, side projects have people thinking they are running a great business.

What Should Your Customers Expect?

We had this discussion in the forums and I wrote about how many of the issues between designers and clients stem from the fact that the design doesn’t help to set the expectations of their client. Usually, a client is simply told they will get a great design for X amount of dollars. However, should they expect to be included in every step of the process? Will they need to do any work to make the job easier, for example produce content by a certain date?

You have to assume that you and your customers are never on the same page. Communication is key.

What happens if you do a mockup in Photoshop and don’t tell the client that the site might look different in different browsers? They will get upset because their expectations were that they would be getting what they saw in the mockup. Letting them know ahead of time that their design might not be 100% the same in each browser and explaining why helps to keep their expectations in check.

Most importantly, be realistic about the deadlines you set for yourself. Just because a piece of work seems easy in your head it doesn’t mean you should underestimate how long it will take. The client will expect that you will continue to iterate the design until it is to their liking, so if you don’t want to design forever, be sure to let them know that their budget allows them X amount of iterations.

As they say, under promise and over deliver.

What Should Your Employees Expect?

When I was part-owner of 9rules, along with Tyme White and Mike Rundle, we ran into a major hurdle a year after the three of us started working together. We brought Tyme on later in the life of 9rules and at the beginning we provided her with some generalities of what we wanted from her and expected her to go out and perform. After a year of work we found that we were growing frustrated with what was being done.

After sitting down and talking we discovered that we had a set of expectations of the work she would do, while she did exactly what we told her. For some reason we felt that we could mentally pass over what we needed done by her without having to say it. Of course that doesn’t work and our failure to communicate as a team held us back.

Now with Splashpress Media, we use Basecamp to maintain communication amongst all team members. Instead of being frustrated that a job isn’t getting done I make sure that my expectations for that person are clearly communicated. Once that is over and done with and the job still isn’t getting done, at least you know that you did your part.

As you do with your customers keep open communications with your employees. Never assume and if you have expectations of a specific job, make sure they just don’t stay in your mind. Always assume your employees have no idea what you are expecting of them.

What Are Your Goals?

Beyond getting rich what are your goals? I have a bad habit of setting goals in my mind and never achieving them not because I am incapable, but because I don’t write them down. You get to decide your future, but if you aren’t continually focused on that future then you are sure to miss it.

It’s a good idea to set goals that increase in iterations. Maybe in 30 days you receive your first 100 visitors and your first 90 days you get your first order. Setting goals will allow you to focus on what needs to be done to achieve them and if you miss one you can easily analyze what went wrong. They also help for the next part.

Can You Stick With It?

If you are lucky there won’t be any rough patches, but if you are successful and growing then there definitely will be. If you can persevere and stick with your business through the tough times then you have a decent shot at succeeding. However, don’t confuse perseverance with stupidity. There is a time and a place to know when you just aren’t cut out for running your own business or the business you are running isn’t good enough and you need to abandon ship.

It could be when you never seem to reach any of your goals or it could be when you are dead broke and get tired of eating Ramen every day. Either way, like gambling in a casino, there has to be a limit set for when you will bail out.

Can You Maintain Your Integrity?

Can you imagine what would happen if I had written about my distaste for list posts and then my very next article was nothing but a simple Top 10 list? What about me complaining that ads can kill a site and the very next day you see 10 of them pop up? I’m not saying people can’t change their minds, but if you want your customers to trust you, they have to trust your integrity as well.

Your integrity many times is your reputation. You have to ask yourself if you can maintain your integrity even when times are bad. I could be an extremely rich person if I had gone through with some of the shadier deals that were offered to me during the 9rules days, but I couldn’t sell myself, my friends, my business partners or my community out like that. It isn’t easy maintaining your integrity when you are trying to put food on the table, but at the end of the day it allows you to sleep well at night. If you stick to your guns you will find that you have less regrets when looking back at the past.

It Isn’t Easy

I just wanted to remind you that it isn’t easy. I question myself all the time whether I am cut out to run a company, but at the end of the day I know what I am capable of doing. I understand my flaws that need to be improved and the strengths that I can focus on to keep me going. Hopefully you understand yourself well enough and can decide if you are capable of putting in long hours, experiencing many ups and downs, and possibly dealing with failure.

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.

At times I probably come across as too cynical in regards to the state of design on the web. However, I have a great respect for a large amount of the work that is being done by people around the world. This can be seen by the many sites that I admire in the Drawar Gallery. Like other galleries you come across on the web, they only go so far as to show you what sites a person likes, when many times people want to understand why a person likes a certain site. With this in mind I wanted to showcase some of my favorite designs of 2009 and provide some explanation as to why I have selected them.

What makes these sites special in my mind is that they don’t go overboard in trying to wow you. Their “wow” factor comes from the many subtle nuances that they provide. Many of them go unnoticed when you think about them individually, but when you combine them all they make for a memorable design. I can only hope that after going through these designs you to have a better appreciation of what it takes to bring together a cohesive design.

Note: It is quite possible that some of these designs existed before 2009, however they were only added to the gallery in 2009 and therefore every design was open for selection. As we move forward to 2010 and beyond you should start to see sites included during the year they were made. Also, there is no point in asking me why I didn’t include a certain site, everyone will have their standouts, these were mine.

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Sid Lee

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Billy Tamplin

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Sourhaze: EP 1

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TweetCC

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Maryland Institute College of Art

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idsgn

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Tennessee Vacation Trails

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Bobulate

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pikaboo

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Area 17

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School of Visual Arts

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Blik

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Mission Bicycle Company

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iA

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MIX Online

Going through the Drawar Gallery, a majority of the sites are portfolios for design studios and freelancers. When I come across these sites I like to look at the other work done by the designer to see if there are other sites I can draw inspiration from and include in the gallery. Rarely do I find any. This can’t just be a case of clients ruining the work of a designer, this seems more like a case of one hit wonders.

Then it hit me. What if the majority of designers out on the web, aren’t really designers at all?

Design Observer does a wonderful job of taking a very low level approach to design. You have to know your stuff to really gain an appreciation for what the authors of the site talk about. How many of you out there read everything that comes from them? There was a discussion on QBN not too long ago that included one of my articles and one of the points brought up is that the print design and web design communities are separated because web designers aren’t really designers at all. That struck me as pretty strange because immediately I started calling out names in my head of web designers that I knew with print backgrounds and ones that could definitely go toe-to-toe with the great print designers. Beyond that you have an over-abundance of people selling services as a designer, when they know almost nothing of design.

Call them armchair designers if you want. Call them people that see a trend on the web and make sure to follow it on their next design no matter what the requirements are. Call them people who hit the galleries for inspiration and leave with a little too much inspiration if you catch my drift.

When Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton talk about designing with a grid it is a wonderful thing, but does anyone else find it shocking that so many people treat the grid as if it were something new? For example, here is a comment I found while reading another designer’s blog.

Can you go into detail on “the grid”? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a designer mention that before… and now I’m interested. How can I use it to my benefit my designs? I’ve always made my designs by color and just what I feel looks right… never with a grid system.

I find it hard to believe that someone in this profession doesn’t know what a grid is or how to use it. I didn’t go to school for design, but when I thought I might get paid for some design work I made sure to dive head deep into the many great books on design out there. I became a student of design. How many designers know about kerning and the psychology behind colors? How many designers understand the principles of typography and white space? You ever wonder why articles on these subjects are so popular? It’s because 90% of the web design community don’t know about these subjects.

Back in 2007, Greg Storey, wrote a cry for help asking for more qualified designers. There are plenty of people who can chop up a design in XHTML/CSS. Hell you can outsource that for a couple hundred dollars. There are plenty of people who can AJAX-ify your interface to increase the user experience. There are plenty of people who can create a design that looks nice.

The problem is, how many people can design solutions to fix the problems a site has? How many people can take the ideas of their client and translate them properly to the screen? How many designers can look past their own style and design a site that fits the current project?

There aren’t many. There aren’t many people that treat design as an art and passion that must constantly be improved. There aren’t many people that understand design is a craft that should be studied and poured over until you get tired of it and then you get up and do it again. There aren’t many people that understand what design is and yet wish to call themselves designers.

I am by no means a designer. If someone were to come up to me and I knew they needed a graphically rich website with vibrant colors, there is no way I could produce that for them. I do my own sites because I only have one style and work with limited colors and keep myself constrained to the graphical properties of CSS. I am no designer. To be honest, most of the people out there are no better than me and yet they want the big bucks. They want the glory. They want to know why their site didn’t make it into the gallery (do galleries even reject sites anymore?).

No, you are not a designer. You are someone that can piece together some stuff in Photoshop or add the right pieces of code in XHTML/CSS. You aren’t the person that creates experiences. You aren’t the translator of ideas that people never thought could be produced visually. You aren’t the person that can toss their own style to the curb and come up with something even greater because of it.

But you could be. Maybe. Just take the time to study like the greats before you. Push your limits. Test your boundaries. Designers like to work within their comfort zone because they know what they will like. Make something ugly to help you come up with some ideas on how to make something beautiful. When you need inspiration create your own.

A great point was made by Tyme White in the forums.

Ever walk into an art museum and you see the pretty paintings, then you come across one that looks like a kid threw a wet paintbrush at the canvas? You stand there wondering why that painting is there…you could have done it. Then some art enthusiast walks by and mentions how the painting is actually millions of dots made to look like splashed paint. You might wonder why someone would create a piece of art like that but you understand WHY the painting is there.

Tyme White

Look at the designs that inspire you and even the ones that don’t and try to understand what part of them appeals to you. To simply say you like the colors doesn’t help you as a designer. Question why that particular color combination works for that design. Figure out if the fonts used were the best choice. Even when you know design, you are always learning design.

You can become a true web designer if you work at it, just not many people out there really have that desire. I know you do though.

Next week I will be going over the Top 5 (gasp, a useful list) Website Designs that I found this year and when I say “going over” I mean actually looking at them and discussing why I like them. So be sure to subscribe to our feed or follow us on Twitter because you won’t want to miss it.

ABC News

LA Times

Chicago Tribune

The Drudge Report and Google News have to be two of the ugliest news sites on the web and yet are two of the most popular. Why? I like to think it is because they cut to the chase and give you the ability to scan headlines quickly. There is so much news happening at any given time of day that the best way for us to keep up with it is to allow us to do it at our own pace.

I am the biggest fan of sites that let you get straight to the content without all the fluff, but that doesn’t mean a site should go without some aesthetic appeal or a change of structure. Newsmap came out years ago and although the interface isn’t perfect (some of the titles are so small they are impossible to read), to me it is still lightyears (damn that measures distance not time so is that accurate?) ahead of the field.

Why can’t news agencies get on the ball and realize they are missing a great opportunity to leap ahead of their competition? Whenever you read about the newspaper industry all you hear about is the decline of revenue and how all papers will soon disappear. Everyone is fighting for eyeballs and the way they do it is by looking like their competition? I can understand that coming from the USA Today because they are supposed to be generic, but from the rest of the field? Come on!

Here is what is disappointing to me about the design of news sites. You know most of them have big time designers behind them, but there is no way that these designers are releasing these designs themselves. They are probably going through a million levels of bureaucracy and it comes out looking that way in the end.

New York Times

The Guardian

Khoi Vinh has done a great job over at The New York Times, but even then you have to feel as though he wishes he could take away some of the content. That site feels like it should be broken down into 10 different domains just so some of the content can breathe.

Now I know it doesn’t have as much content as the NYT, but don’t you wish that more news sites looked like The Morning News? Would you ever have a problem going to a beautiful site like that to catch up on what is happening today? Hell, wouldn’t you go back to check even more just because of the pleasant design? We are forced to go somewhere if we want our news and that is what is keeping these horrible news sites alive.

Information Overload

The design dilemma these sites are facing is that their is simply too much content. Instead of trying to narrow down what content needs to be shown on the homepage, they try to find ways to ensure that all content is shown on the homepage. You can’t honestly tell me that all news items deserve front page coverage no matter how small the link is can you? The only reason I scan a news page is because I have a hard time keeping my eyes focused on one spot. I am forced to scan it so maybe there is a trick or two in there that I don’t know about yet. The trick is to not encourage your readers to scan the page, but to force their eyes to go into a state of perpetual motion until their finger saves them and clicks on a link. Brilliant.

Seriously though, how often do you go to a new site looking for one particular headline that is crammed 2400px down the page? I know I don’t and I can’t remember finding any hidden gems either. If I want sports I go to sports. If I want politics I know where to go. If I am just looking for what is happening around the world I will simply go to a news site and check the major headlines.

In an industry that is trying to figure out how to handle itself online, maybe the axiom of less being more really does apply. Why not treat your website like you do your physical newspaper and allow people to browse without overwhelming them with a million bits of content at once?

Could you imagine watching a news broadcast that split the screen into 16 squares and they all reported the news at once? That is how most news sites feel to me. Newspapers always have one front page article that receives the giant headline treatment. The rest of the articles the readers have to “scroll” and find. Why can’t their online counterparts work in the exact same way?

Offline you have beautifully designed newspapers with eye-popping headlines and ads that don’t get in the way of the content. Online you have sites that could have been designed by anyone. If you can come up with beautiful designs for your offline news then it shouldn’t be that hard to do so online.

Economista

Politiken

Aripaev

Frankfurter Allgemeine

There you have four award-winning newspaper designs from around the world. I understand that print design varies from web design because you have greater freedom due to the restrictions of what you are working with (yes, that makes sense). But why can’t some of the design principles being used offline be applied online? Even if your site is producing a new major headline every hour you can’t tell me someone in your organization is not wise enough to cook up some sort design to accommodate it.

Pictures are great, but the way I scan a news page is by looking at the text quickly to see if anything catches my eye. Looking at the full screenshots of some of the larger news sites on the web you can see that they offer their readers a lot to scan. Probably a bit too much.

How To Improve

NYT Skimmer, How I like my news

Let’s try to knock out some of the misconceptions these publications seem to have. If you looked at the screenshots of their sites you will notice that they are very, very long. Apparently, they don’t believe in the above the page fold myth either, but there has to be a limit to how much content you put on a page before it starts to lose its purpose. When you come across a single page site that is long, it makes sense because the content is all related and it is used to guide the reader. On a newspaper’s site the next content you scroll to probably has nothing to do with the content you just read. It breaks the flow for the reader. In fact, I find myself scrolling to the bottom and passing over everything in the middle.

Newsvine

Looking at the screenshot of Newsvine on the left they have the shortest homepage of any of the sites shown here, with the exception of Skimmer, and they don’t suffer because of it. The rest of the sites above cover at least 3000px in vertical space, which to me seems like over 1000px of overkill.

Why not take a page out of blog design and have a running tally of your most recent major headlines? This way I can visit a news site any time of the day and see what I missed previously. Can’t you safely assume that a majority of the readers aren’t going to scan the whole front page for something that interests them, especially if you are trying your best to draw their attention with major headlines?

Need More Links

If you plan on running a news site it seems you best be ready to add a ton of links. On Monday, Nov 30, 2009 I counted how many links were on some of the major news sites’ homepages. These numbers are outrageous.

• New York Times: 325
• Los Angeles Times: 312
• Guardian: 222
• Washington Post: 400
• ABC News: 249
• Chicago Tribune: 347

If a reader can’t find something to click then they aren’t looking at the screen. Information overload is not always a good thing.

If the purpose for the long pages is to stick more ads on them then wouldn’t it be easier to just find ways to get your audience to browse the site more? I don’t mean breaking up long articles into pages like some jackass sites do, but find ways to encourage readers to go somewhere else on the site after reading an article. It works that way when I use the Times Skimmer, but maybe I am in the minority.

I haven’t gone through the history of online news site design, but I wouldn’t be surprised to witness very little change. The time is ripe for someone to jump at the opportunity to change how we read our news online. Newsvine changed the social aspect of news, so why can’t the major news outlets at least try to change the way it is presented? And if you think CNN’s recent redesign is a positive step forward then you are mistaken. They might as well start all over from scratch with that one.