Have you ever found yourself literally frozen creatively while trying to get a website design going, or maybe even while trying to finish one up? If so, congratulations, you are a human being, and web design is a damn frustrating thing time to time. The variables come at you, come at us, from every possible angle, and no, I don’t mean the type of variable that you assign a proprietary value to. I mean the type of variable that sometimes dictates more than assists with the creating process. I mean the type of variable, that in a nutshell, encompasses the development process that follows the design process, and all of its nasty little tendrils. That is, if a nutshell had…tendrils. Anyway, this article may mostly be things that you already know but for some reason can’t seem to tell yourself and be taken seriously. Sometimes we have to hear it from someone else. I’m here for you, man.
Help, I’m frozen in a design process!
I’ve never really asked any other website designers or developers if the following is a technique that they also use or know it to be commonly used, but it absolutely works for me. If you’re frozen in the design process and can’t seem to make any head-way, jump pre-maturely to the development process. And I kind of dis-like using the word “prematurely”, because I usually do the design process along side the development process. I’m not the type that can really sit there and do one to completion and then the other. Not only does this help me to keep my mind in a multi-tasking type mode, but a lot of times during the development process, when coding my header for example, I’ll gain ideas or insight into my creation and find not just ideas for the development, but also ideas for the design. I would suppose this works due to the fact that website creation is not and never possibly could be a one-process stop. Design is as much a marriage to development as being caucasian is a part of my existance. Yes, I’m a white guy, and not that it matters, but I really like the dry senses of humor. Ok..
Tunnel vision can sometimes create boring things…like tunnels.
If at all possible, and this is another of my bigger hurdles, but if at all possible try not to get too fixated on your own work. Try to continuously feed your mind with a bit of inspiration — whether it be something along the lines of a great CSS gallery you previously enjoyed visiting, or something that is undeniably pure crap, such as the TV series Charmed, that we all for whatever reason pause at when channel surfing, but experience other people’s expressions. My personal favorite is going to a local coffee house and wasting time. And, you might be surprised at how much time you can actually save from wasting a bit of it on something else.
Oh, and before I forget — a brief explanation of what “expression” I gain from a coffee shop. Well, if you actually needed this explanation, you’ve obviously never been to a coffee shop, because “they”, that mysterious aggregation of people, are very expressive.
As that infamous song states, “Know when to hold em” and “Know when to fold em”.
The above title translated into something meaningful not just to 99% of Jimmy Buffet fans (a mystery in itself), but also to us designers would be this: Skipping on sleep, stressing oneself out, working incredibly hard, in my honest opinion, these type of actions or neglects might get you ahead in some fields or corporations, but not when you absolutely have to express creativity via art and then up and through to finalize a web oriented design. You simply can’t force art. If it isn’t happening and you’re absolutely definate that you’re probably only lieing to yourself a little bit about that, and you’re completely uninspired — back away. Take a nap, take a shower, take a trip whether that involve an automobile or a huge bean bag chair and The Grateful Dead. (Advisory: JungleJar.com does not condone or endorse the consumption or illegal use of drugs. Not unless you have nowhere to go, anyway.)
Why the word “Mockup” would have been better off without the “Mock”.
Even if you stole no code or used any images from someone elses design — but mocking up (designing) a previously designed design — taking it further than just being inspired by — but absolutely having to own this, like an obsessed man or woman in love or lust — this is design theft. No, you probably won’t be pushed across the room by a few relatively out of shape cops from our finest american cities with a reggae theme playing in the background and the camera-guy that is never questioned by the criminal but accepted by the criminal as just a part of the “group”, but face reality. You did not create art, you copied art. There is a big difference and only someone as great as Andy Warhol could you tell in great detail the fundamental differences, so I won’t try, but I guarantee you one thing: If this design is to be seen on a regular or even random basis by you or those you know, serves you or people you know frequently or quite possibly even if interaction with it is seldom, you will ultimately become dissatisfied with the design and will do 1 of 2 things. You will either have to crack and re-design the website, or flyer, or business card — whatever media it may be, or you will embrace the depression brought on by the consciousness, and the feeling of shame and guilt. This may also be immediately followed by wearing dark clothes for the sake of wearing dark clothes, embedding Marilyn Manson mp3s into your projects, and/or tricking yourself into believing you’re actually a really cool vampire. Or, even more unlikely, an artist of any sort. Snap.
View the progress of the design in different ways.
And the above title is as literal as one could possibly be. And yes, this actually does help me — altering the size, scope, or angle of your project can very well offer you a new sense of canvas. Usually what I’ll do is open the design in Adobe’s Photoshop, if it isn’t already, drop the size of the image or canvas as it were by about 50%, sometimes as much as 80%, and this helps me in making wise and productive decisions before investing too much time into something that is more unlikely to not work out. Not only that, but it gives me a different understanding of the design as a whole and not just what my screen is displaying at that moment. I’ve also found this to help you more easily scan for a proper flow in color orientation of website objects and/or textual orientation. I, and I’m being completely honest, am color blind, and I find this resizing method to benefit me greatly. I’m not aiming to say that as though it’s on level with an epiphany, but take it for what it’s worth to you.
Sometimes the only way to truly construct is to deconstruct.
No, don’t worry, I’m not about to go on any philosophical rant right now — albeit rather tempting, but we’re simply talking about things along the lines of backspacing data. One of the hardest things to do, especially if you’ve invested a significant amount of time into the work, is to accept the fact that one really great idea has manifested, almost at the get-go and unbeknownst to you, into something rather feeble. It doesn’t work, what do you do? If you’ve went through the paces, shifted things around, maybe re-created the color pallette 3 or 4 times, went through the span of a lifetime of logos and used every icon in the famfamfam archive to show off a “0 comments” notifier, start over. Something fundamentally is off about it, we’ve decided on this, and if we haven’t, we probably now should. It’s even quite mysterious — something, be it in the design process or development process has snuck into our artistic masterpiece and turned it into an illogical piece of crap. Suck it up and start over, and tell yourself you’ll cut back on your adderal the next day to make-up for it.
I hope you enjoyed my article on the painstaking process of web design and development, appreciated the humorous approach I took on it, even if that involuntary, and stumble it until you can’t stumble no more. Thanks and good luck.
