reflections

I need to open this post by apologising for the sporadic level of posts recently… Everything’s managed to catch up with me the last few weeks, leaving me with little time to blog or comment on all my usual daily reads. I’m off on my holidays tomorrow though - and I’m hoping to return to a more relaxed schedule!

Aaron Russell tagged me with this almost three weeks ago (has it really been that long?!?), and he was originally tagged by Marc Rapp - the creator of this fantastic meme. Aaron managed to weasel out of giving anybody any real advice though (only kidding mate), so I felt I should at least try to impart some pearls of wisdom!

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One of my greatest pleasures as a web designer is getting the chance to refine my craft but, in contrast to that, one of my greatest burdens is the the number of ridiculous questions that clients have presented me with in the past! Given how long the Internet has been around, and considering the sheer number of sites on the web, you would think that everybody would have at least a basic knowledge of how it all works - but you’d be wrong!

Clients can’t always be expected to understand the complex stuff though - that’s why they pay a designer. But sometimes it would be so much easier if they’d just get a grip!

You’ll need a large spoonful of patience if you’re not going to start alienating your own clients though, because you’re the one with the knowledge. Treat them gently, especially if it’s the first time that they’ve had a web site built! If you know what to expect though, then it should help you deal with the questions when they come!

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Every designer is influenced by their surroundings, the people they meet, and design trends - but does that mean that we’re all affected in the same way, or does each of us retain a sense of uniqueness in our designs - regardless of influence?

Tara at the Graphic Design Blog decided to run an experiment to find out. The experiment (open to anyone who wants to take part) requires you to scribble down a logo idea (or several if you wish) for two fictitious companies.

Well, I couldn’t resist finding out if my patterns of thought when designing are my own - so without further ado, I present my submission to the experiment!

Caffeine Rush - Espresso Machine & Accessory Supplies

The first scan shows my initial brainstorming sheet. I wrote down the two words from the company name, then strung off various keywords and sub-words that were related to them. Finally I put asterisks by the words that had visual cues for me.

The main idea I played with on the second sheet was the different ways of portraying coffee cups and mugs (1-5, 13, 15). I also looked at coffee beans (6-9) and their shape, latte art swirls (10-12), coffee leaves (14) and a remembered idea for a lettering style (16).

The third sheet shows me playing around with various ways of indicating speed (17-20) and movement (21), and drawing out an idea about a rocket (!) that popped into my head (22). There’s also a stamp motif idea (23 - like they have burned into the sides of coffee sacks), and some messin around with letter spacing, word division and text placement (24-30).

Cheap ‘n’ Cheerful - Budget Fancy Dress Shop

Same as before, but I wrote down three main keywords this time, strung off the related keywords and sub-words, and put in the asterisks by the most visual words.

I played around with various clown, jester and harlequin concepts on this sheet (1-5) and then a couple of interesting ways to use them (6 - glove puppet, 7 - toy on a stick).

This sheet’s got a couple of jack-in-the-box ideas (8 and 9), and then I’m playing around with letter styling, word positioning and placement of the graphic (10-14).

The Final Designs

I realise that this wasn’t a part of the experiment - the sketches alone should be enough alone to indicate my thought processes - but I couldn’t stand the idea of not taking my favourite concepts through to completion! So, here they are…

Thanks again to Tara for coming up with the idea - I can’t wait to see the results of the experiment… Remember to check out the other submissions too: Tara’s sketches are here, Tess (from Thoughts and Such) has some up here, and Siong’s are here.

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One of my ongoing projects at the moment is Britster - a social networking site that will offer many of the popular features from sites like MySpace, YouTube and Date.com. What will make this site different to the rest though, is that fact that it’s aimed squarely at the British - including UK residents, ex-pats, and anybody else who wants to communicate with those living in Britain. My role in the project has been varied to date, and has included PHP development, online and offline marketing, corporate styling, and (of course) the design of the main website.

As research for the website design element of the project, I’ve looked at all the major existing social networking sites in a critical light, to see where I could make my own designs better. What I found really surprised me though - a general lack of quality, poor navigation and huge file downloads are common among both the leaders in the field and those vying for success

Please remember that these evaluations are purely my own opinion as a web designer. Just because I think a site sucks visually, it doesn’t necessarily mean the functionality is also lacking, as that isn’t what I’ve focused on.

I hope that any designer (web or otherwise) will find this roundup useful, as it highlights the pitfalls a designer may come across when creating a design for mass consumption - something we all have to tackle at some point in our careers. This may also be of interest to anyone else developing a site with social networking features.

Notes: clicking on any of the thumbnails will open up a full-size grab of the site in either a new tab or window. These are stored on my Flickr account, and I’ve grouped them into a set which you can view in full if you want to make comparisons! With this being a rather lengthy post, I’ve made use of a ‘read more’ break in the text, so you may need to click the title to read this article in its entirety.

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