Today, we’re going to look at five key rules for selecting an ideal typeface for any project, and how to determine if that font you think is amazing may not be so great after all.

You Don’t Need as Many Typefaces as You Think You Do

When I was in school, my type teachers would stress that graphic designers really only need around 5 or 6 ‘default’ typefaces that they can use to handle 99% of all possible scenarios.

This has the effect of giving your design work a very distinctive look; only using five fonts for everything will clue people in faster as to who the designer is. It can become a bit monotonous, though, and, if done incorrectly, can make your work look awkwardly limited.

By Rikki Rogers

However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t good advice to stick to a particular ‘palette’ of fonts for the most part. If you learn the fundamentals of type, you can get a lot more versatility out of even a single typeface than many type novices think is possible.

Type can be altered, tweaked, spliced, and shaped to fit a variety of needs. Many of the newer fonts out there were created from classic ones anyway.

It’s all about making sure the changes are seamless and look like they were always part of the letterform.

Check For Telltale Signs of Auto-Tracing or Lumpy Vectors

Back before digital took over the print world, type was created by actual foundries, which offered sets of metal letterforms to be loaded into a printing press.

A common problem with a lot of modern digital fonts (even the ones you have to pay for) is that the ‘foundry’ that designed the typeface cut corners to produce it.

They might have taken scans of printed letterforms, auto-traced them in Illustrator, and put them into FontLab or a similar program without bothering to clean them up or correct any errors created by the software.

Display fonts are meant to be shown at large sizes, and when you have one that’s poorly drawn, it’s going to be that much more obvious when it’s blown up to the necessary size.

A good typeface should be just as elegant and readable at size ten as it is at size 84.

By Blink Design

If it isn’t, consider looking for a different one. If you need a display font, make sure the vectors are clean and elegant, with no signs of lazy auto-tracing.

It’s easy to create outlines of any typeface in Illustrator to see whether it’s a prize or a dud.

Don’t Forget About The Symbols!

Symbols, numbers, ligatures, and dingbats may not seem important… until you need one and are forced to improvise or borrow from a different font.

It’s much easier and more cohesive for your design to just pick a font that has all the symbols you need.

By Stefan Dziallas

Believe me, even if you think you’ve found the ‘perfect’ typeface, if it’s not complete enough for your project, you are going to be kicking yourself as your next deadline approaches.

Before you commit to an incomplete font, check to see if there isn’t a better option that’s just as good, which won’t have you scrambling to fill in the gaps.

Pulling Your Own Weight

Remember all that rambling about type weights you slept through in design school (don’t pretend like you didn’t)? Well, as it turns out, it was a vital piece of the typography puzzle.

Like symbols, type weights (bold, italic, etc.) only seem insignificant as long as you don’t absolutely need them.

Of course, there are plenty of faces – Roman capitals and many stencil or pixel fonts – that only come in one weight. If you choose to work with one of these fonts, it’s important to take their limitations into account before you begin your project.

Application is Everything

Are you using a web font, a print font, or a combination of the two? There is a difference, and it does matter. Web fonts are designed to be read on a computer screen.

They are typically sans serif, like Arial or Tahoma, although there are serif fonts, like Georgia, which are intended for digital applications as well.

Fonts meant for print are older and more classic, like Bodoni, Baskerville, or Goudy, and the best ones can be perfectly suited to web design with just a few tweaks to their curves and spacing.

By MadeByStudioJQ

Modern typefaces like Helvetica look great both on and off-screen. The popular Helvetica Neue was specifically created for digital design, relying heavily on Helvetica’s classic letterforms.

Just like celebrity break-ups and recipes for black forest cake, typefaces can be googled. With a simple search, you can find out a font’s origins, whether it was created for print or digital, and whether there is an updated version that might be better for your design.

The post Good Font, Bad Font: How to Pick the Best Font appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

But some key developments have risen up over the past decade, which, in my opinion, are threatening to eliminate the need for a personal website.

Information is spread so quickly these days through social media that it’s impossible to keep up with all of it, and the truth is that potential clients and people who like your work are rarely going to take time out of their busy day to visit your website.

The post Is It Worthwhile Having a Personal Portfolio? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The colors are wrong, the type is inappropriate, the composition is hideous – it’s just a mess, and you eventually write it off as a failure. Sometimes you have the luxury of hiding the whole thing in a folder in the very back of your hard drive, where no human eyes will ever come upon it.

But what happens when you have a project that’s due in to your client at 8AM, and it’s currently 3AM and you’ve got absolutely nothing decent to present? Do you curl up into a ball and declare yourself a failed designer for all time?

Or is there another way to approach this inevitable feeling which will leave you, if not satisfied, at least able to continue on with your life and your career with confidence? Let’s explore, shall we?

Prepare To Fail

You’ve probably heard it said that failure is a necessary part of success. That’s fine to say and all, but in my scenario above, when it’s 3 in the morning and you’re sobbing uncontrollably, chances are you’re not going to simply repeat that adage to yourself and snap out of it.

The key to really believing that failure is a necessary part of your process is conditioning yourself beforehand, so that it doesn’t come as a complete shock to you when you’re actually in the trenches.

Keeping your mind sharp with creative exercises every day, that are unrelated to your work, will gradually introduce you to the idea of failure, because trust me – you’re going to fail at many of those exercises.

Force yourself to keep to a schedule for your personal projects just like you schedule your paid work. There’s no worse feeling than failing to complete a project when you have yourself as the client.

It’s much worse, in my experience, than bombing on a paid assignment. At least you’re not expected to hold yourself accountable. But once you experience this unique form of torture often enough, you’ll find that it will actually help you start working faster and more efficiently.

You’ll become used to the idea that you’ll have to give it a few extra tries before you get it right, and by the time your next freelance assignment comes along, you’ll be ready to fail with gusto. Well. Maybe not gusto. But at least with some kind of dignity.

Through the Valley of Insight

In the book Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, there’s an exercise from Tim Brown, the CEO of design consultancy firm IDEO which I think is especially useful to designers “learning” how to fail.

In the book, Brown is said to provide his employees with what he calls a “project mood chart,” which informs people how they will feel at various stages during any given project.

The chart itself is shaped like a V – at the left point of the V, there’s a label that reads “hope.” This signifies the rush of excitement you feel when you first start on a project. You’re relaxed and focused, everything is going swimmingly and you’re absolutely sure you’ll get everything in to the client on time.

The label on the other end of the V reads “confidence.” This represents the way you feel after you’ve finished a project successfully. You’re high on positive energy; you’ve kicked ass and your client wants to marry you. Sweet. This is how every designer wants to feel after it’s all over – proud and accomplished. The trick is getting there.

The third label in the V-shaped diagram reads “insight.” This is the point between “A” and “B,” and it’s where all the failure and depression and late-night drinking binges lie. Everyone has to cross this valley and gain the insight they need to get to the confidence of a successful job well done.

It’s like crossing a desert – many never make it. You can almost imagine dry skeletons of your fallen design comrades as they gave up and got stuck in the valley forever.

Some gave up on creative work altogether and became secretaries or accountants. You don’t want to be one of those people.

You chose a creative field for a reason, and the sooner you develop the mental toughness to cross the unpleasant valley, the more prepared you’ll be for when you have to do it all over again next time.

Isn’t being a designer fun?

It’s Not Really Failure

Here’s something about failure that you might find interesting. Most of what we normally refer to as “failure” isn’t actually failure at all. If you’re stuck in the middle of a project that’s going nowhere fast, you can feel like there’s nowhere to go but down and write the whole thing off as a lost cause.

But if you learn to develop persistence, you’ll eventually realize that, despite things not going so smoothly at first, your momentum will eventually start to pick up and you’ll inexplicably find the energy to begin scaling the side of the mountain to victory.

Your confidence will grow the more ground you cover, and eventually, it will overcome your sense of doom and the “failure” will show its true nature as a mere pothole in the road.

Conclusion

Everyone goes through periods where they feel like nothing is working right. And, no matter how much experience you gain as a designer, crossing that valley from hope to confidence is going to be unpleasant.

Even with my years of experience as a writer and designer, there are still times when I need to go back and read or look at something encouraging – a quote, a sketch of my eventual project, or even an article like this one, to give myself a boost to keep on going.

Giving yourself encouragement when you need it is essential to learning how to fail “properly.”

The post As a Designer, Is Failure a Necessary Part of Success? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

In fact, most designers have more ideas than they know what to do with. Yet, most jealously hide their ideas, paranoid that someone will “steal” them and do something that will undermine their own fame as a designer.

Today, we’re going to explore some important reasons why it’s stupid to worry about anyone potentially stealing your ideas.

Ideas Mean Nothing

First of all, success is 99% execution. The sweat and hard work that go into making a design a reality is really what matters – that’s the important part. Only 1% of success is the idea. Ideas are useless on their own. We all get them – they only mean something if you make them happen. You can have ideas that are sort of ‘blah’, and yet still dominate your field through hard work.

The good news is, people who steal others’ ideas don’t realize this. They think it’s the idea itself that is valuable. But the truth is, a mediocre idea executed well is worth a lot more than a great idea executed poorly. So, if you have good ideas, and you work hard to turn them into something, you can always generate more ideas and have success as a designer.

Telling People Gives You More Ideas

Sharing your ideas will usually foster the development of new ideas. If you’re creative, that is (which you are; why else would you be reading this?). The person you share your ideas with can give you an outside perspective and some much-needed feedback about whether your idea is actually as good as you think it is.

You can also brainstorm together with others to come up with a myriad of different ideas, each one stronger than the last.

If you only have one idea, though, that’s a bad sign. It’s important to avoid ‘one-itis’ or fixating on a single idea to the exclusion of all others. You might be completely convinced that that one, single idea is the end all, be all thing that’s going to make your career, but it probably isn’t.

Success is a culmination of the little things, the daily triumphs we make each time we complete a new project that we’re proud of. So go out there and make as much work as you can.

Provide Value to Others

When you share ideas, you help the entire design community. It’s important to give back to your fellow designers who might be struggling with the same issues you did once upon a time. I’m not saying you have to give away all of your “trade secrets” (although even that’s not as taboo as it used to be).

But talking out an idea and letting others transform it in their own unique ways can inspire you as well. You might see a completely different approach to an idea that you hadn’t considered before.

Someone Else Probably Thought of It Anyway

Exactly what it says on the tin. Ideas occur simultaneously to different people all the time, often without them even knowing it. This is why some work can look strikingly similar without the designers even having heard of each other. Great minds think alike. That’s the reason you can’t legally copyright an idea. We humans are just too similar in our thought patterns.

The key is taking an idea that other people might have already explored and doing it in your own unique way, using your experiences and skills as a designer to put an unconventional spin on it. As the saying goes, everything has been done before, but not by you.

Finally, keep in mind that ideas are rarely stolen wholesale anyway. Usually, someone takes bits and pieces of ideas from various sources (or they should, anyway). As we saw earlier, everything is a remix – not a direct copy.

Very few designers who have any pride in their abilities at all will actually want to steal your idea entirely. Those are called hacks – they’re very easy to spot, and the design community doesn’t normally tolerate them for long.

The post Stop Worrying About People Stealing Your Ideas appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

That’s the underlying principle of Apple-style minimal design. Not necessarily to “strip” something down, but to make sure it’s easy to figure out and access with as few distractions as possible.

Here are what I like to call the 10 Golden Rules of Simple, Clean Design. They are based loosely on the 10 Principles of Good Design proposed by master product designer Dieter Rams, but I’ve modified them a bit to fit with a more general goal of design simplicity.

Less, but Better

Dieter Rams said it first, and it’s first on this list for a reason. Simple design isn’t just about subtracting things from a design willy-nilly. It has to improve the design’s overall effectiveness.

Rams’ aim is to strip away the “non-essentials” of a design, to return it to a pure, simple state. However, too many designers seem to think that one has to keep stripping things away even past the point where it’s practical for the design.

To this designer, the goal isn’t complete and utter white space. If something is essential but makes the design look clunky or inelegant, your job as a designer isn’t to eliminate it anyway but to figure out how to “make it work.”

Image Source

Be Neutral

This doesn’t mean your design has to be completely devoid of personality, but if accessibility is your goal, your design should provide an easy way for your viewer to make sense of the content.

Remember, the number one goal of graphic and web design is to present content, to feed people the information they’re looking for in the least headache-producing way possible.

Be Honest

Your design needs to communicate the intent of your content clearly and honestly. If your viewer has the wrong idea of what your content is trying to tell them, your design isn’t honest enough.

No tricks are necessary here – everything about the design of your website, flyer, brochure, or poster, from the graphics down to the colors, should be suggestive of the product being sold or the information being conveyed.

Image Source

Go For Timelessness

Of course, it’s not for us to say, right now, what will become timeless and what will fade into obscurity. But there are certain rules you can follow to make sure your designs steer clear of fads and trends which will destroy their longevity.

First of all, if something feels like a trend, it probably is. The thing that will help you most here is reading. I’m not talking about design blogs and websites either, though those are great resources for keeping up to speed with your fellow designers.

But certain design fundamentals are basic and important enough to be printed in a book and referred to over and over in your permanent library. The closer you stick to those fundamentals, the more classic your designs will be.

Braun Speaker by Andrew McClintock

Don’t think that just because something is “classic” that it has to be boring, either. It’s true that certain approaches work better than others when creating designs that will speak to both present and future audiences, but keep in mind that classic work is being produced every day by creative professionals.

It may be “contemporary” today, but give it a decade or two. It’ll be right alongside the greats in design libraries the world over.

Less “Design”

If you mention the word “design” in just the wrong context, some people will get a mental picture of something fussy and overdone. That’s not what you want. Your job as a designer is to get out of the way of the content.

Yes, design can be beautiful and an art form and all that warm, fuzzy stuff. However, the priority is always the content.

A helpful way to think of it is “assembly” versus “ornamentation.” Sushi, with its clear, separate components – each important to the whole in its own way – is a perfect example of an assembly type of design.

The fish, rice, wasabi, Japanese mayonnaise (if you’re into that), and seaweed are like blocks of content in a design, which must be arranged to form a complete, concise, delicious bite.

There are endless ways a skilled sushi chef can assemble and arrange these blocks of content, and this same type of creativity can serve you as well in the creation of a clean design.

Ornamentation, on the other hand, is like the sprinkles on a cupcake. Or, to keep with the sushi theme (because I love sushi), it’s the little bowl of soy sauce or the leaf used to hold the extra wasabi on the side.

Nice to have, but essential? Unless you’re extra-hardcore about little wasabi leaves, I think not.

Be Thorough

Just because your design is simple, doesn’t mean you can get sloppy with the details. Remember that, in a minimal design, the end result your viewer will be seeing will highlight all flaws in your work.

Quite mercilessly, I might add. When most of your design is white space, there are very few places to “hide” bad composition or an unfortunate typography choice.

Be Conservative

I don’t mean your design has to look like a frumpy, old librarian (apologies to any frumpy and/or old librarians out there), but it should be conservative in terms of the resources it uses.

“Green” design is all the rage these days, but conserving your resources as a designer goes much deeper than that. It’s also about your personal resources – your time, your manual effort, your hard drive space.

A note I should make here is that when you’re striving to create a simple, minimalist design, the majority of your resources should be spent in the beginning stages.

Think of it like baking a cake, since my favorite kinds of analogies involve baked goods of some sort. When you lay out all the ingredients on your kitchen counter, it can be messy and confusing at first.

Then, once you slowly begin to combine things in the proper order, and the batter comes together in a single bowl that you can then transfer to the cake pan, you know that all that energy you spent in the preparation stages was worth it.

You won’t see all that early work in the finished product, of course, but you’ll know it’s there.

Design is the same way. When you make your initial plans, sketches, and studies, you’re just like the baker in the kitchen, producing a clean, simple, singular design that reveals very little about the work that went into it.

Take Your Time

To give the details of your designs your full attention, you need to take your time and get them just right. This may seem like common sense, but I’m always surprised at the opinion many designers seem to have that simple design is somehow “easier,” or that it takes less time.

Braun AW20 Watch by Barry Lachapelle

Minimalist design is like an optical illusion. The result might look clean and simple, but that’s the point. It’s like ballet – the whole intent is to trick the viewer into thinking they’re seeing something effortless.

If you do, then the ruse was successful. But don’t think that it takes less time or effort to achieve those results. If anything, it takes more time.

Be Understood

Good design doesn’t need to be explained. You know this, even if you’ve never consciously thought about it before. Think of all the items you use daily. The odds are good that you didn’t have to read a manual to learn how to use them.

Your designs can be that straightforward as well. Note that I didn’t say they “will” be that straightforward – only that they “can” be.

It takes work to arrive at a place of such simplicity, but one way to approach it is to make a note of exactly what appeals to you about your favorite simple designs. Is it the ease of use? The approachability? The absence of clutter? The chances are good that straightforwardness has something to do with what makes these designs work.

Make It Pretty

Dieter Rams says that good design must be beautiful as well as useful. Why? Because “the aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being.” That means the more you look at something, the more of an impact it has on your senses.

If you’re looking at a hideous design day in and day out, you’re going to internalize some of that hideousness, and it’s going to affect your interaction with the world in some way.

Maybe you’ll be a little more irritable to the barista at the coffee shop in the morning, or you’ll frown a little deeper and grip your steering wheel a little tighter when you’re stuck in traffic.

If you’re a designer, that ugliness might affect you in even worse ways (well, worse for designers at least). If all you’re looking at is bad design, your taste – or what Rams calls the “aesthetic” – will reflect that, and it will skew your perception of what “good” design looks like.

After an onslaught of crappy designs, your own output will suffer, and pretty soon you might catch yourself actually contributing to the crap pile instead of fighting against it.

Don’t do this to your fellow designers. Take care with your aesthetics and inspire others to be and produce their best as well.

Simple is a lifestyle. You have to think very hard about what you’re going to leave out of a design, and how you’re going to go about it.

It’s not an easy process, but the more you attempt it, the more you’ll discover what works and what doesn’t.

The post The 10 Golden Rules of Simple, Clean Design appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

It doesn’t matter what the unethical thing is or your reason for not wanting to do it – it’s always a pain to deal with and handle in a professional and courteous manner.

Luckily, there is a reliable process many freelancers can use to stop these types of clients from getting out of control, and often prevent ethical issues from coming up in the first place.

Opting Out

First, it’s important to remember that the best option in situations like these is to simply have more options and avoid these types of projects altogether. Clients who are shady are almost always more trouble than they’re worth, and if the unethical activity can be traced back to you in any way, you’ll find yourself with more trouble on your hands than you ever wanted.

If you have other potential clients you can work with, you can simply fire these bad apples and send them (politely) on their way things start to get moldy. But how do you determine who’s on the level before you take on a project?

Spotting The Red Flags

Many times, you can use your natural intuition to determine whether or not a client will present ethical dilemmas before you begin working with them. It can be as simple as a “vibe” – just a weird feeling you get when talking to them, or the dodgy way in which they answer your questions.

I’ve turned down work from clients before who just had an oddness about them that I couldn’t explain. I didn’t know why they made me uncomfortable; simply that they did, and I wanted nothing to do with their project. In more than one case, I found out later that they were, in fact, up to no good. Freelancer: 1, disaster: 0.

Other times, it can be the type of work a client asks you to do that sets off the alarm bells. Reputation management, radical brand redesigns, or conflict de-escalation with third parties like angry customers or threatening competitors, while not unethical by themselves, can be signs that your client might want to handle these problems in ways that aren’t entirely above board.

Use your judgment and listen to your gut when deciding which projects to take on. It might seem silly to turn away a client just from a feeling, but it can save you potentially years of headaches and legal problems. Plus, word to the wise: it’s often these kinds of clients who provide the biggest issues when it comes to payment as well.

Remember You’re The Expert

Sometimes, a request for something unethical can truly come out of nowhere. Everything is going fine, then suddenly your client springs a rotten request on you that you’re not sure how to handle.

In these situations, it’s likely that your client is less likely to be a crook, and more likely to simply be misguided on the direction they should be taking with the project. They see what’s working for their competitors, and they decide it’s not worth tampering with what’s clearly a winning formula. In other words, they have the right general idea, but need some help executing it in an original way.

It’s important to remind these types of clients – and yourself – that you were hired to apply your professional expertise to solve their business problems. Don’t be afraid to challenge your client’s assumptions as to what will be truly effective and why.

Point them to results you’ve achieved in the past that will show them that there are many ways to approach the dilemma that won’t violate anyone else’s intellectual property rights. Don’t just send them a new round of comps or revisions – take the time to explain what works, what doesn’t, and what will help them avoid a lawsuit.

Saying ‘I Told You So’

Ah, yes. Gloating. It’s not just for school children anymore. If you’ve done everything you can to convince a client to do the right thing, and they still refuse to see reason, it’s essential to be able to release yourself from liability if and when something goes horribly wrong. Here’s where having a record of all communication comes in handy.

Even if most of your exchange with the client happens in person and over the phone, always make transcribed copies of your recommendations, requests, and warnings, and ask the client to sign off or verify them via email.

Keep records of all the advice you provide and send a copy to your client, even if they end up completely ignoring you. That way, when their idea fails miserably, you can whip out your notes and show them that you warned them. Besides being satisfying to get a little revenge on a stubborn client, it makes it impossible for the client to hold you responsible for their poor behavior.

Hopefully, this will convince them that it’s always better to do things the right way rather than treading on someone else’s rights, but if not, at least you can walk away with a clean conscience and warn other freelancers you know to avoid that client at all costs.

The post How to Handle Ethical Disagreements With Your Design Clients appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

To many designers, this is the kiss of death, but I’m here today to tell you that it doesn’t have to be. We’re going to explore some unusual but very effective ways to get those creative juices flowing again so that you can get back in the flow of things and continue to wow your clients.

Creativity in Routine?

Here’s a fact about the human brain that you may not know: every single decision you make throughout your day will have a negative effect on your ability to successfully complete a task. That’s right – whether it’s choosing which color to make that dropdown menu, or whether you should wear that green shirt or the blue one, every time you’re forced to make a decision, you lose just a bit more mental energy.

This is why you may find yourself burnt out by lunchtime if you begin your day by answering emails or answering silly questions from dense clients. Those small decisions have used up a huge amount of your energy for the day. Sure, you can recover some of it by eating a nutritious lunch or having a quick nap, but you won’t be quite as productive after noon as you were before.

Adopting systems and routines that automate a lot of your daily decisions can help tremendously in recovering some of that creativity you thought was lost forever.

Consider taking a full day to plan the little things you know you will have to do for the week, even down to what color shirt you’ll wear. Try to batch your email responses if you can – it’s not a crime to cut and paste responses if they’re relevant and get the point across.

The more things you can automate, the more you can turn your focus to the work that truly matters.

Getting a Jolt of Energy

Starting a new project can be very intimidating. And yes, I’m about to use yet another of my famous food analogies, so get ready.

Have you ever been to a restaurant, and the waiter hands you a menu that’s absolutely terrifying? I don’t mean it has teeth or it growls at you or anything like that. I mean, there are so many items on the menu, and the descriptions are so lengthy that you almost lose your appetite and want to run back out the front door?

Too much choice can do more than confuse us – it can just about ruin our experience and make us want to hide while we try to process everything in front of us.

For me, it seems like the more freedom I have with a design project, the scarier, more confusing, and more impossible it becomes to get started.

Of course, freedom in my design work is something I’ve strived very hard to achieve, and I’m very fortunate to have it. But sometimes, with a big, hairy project deadline looming over my head, I almost wish I was a student again, with rigid assignments and a limited scope as to what I could work on.

What’s the solution to this problem? I’ve found that doing something spontaneous to get my blood pumping and my creative energy flowing helps tremendously. Exercise is the most obvious choice here, and I don’t need to tell you how many ills it can help cure besides creative block.

However, there are other options, such as spending quality time with friends or loved ones, working on something else, like a personal project, or, my personal favorite, cooking.

Calm Those Jitters

Sometimes, your problem isn’t that you’re frightened into submission by your project. Rather, you’re inundated with too much energy, which can manifest as nervous fidgeting, hair-pulling, or procrastinating by doing meaningless busy work.

This can be just as maddening because you’re not exactly sure where to begin, and you know you should be doing something productive, but you just can’t figure out what.

You may not realize it, but your brain is like clay. Whatever approach you decide to take for your work will leave an impression on your brain for next time. So, if you react to a challenging project with stress, nerves, or excessive anxiety, you’re saving a copy of that reaction in your brain’s hard drive, which will automatically pull up every time you’re faced with a similar dilemma.

In this case, you need a solution that will burn off or diminish some of that excess energy. A calming activity, such as meditation, walking, journaling, or reading, will help soothe your brain and help it focus on the task at hand.

The post How to Get Those Creative Juices Flowing Again appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Why am I talking about pie on a design website? Well, because I think that designers, of any kind, can learn a lot from bakers who skip over the fancy trimmings to give people what they want most – an uncomplicated plate of minimalist goodness.

Apple pie has endured through the years because it’s something people easily understand. In the same way, a simple, classic design that doesn’t require your audience to think too hard to understand the message will still be relevant after years of fancy fluff and bad trends have come and gone.

Apple pie is something you can’t really mess up – unless you start adding things that don’t really need to be there. It might not be easy to create the perfect design, but simplifying your “recipe” of features and information is one of the most important steps toward creating the best user experience possible.

“Pare” Necessities

The best recipes for apple pie, in my opinion, are the ones that keep things basic. In culinary terms, this allows the flavor of the main ingredient – apples, in this case – to shine. The apples are the “selling point,” so to speak. When you sit down to design a website, flyer, or brochure, make sure your audience knows exactly what they’re looking at.

In America and most of Europe (with a few exceptions), apple pies are covered with a crust. This crust is traditionally either flat or plaited into a lattice, and it sends a signal to hungry folks that the fruit they’ll find inside is probably going to be apples.

Make sure your selling point in a design is as clear as the apples in a pie. Determine exactly what your users are looking for and what they want. Ask them, if you can. The more testing you can conduct before publication, the higher your probability of creating a design that speaks to your users’ specific needs.

If, for example, you’re designing a clothing website, do your users want to search based on the types of clothing (shirts, dresses, shoes, etc.) or the types of materials (silk, cotton, leather, vinyl)? The only way you’ll know the answer for sure is if you ask.

Getting feedback from friends and acquaintances is a time-honored way of gathering “market” research in the initial stages of a design. Ask them specific questions about their experience – is something missing that they’d like to see? Can they digest the information they need clearly and without any assistance? If you’re bound by confidentiality agreements (or you have no friends), it’s perfectly acceptable to ask your client to produce this research for you or enable you to do it yourself.

This will probably be a terrible pun/cliche combo for both this article and this topic (forgive me), but Apple is the leader in the area of simple design and streamlined user experience. The Apple website and store are specifically designed to lead you, the user, through the buying experience with as little hassle and stress as possible.

The product images are big; the text is short and obvious. Additional information is available at the click of a mouse, but if you don’t click the links, you never need to worry about it. You’d better believe that the web design department at Apple spent hundreds of hours figuring out the things their users wanted – and needed – to see in order to complete the sale. And well, cliches just mean that something is extra-extra true!

Sweet Reduction

There are plenty of things you can put on top of a pie: ice cream, sugar, whipped cream, syrup, cookies, cherries – the list goes on and on. Some people might think this makes the pie taste better, but in my opinion, if you have to add that many extra things to your pie to improve the taste, you’re starting from the wrong end of the plate.

Similarly, extra bells and whistles usually only serve to clutter up a design and obscure the fact that it wasn’t very good to begin with.

I’m not saying you should never add, say, an extra column, widget, or typographic treatment if you really need to, or even just really want to. But it’s important to start with a good “base.” Make sure the fundamental message of your design gets through loud and clear. Don’t give your users extra options they don’t need or aren’t looking for.

Don’t make it harder for them to get to where they need to go. Make your users’ main goal your top priority, and add in the “toppings” only once you’re sure the main event is a treat. And hey, toppings can be delicious. My favorite is apple pie à-la mode!

Ask Grandma

You know what they say: if your Grandma can’t figure out how to navigate through your design, it’s too complicated. Elderly people tend to have less patience, ability, or desire to sift through tons of unnecessary information. That makes them perfect starting points for determining exactly what’s needed for your design and what’s simply taking up space.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re testing a design for a web template store. Is your objective clear (instant download of PSD files)? Will it be easy for your customers to find exactly what they’re looking for? Is the font size large enough for most people to read? Is there too much text? Too many ads? Is the shopping cart/payment method simple to find and navigate through?

Simply put: is there anything standing in the way of your user getting exactly what they want? If so, Grandma might just get up and head down to the record store. (Assuming there still is one in her neighborhood!)

Remember to run your design past your grandmother (or your uncle, your great aunt Matilda, or anyone who’s not so “tech-savvy”) and see if she gets it. If so, perhaps she’ll bake you a nice apple pie!

The post How Simple, Classic Design Should Work appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

We’re going to explore the history of the humble shopping cart, taking lessons from its design, marketing, and even the psychology of use, that you can start applying to your design process today.

Revisions Are Key

A couple of ordinary folding chairs were the inspiration that spawned the early prototypes of today’s shopping cart. This was an invention that helped revolutionize the retail grocery business. But it wasn’t perfect at first. Sylvan Goldman and his associate revised the design of the shopping cart many times before it began to resemble the modern cart we know today.

They had to work through safety issues – the little space for children was developed after observing how mothers would put their children in the early carts, which was dangerous and which also left little room for their groceries (and thus defeated the entire purpose of using the cart in the first place).

I know designers love to complain about client-initiated revisions (and I’m definitely including myself here), but designer-initiated revisions are extremely important to the design process. Vital, even.

Many designers often rely on the first or second idea that comes to them, which may get the job done and be “good enough” for the client, but it’s terrible for fostering true innovation and creativity.

Challenge yourself to be your own worst critic for each job you take on. Begin training yourself to look for areas you can improve on and ideas that could be developed further, and you’ll start to see glaring errors you wouldn’t have noticed before.

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Determine Your Selling Points

Nowadays, shoppers are most likely to complain about inefficient steering on their shopping carts, making it nearly impossible to turn corners or pivot to avoid other shoppers or freestanding food displays. But back in the 1930s, grocery store owners were very interested by the small amount of space Goldman’s new shopping carts took up.

Before Goldman’s invention, people placed their groceries in heavy, bulky baskets made out of wicker or wire. Once filled up with groceries, they got so heavy and cumbersome that store clerks would approach struggling shoppers and provide them with a new, empty basket, taking their full basket to the check stand for them.

These baskets took up a lot of room in the stores as well, so Goldman’s upright, foldable carts were a very welcome boon to store owners.

As a designer, it’s always important to consider the selling points of your designs, not just to your clients, but also to your client’s eventual users, audience, or consumers. The shopping cart solved a problem both for the store owners (took up less space) and for customers (were less heavy and cumbersome).

If you make your client happy, that’s a good thing. They will pay you and send you on your merry way. But if your design fails to make your client’s users happy, your client will be calling you back, possibly demanding a refund.

Goldman experienced exactly this phenomenon firsthand when his client (the grocery store) attempted to sell their customers on the idea of the shopping cart.

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Know Your Audience

Believe it or not, Goldman and his associate had the most difficulty not with developing the shopping cart model itself, nor with perfecting its functionality. The biggest problem they faced was in getting store shoppers to actually use them.

Female shoppers of the day thought they too closely resembled baby carriages – they refused to push yet another cart on wheels and add to their daily drudgery.

And male shoppers were too macho to use a dainty little cart on wheels when they could just use their “big strong arms” to carry around one of the old-fashioned baskets. Who knew shopping carts weren’t considered manly in the early 20th century?

The only users who actually liked the idea of shopping carts at first were older people. Not good.

So, how did Goldman get around this marketing obstacle? If you guessed ‘use plants to manipulate shoppers into using the new carts via peer pressure,’ give yourself a prize!

Goldman hired several “pretend” shoppers of various age groups to use the carts in the store. He then proceeded to suggest to real shoppers that “everyone” was using the new carts, which created a social imperative to fit in.

Almost instantly, the new shopping carts were a hit – everyone began using them within a few weeks.

Is it unethical to persuade your target market to consume your products or information by appealing to their need for social acceptance? Absolutely not. Companies, as well as everyday people, do it all the time.

When you and your friends are deciding where to go out to dinner, and one friend is holding everyone up by not making a decision, what’s the first thing you do?

If you’re anything like me and my friends, you’ll appeal to the “majority rule” and try to persuade your friend to choose what everyone else has chosen. This is exactly how companies have persuaded people to have televisions in every room of their house, or purchase hideously ugly shoes that no sane individual would ever spend their hard-earned money on.

The power of social persuasion is nearly limitless, and as a designer, you should definitely be using it to your advantage whenever appropriate. If you have to resort to an obvious persuasive tactic or two, that means you’re using your power as a creative professional to sway public opinion and generate profits for your client.

Either that, or you’re just a big jerk. Who knows, really?

Never Stop Innovating

First came the “folding basket carrier,” the initial prototype for the shopping cart perfected by Goldman and his people. After ten years of successfully marketing this cart to stores, there came the “nest cart,” which included the new mechanism of being able to nest itself inside the next cart in front of it.

This mechanism should be familiar to you if you’ve seen those long lines of “nesting” carts at cart kiosks or drop-offs.

Shopping carts have gone through many, many changes over the years. You may have been grateful for the shelf underneath your cart, which allow you to select heavy objects without having to lift them too high, or irritated at the security measures stores have taken in recent years to prevent theft (the carts in my neighborhood store automatically lock down the wheels of any cart that wasn’t cleared by the system, which has taken me by surprise more than once).

Sylvan Goldman died in 1984, but his innovations have lived on in the imaginations of countless product designers, and there are now more versions of the shopping cart than even he lived to see.

Just because you finish a design job with one client, that doesn’t mean the research and testing you conducted for that project has no further use. If you work to narrow down your focus to a particular market or two, you can collect research data from each future job you take on, accumulating a database of knowledge and experience which will allow you to innovate faster and more efficiently with each passing year.

In a couple of years, you’ll have far surpassed those designers who ignore the goldmine of business, marketing, and psychological insight they have at their fingertips through their clients and their clients’ users.

The post Taking Inspiration from the Humble Shopping Cart appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Personally, I’m in the ‘love it’ camp, and today I’m going to share with you six ways that you can leverage the power of sushi to improve your designs. Yes, really!

1. Tell a Story For Your Clients

Traditional sushi chefs in Japan are known for chatting with their customers at length about the local ingredients so essential to their cuisine. If you sit down at their restaurants, they will regale you with stories about the work they do, informing you and engaging you at the same time.

Restaurants are social environments – we go out to eat when we could easily stay in because we want to be around other people while we enjoy a (hopefully) delicious meal. People, like this guy, have since turned this traditional, sociable behavior into an international legend, comparing every sushi experience to the pleasant, informative one they had in Japan.

As a designer, you too can leverage this narrative power when you engage your clients. People respond well to storytelling – it makes you stand out from the pool of other designers who never use this tool.

Make sure you have a story to tell about your work. Do personal projects you love, and make a habit of explaining your unique and fascinating process to potential clients. They’ll definitely be interested as long as you keep it brief.

2. Simplicity is key

For many Japanese people, eating a little raw fish with rice is a complete meal. The story you tell with your work need not be complicated or overly dramatic. The more you simplify your process, the easier it will become, and the more work you’ll be able to accomplish.

Take writing this article, for example. If I hadn’t started out with a process to keep things simple, I would have spent far too long going into details that aren’t necessary to tell the story.

Simplifying your process isn’t easy, but once you develop your own system for tackling your work, it will definitely make your life much less hectic.

3. Uncover New Paths

Originally, the rice in sushi served a very specific purpose – to keep the fish preserved as it traveled from the fishing docks to the fish markets. To accomplish this, the rice was fermented and consequently had a very strong flavor that few could stomach.

It was traditionally discarded until the 18th century, when people began reducing the fermentation levels and including it as part of the actual dish. Now, sushi rice is the most common ingredient in most types of sushi. Making the rice part of the flavor profile opened up a whole new range of possibilities for flavor combinations.

Coming up with a function, or a solution to a problem you didn’t even know was there is a crucial part of design. Imagine if chefs still threw away their sushi rice before they served you your meal. We’d be missing out on so many different types of delicious sushi – nigiri, temaki, gunkan, and all those delicious rolls we Westerners love. How sad would that be? Good thing someone figured out how to prevent this tragedy from happening.

As a designer, your job is to navigate uncharted territory, making use of things that others miss or overlook. Have a bunch of throw-away supplies, research, or junk mail staring you in the face? Look at it again with new eyes and see if you can’t create a ‘sushi rice’ moment of your own.

4. Details, Details

Because they work with raw fish, which can contain harmful microorganisms, professional sushi chefs are specially trained to pay attention to certain characteristics of the fish that most commercial inspectors don’t bother with. Things like the smell of the fish, its color, firmness, and sterility are examined much more closely to ensure a safe dining experience for their patrons.

Designers can learn a lot from this ultra-specific attention to detail. As you are a decision maker, expected to come up with solutions to your clients’ problems before they even realize the problems are there, you need to learn how to think like a sushi chef and closely examine your designs for tiny flaws that others might not see.

Be relentless; weed out whatever doesn’t belong and don’t be satisfied until you’re sure you can present your clients with the absolute highest quality designs you can possibly create. This does two things: one, it puts more awesome design in the world (and who doesn’t need more of that?), and two, it signals to your client that you are different from all the other average designers out there who just turn in work that’s ‘good enough.’

5. It’s All About the Presentation

The reasons for inspecting sushi and sashimi ingredients aren’t all dire and health-related. Fish used for sushi and sashimi is also inspected for its visual appeal. Only the most attractive and flavorful cuts of fish are used, and great care is taken to make sure the beauty of the fish is retained once it arrives on your plate.

More creative chefs have signature styles of presenting their sushi – things that make their dishes unique to them and which inspire a mythology among their customers. Does that remind you of anything? Sushi is definitely a designed product, from inspection to presentation.

In fact, I can’t think of another traditional food that incorporates more conscious design into every aspect of its creation than sushi. Everything from the way sushi chefs select their ingredients, to the way they proudly tell you about them at the restaurant is a carefully orchestrated production – almost a performance.

You can definitely harness this process for yourself in your design work, and create a similar production experience for your clients and your users. When you develop your own unique production style, clients and users will take notice, and your work will take on a life of its own in the stories people will tell each other about it.

You want those stories – that mythology – to take root. It’s the single most important part of your reputation as a designer. What people say about your designs, and how they say it, is vital to getting the best clients. Plus, you can actually influence people’s opinion of your work based on they mythology surrounding it.

People are more likely to respond positively to design that has a good mythology, than to design that has little to no mythology.

6. Juxtaposition: the ‘Secret Sauce’

In the West, we don’t really pair unremarkable cereal staples with other, much more flavorful dishes. Except for pasta, which, of course, comes from Asia and is traditionally made from…rice. Go figure. But in Asia, chefs and cooks do this all the time. Rice is used as a palate cleanser and a kind of ‘shock absorber’ for the spicy and flavorful foods it normally accompanies.

Sushi is no exception. I suspect the reason Japanese cooks began including rice in their sushi dishes was that they wanted to experiment with different types of flavors for the fish – flavors that would be a bit too strong if consumed by themselves, without the rice as a ‘buffer.’

When you employ this practice in your designs, you are having the same effect on people’s eyes and brains that sushi has on their palates. Simplicity paired with tiny moments of intense detail or “flavor” is a philosophy you can use to create designs that are intriguing and unexpected.

How else can you draw design inspiration from sushi? Could you really, really go for a Hawaiian roll right about now? I know I could…

The post Leveraging the Power of Sushi to Improve Your Designs appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.