Sophie Dennis
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“Privacy and solitude improve creativity and productivity. I love working alone. Some of my most inspired moments come from ruminating, researching, experimenting and working alone.” — Andrew Mottaz, ‘Collaborative Prototyping, Groupthink and Design by Committee’0 Comments -
Simple is not a design treatment
Simple is hard. Simple requires deep investigation, a thorough understanding of every aspect of a project, in line with the needs and expectations of the audience.
Simon Collinson, ‘Taming Complexity’, 24ways 20112 Comments -
Is Google's clean-and-simple aesthetic dull, or classic? Mashable can't decide. I’m confused. The new Google Reader is “super stark, open and clean, but is it too dull?” yet the “Clean and Simple Homepage” - which could hardly be more dull - is “still a classic”. Make up your mind Mashable.
Much of this can be ascribed to users’ well documented hatred of change. As Jakob Nielsen wrote in 2009 “Users hate change [but] in the long run, incrementalism eventually destroys cohesiveness”.
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Mike Reed, on judging D&AD 2011 ‘I wish I’d written this one.’ That’s what you listen for, of course: the ultimate creative’s compliment. That potent mixture of delight and envy – and the undercurrent of anxiety that, presented with the same brief, one wouldn’t have come up with anything like as powerful a solution. (Or perhaps that’s just me.)
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Designers fail 95% of the time
All designers fail 95% of the time. This is true for all creative work. And it is unusual in the professional world. The process by which we create is failure centric.
We were talking just last night about design critique and feedback, and how easily it becomes a fraught experience for both parties. If can be just as difficult for the client to talk about what they don’t like, as it is for the designer to hear it.
If both parties accept that, 95% of the time, any design isn’t going to be “right” yet, and treat that as a perfectly normal and natural state of things, those conversations become a lot easier. Because just cos it isn’t right yet, doesn’t mean it won’t be right when we’re finished. The design process is all about spotting what isn’t right and working out how to fix it; refining, improving, polishing and adjusting until it’s all just so.
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