Tired. That about sums up how I feel. The many hours I’ve spent in the wee of the morning before work. The weekends spent doing nothing but crafting this puppy, taming the beast we call WordPress.

I’m finally happy enough to launch it. So here it is. Of course I’ll be polishing the site some more over the coming months, but I’m itching to move on to other projects that have been kept waiting.

My previous design

Why a new site?

I had just finished my previous design, and was very proud of it. I showed it to my brother who just threw up all over it. At first I was just going to ignore his comments, but then I really thought deeply about what he’d said, sifted through his comments, and extrapolated what he really meant when he said certain things.

It made me realize that I had gone about the entire design process for that site completely wrong. I needed to seriously rethink my methodology. So I pondered and looked to where I could make improvements.

Goals

I thought about what the purpose of the site was and what I was trying to accomplish. Once I set my goals, I realized my current design wasn’t achieving them, primarily because I hadn’t thought very hard about what the site should do. I had just sat down and started running. I think I still came up with something pretty, but pretty isn’t always meaningful. I want design that is meaningful. That will make an impact. That will achieve results.

I don’t like it when people tell me that I’m here to “paint pretty pictures”. I solve problems. I solve business needs. I bring results. It often happens to be pretty. But pretty isn’t the goal. Effective is.

A time to think

I appreciate these times because I get to reflect on my design process and really think about what is working and what isn’t. I looked around the web. I thought hard. I tried to see what other designers were doing, and meditated some.

So I came up with a new process. It seemed to me that the designers I really respect seem to spend a lot more time thinking about their Design before they start and along the way. They can explain why made their choices. So I tried the same thing. I thought. It thought a lot more at each step of the way. I tried to have good design rationale for everything I did. Some things of course, I just did because I wanted to, but that’s part of the fun of it. I think it worked better for me. You be the judge.

In the next few weeks I’ll be talking about my new design process. I’ll be taking a look under the hood of thise and talk about what went into building it. Starting at custom built RSS feeds, Image Replacement, Grid based design and CSS etc.

Until then…

I recently completed my typography course here at school as I am working on B.S. in Information Systems. The most valuable thing I can remember from my course is the idea of having a concept. Having a concept before you start sketching, before you think the layout, or the colors, or the fonts.

Why a concept?

A concept gives a designer a vision to work with. A theme to follow. A goal to aim towards. It is the subconscious end that will(should) guide all of your decisions. If your concept is “A rainy day”, you will font that expresses that. You might choose blue as your main color. You might choose a layout or certain effects that make you think of sadness and rain. Suddenly you find yourself having ideas based on this concept, and you have a definite direction to go towards. If you have new ideas, you can always compare them to the concept, and see if it fits.

Your concept will guide and inspire the sketching process. You won’t choose blue because you like blue, or a 1 column layout because you like it, but because it fits with your concept. Suddenly, you have a completed piece, with it’s fitting parts that make up that piece. Not just different parts that are trying to fit like puzzle pieces that don’t belong together. The difference is immediately apparent and powerful.

How do you get a concept?

If happen to be designing a page about an artist, you need need to research that artist. Write down words that come to mind. Words like powerful, dressing, provocative, words that are descriptive. I have found time and again, that I will write these words down, until the words cause images to flash in my head. Images of possible designs. I then sketch these images on paper, and explore those options if I like them. If I don’t I keep going on with my concept.

Once I have my concept, I should try to stick with it as much as I can. The finished piece will be better if I do, because each part will have a sense of belonging. It will feel like it is adding to the piece by being there. Not just there as decoration, or as a crutch, but because it helps express the overall theme or emotion of the piece.