“Design isn’t crafting a beautiful textured button with breathtaking animation. It’s figuring out if there’s a way to get rid of the button altogether.”
“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”
“Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.”
Red Flags: When To Not Hire A Designer
Design shapes perception and perception is not only reality but the foundation of your brand. Making the decision to invest in professional design for your business is making a decision to put your best foot forward, actively shape perception, and show up in the world as professional, authoritative, credible, valuable, and trustworthy.
While investing in professional design is a no-brainer for savvy businesses who want to accelerate their success and increase sales, making the decision to hire a professional designer can be wrought with stress, worry, and frustration if you don’t know what to ask when interviewing a designer or what to watch out for when signing a contract.
Bourn Creative celebrated its 12 year anniversary this past summer, and for 12 years straight, I have heard horror story after horror story from business owners who signed contracts without understanding the terms, didn’t receive the files they should have, ran into problems and delays, and encountered challenges that caused them to walk away with nothing or a design they didn’t like.
Each and every time I hear these stories, it breaks my heart a little bit because these situations can be avoided with a little due diligence up front.
Listed below are eight red flags to watch out for when hiring a designer. If you encounter any of these situations, say no thanks and move on.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
“Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer… But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable… They are people willing to take social risks — to do things that others might disapprove of.”
“Good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the times. They should–and must–question everything generally thought to be obvious. They must have an intuition for people’s changing attitudes. For the reality in which they live, for their dreams, their desires, their worries, their needs, their living habits. They must also be able to assess realistically the opportunities and bounds of technology.”
The Shoemaker’s Kids Finally Have Shoes: Portfolio Update
The last time I wrote about the struggle designers and developers face with their portfolios, I wrote about the notion that the shoemaker’s kids never have shoes — and like the shoemaker, client projects always come first, and our own work often gets pushed off.
When we launched the current rebrand and redesign of Bourn Creative in October 2014, we had every intention of continuing to work on our portfolio, writing longer, case study style project descriptions, creating better imagery, and keeping it more current. But in October 2015, we realized that even though we had worked on some awesome projects with some of our favorite clients to date, it had now been a year and not a single new project was added to our portfolio.
Around the same time, we were neck deep in the fall rush of client projects and trying to squeeze in development time for my new personal blog. It was too much to fit into a sane work schedule, so Brian stopped development on my personal site and made a deal: Overhaul our old portfolio, add the new projects we want to feature, and write case studies for each one. When the portfolio was complete, he’d finish my site and give me access.
I was on a mission but it was slow going. Client work again came first, Soccer ate up our Saturdays, we co-hosted the inaugural WordCamp Sacramento (and I was in charge of all design, marketing, and communications), and we took family vacations at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Needless to say, it took longer than I had hoped, but today I finished.
I’m done done with the update of our portfolio and I’d love to share some of our favorite projects from 2015 with you. And, if you’re interested in reading the case studies and project descriptions for the projects, please check out our portfolio — I’m pretty proud of it!
“Creativity is to discover a question that has never been asked. If one brings up an idiosyncratic question, the answer he gives will necessarily be unique as well.”
"The best designers are deep thinkers who grasp the essence of an idea or concept, shape and translate it, and then communicate it to others with a visual power and verbal grace that others can only envy."
Sometimes Creativity Doesn’t Come Naturally
My last few articles for WP Elevation have covered contracts, follow up, and new client on boarding. My latest article is a bit of a departure from the normal business advice and tips for designers, developers, and consultants working in the WordPress space — it’s all about creativity, or rather the lack thereof.
Creative People Aren’t Always Creative
I follow a lot of designers and developers on the web; they tweet some amazing links and share great resources and quick doses of inspiration through their work and the work of others.
It’s easy to see all of the great work others are doing and sometimes get frustrated — especially when you’re stuck, when you’ve hit a creative roadblock, or when you feel uninspired. I know because I’ve been there on more than one occasion.
Sometimes Creativity Doesn’t Come Naturally. Even the most creative of us have days where the flow doesn’t quite flow, the groove can’t quite find its rhythm, and frustration comes as a white screen or blank sheet of sketch paper sits mockingly in front of us.
“Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.”
“Design is a means toward accomplishing the end goals of serving markets and generating profits. Furthermore, design is an element in social responsibility. Good design allows ‘form to complement performance.’ The way things look is not irrelevant to the way things work: how they work is how they should look.”
A Quick Peek At At Some Recent WordPress Design And Development Projects
I’m sure at some point you’ve heard the phrase, the shoemaker’s kids have no shoes. You may have even used it yourself. The silly phrase is often thrown around in jest, but never is it so prevalent as in the web design and web development worlds.
Designers and developers are the worst culprits of doing amazing work for clients, but never making time to do amazing work for themselves — and we’re often no different.
At Bourn Creative, we always operate with a full client roster, and that means client work and pending client deadlines always come first. Sometimes we go months, and even a few times, over a year between portfolio updates and refinements or revisions to our own website. But, this past week, we did make some time to update some things!
Below are just a few projects we have worked on recently:
"I go to work every morning with the possibility that I might learn something I don’t already know… You should look at every problem and think, 'what can I learn by doing this?' And if you think you can learn nothing, forget about doing it."
WordCamp San Francisco 2014: Champion Purpose Driven Design in Client Work
WordCamp San Francisco — the event, the talks, the people, the fun — was amazing.
I was honored to be selected as a speaker for the flagship WordCamp event and to give a talk alongside some of the most talented people I know and new people I was lucky to meet.
This year, WordCamp San Francisco did something a little different. Instead of each session featuring one speaker, giving a longer talk, they peppered in lightning talk sessions throughout the event, each featuring short 5 minute talks by three different speakers. I spoke in the design and business lightning talk session with Taylor Aldridge and Tracy Levesque.
My five minutes were dedicated to designers and encouraging designers to champion their design and be the expert they are hired to be.
In a world where web design can quickly turn to web decoration, designers are problem solvers who must not only lead clients through the creative process, but protect the integrity of the solutions they deliver. With an abundance of options readily available, it is imperative that designers step up and become the voices of, and champions for purpose driven design, where each element has a specific purpose and only the elements needed to compel action are included. No more, no less.
WordPress Website Design and Development Project Features
We love design — web design, graphic design, logo design, print design, digital design — all types of design, and I know it’s in part because we get to work with some pretty awesome clients on some pretty fun projects.
While I do publish new content to the Bourn Creative blog regularly, sharing tips, tools, insights, tactics, and more, I tend to keep the content focused on education and learning. That means that I haven’t shared any of our projects with you lately!
So, today it’s time for some shameless self promotion and a peek at some of the projects we’ve enjoyed working on!
"Good design, at least part of the time, includes the criterion of being direct in relation to the problem at hand – not obscure, trendy, or stylish. A new language, visual or verbal, must be couched in a language that is already understood."
"I would show my my jobs to my mother, and she would always say the same thing: 'That's nice dear.' And then she would say, 'Did you write it?' or 'Did you do the drawing?' or 'Did you take the pictures?'
I'd always answer no, then I realized the problem. My answer was then, 'I made this happen. It's called design'."
"Design is the search for a magical balance between business and art; art and craft; intuition and reason; concept and detail; playfulness and formality; client and designer; designer and printer; and printer and public."
"You cannot view design as something you do at the end of the process to ‘tidy up’ the mess. You must understand it’s a ‘day one’ issue and part of everything."
"People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It's not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts.
Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn't know it was missing."
"A healthy creative process should be able to give a coherent rationale to a client as to why you designed what you designed."
7 Ways To Alienate Your Designer & Go From Client to Contract
In a perfect world, working with your designer would be a perfect partnership of creativity, communication, and collaboration — at least that is what designers strive for. But that’s not always the case…
A designer begins every project excited about what they will create and about bringing the client’s vision to life — they wouldn’t have accepted the project is they weren’t. They are excited about solving problems, helping their clients succeed, and building a new relationship or strengthening an existing one. They value their client and look forward to becoming their long term creative partner.
Designers have so much pride in their work and so much invested in their clients’ success, that they will often bend over backward, throw in extra work, and go above and beyond your contract just to make sure the final result is as good as it can possibly be. Mainly because the success of your project puts their reputation on the line.
But occasionally, a switch gets flipped, and the dynamics of the relationship change. Something happens, or several things happen, that cause a designer to shift the way they view a client and a project.
It’s the critical point where a client stops being a client and starts being a contract that needs to be fulfilled — where a designer throws their hands in the air and gives up trying to make it totally awesome, and instead just wants it to be good and done.