What Makes a Good Design?

Having a stacked portfolio is on everyone’s wish list. Even those of you who already have a nicely populated portfolio will always want to keep expanding it. This is true for many reasons… The most logical reason is to attract bigger and better clients. The other reason is because it’s simply more enjoyable to work on portfolio worthy work. Besides these two reasons, there’s one more which I’m sure many are guilty of… Having a stacked portfolio is the equivalent of social and virtual pride within the industry.

With so many social networking tools available, it seems pretty transparent that a good percentage of these users are in it for one reason; self promotion, which equals personal pride (not that there’s anything wrong with that). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. Though many people are filling the internet with noise and aimless promotion, there’s just as many people using it for it’s intended purpose; spreading useful information and inspiring work. Honestly though, who really cares about design? Other designers, that’s who. It doesn’t matter how cool any of your designs are, your parents will probably never appreciate it to the extent that another designer would. It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally come to terms with this. I think it helps offset the design community and places it within special niche.

So what does in-fact make design good? To be blunt (and very broad), I think it completely depends on who you ask. To continue in the vein of industry pride, I’m specifically directing this question towards other designers (since, after all, they are the only ones who really care to have an opinion). As I’ve mentioned before, there are many roles within the design industry. Each person within these different roles will have an opinion on what good design really is. I’m going to specifically single out three of them: Production artists, web developers & motion designers. You can be sure that if you privately ask each one of these specific types of designers their opinion on a design, you will get three different answers.

Production Artists

My background is in print, and beyond general aesthetics I knew that in order to keep my production artist happy, I had to create a design that would fit within the following criteria: Plenty of room for bleeds, clear contrast between content and design, type that would be legible and would not fall victim to overprint, vector qualities whenever possible, sufficient resolution for all raster images and proper color management. Anything short of these standards would fall in the category of bad design. It was never really a matter of what the final product looked like, but rather, how the final product would reproduce across multiple printing formats and mediums. An old coworker of mine (who just so happened to be a production artist) always used to say “what’s the point of creating a great piece of art if it can’t be reproduced.” Certainly a good point, but anyone who knows they’re way around the adobe creative suite can throw together a design that consists of the laundry list mentioned above. In the beginning of my career I used to think that all printers (not the people, but the machines) were lacking in quality because they couldn’t conform to the needs of any and all designs. Now, it’s clear to me that a good designer will know the capabilities of the printing format he/she will be working with and will design around it’s prerequisites. Not only will this ensure that the image on your screen will look like the final printed piece, but it will also create a much more organized file while keeping the size to a minimum.

Web Developers

Web Developers are a vast array of characters. Some lean more towards the programing side and aren’t so concerned with any design aesthetic, while others focus more on the front end cosmetics and look for a healthy balance of visual appearance as well as functionality. Either way, it’s safe to say that these guys are all about information architecture (IA), arguably one of the most important attributes in web design. Information architecture will help in conveying the most important information in the quickest, most intuitive and obvious way possible.

Another notable characteristic of design through the eyes of a web designer is load time. Knowing your way around different development capabilities will help dictate your design as well as the elements and format you use to design them. Fortunately (for developers) the minimalist approach of design is currently a hot trend which just so happens to be conducive to a fast load time. However, it is still very common to see web designs that are filled with large graphics, complicated blends and unresolved textures & patterns. More often than not, these design will be a headache to any developer and will require limited functionality in order to compensate for the overall file size. The result of compensating functionality for design will cause the user experience of the site to be sluggish, awkward and unorganized.

It’s like the expression: “putting the cart before the horse”. In order to succeed in web design, you must take many standards into consideration before you jump into design. Think about the organization and hierarchy of content as well as the desired purpose and functions of the site first. This will be much more impressive and tolerable to a web developer. If these two key attributes are lacking, don’t count on winning the favor of any developers. Function over form is certainly the way to their hearts.

Motion Designers

In my experience (as this whole article/blog pertains), I’ve found that motion designers (specifically related to the web) are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum to production artists and web developers. These guys seem to thrive on conceptual design and overall visual appearance. This mentality is a bit easier for a guy like me to swallow, simply because great concepts and awesome visuals are what really get me out of bed in the morning. This is something I consistently have to check at the door in order to make sure my designs are serving a purpose, rather than just looking cool. However, there’s no denying my fascination with great design that moves. It’s not until I don’t really know what I’m doing or looking at that I start to see the negative side of motion graphics.

I once heard the term ‘flashturbation’ used at a web design conference. Besides it’s tongue-in-cheek play on words, it basically refers to the excessive use of flash (motion) for no particular reason. I’m seeing this trend more and more in web design as though it seems like the only goal of motion is to out due every other flash based site. With that said, the most significant trend I’ve found while working with motion designers is that they flock to conceptual, excessive and trendy designs. Take, for instance, the exclusively popular flash gallery ‘The FWA: Favourite Website Awards’; The majority of sites that are featured here are stunningly conceptual and exceptionally appealing to the eye. However, they lack a general sense of organization as well as information architecture. A lot of these sites I view as novelty sites… They’re purpose is not to be informative or educational, but visually appealing and glamorous. Their goal is to provoke  interest. That is why designing with hot trends and a conceptual backbone will largely appeal to a motion designer.

You can’t please em’ all…

My intention here was not to point out the predictable nature of production artists, web developers and motion designers, but rather make it clear that the appreciation of any design will have a different out come depending on who is looking at it. There’s a reason why their standards of good design may differ from yours; They’re experts in their specific area, and they know what it takes for a design to succeed within their area.

In no way did I intend to pin point any certain designer and say that their opinion is solely black and white. In that respect, I would love to hear the opinions of other designers. Especially those of who this article pertains. I’m positive that I’ve probably missed the boat on many of these (for lack of a better word) ‘stereotypes’, so please feel free to speak your mind. Regardless, the one absolute truth that I’ve found is that it’s impossible to please everyone. However, keeping in mind the needs of your intended audience (whether it’s a designer, a client or an everyday joe) will surely help create a more successful product.