March 31, 2004 | View Comments (12) | Category: Design
Summary: Remembering my creative identity after it was lost.
Yesterday was one of those busy days where I do a lot of stuff, but nothing gets accomplished. It was more of an experiment type day. I was strolling through the Vault and admiring the great works. I have been working on three new redesigns and wanted to "go beyond" my creative limits so to speak.
While looking at the sites in the Vault I had about 20 tabs open in FireFox and studied each of them to find what I liked. For some reason I had this wild idea that if I studied them long enough I would find what I liked in each of them and miraculously combine those traits into my new redesigns. I played with graphics and colors. I mixed and matched everything. I was never satisfied.
Over the past three days I came up with some "cool" designs, but none of them ever felt right to me. On a whim I visited a long time friend that I have neglected for many months, the 37signals Manifesto.
This was the first site that helped me gain an appreciation for minimal design in a website. It was the first that helped me understand the importance of great copy. Since I saw the site I studied minimalistic design. I tried to understand what was really important when it came to designing web pages and I began to adapt my beliefs into my designs.
When I worked for a certain company, my manager always wanted the sites that had more "fluff" to them as she would say. She wanted moving objects and brighter colors and this was only for a job board that I was designing. I tried to give her what she wanted because she paid the bills. I explained to her what was important to a website and she would always retort, "I am the client." I struggled trying to please her till she finally got tired and said that the design was fine, but I knew she always wanted more. I could not give her what she wanted.
I am a minimalist designer who uses few graphics. The graphics I do use have a purpose for being there. I like clean lines and whitespace. I like creating sites that are easy to read. I like to create content that can speak for itself and a design that helps the content speak even more clearly. For the last couple of days I forgot that is the designer I am.
I visited some other sites that I did in the past six months and I loved them. They were so simple yet so beautiful to me. I discovered I was acting like my former boss. I wanted more fluff when I am not a fluff designer. I was trying to mimic others and forgot that over time I have come to develop my own style.
Sure I have inherited some of the styles of designers that I admire, but in the end I have molded them into my own style. Instead of trying to force newer things upon myself, I found myself wanting to improve what I was already good at. I wanted to improve my identity, not change it.
Your creative identity is what makes you. At the beginning of your design years you may find that everything you do never pleases you. Experiment. Try new things and one day, a style will stick with you and you will run with it. When you find yourself attempting to come up with a new style ask yourself what is wrong with the one you currently have?
I had to start all three of my redesigns all over today, but I am not mad about it. I feel more at ease as to the direction I am heading with them. My creative identity is set for at least another 3 months until I have to come back and read this entry again. Until then I will continue to grow.
I leave with this question: How did you find your creative identity and where was it influenced?
Also, today is the deadline for Version 2 March Edition.
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It definitely stems from a person's personality. At least part of one's personality. I can be extremely loud at times, but my designs never suggest this. I dress in loud colors, but my designs never suggest this.
However, I do love cleanliness and purity which is where my designs come from.
Understated elegance: I love that.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
man, i'm going through the exact same thing right now. i just had about 60 tabs open in firefox (an entire folder of creative sites i like). i'm trying to make a site for a job staffing firm catering to creatives. the client, and my boss, both think we need a heavly themed site. for example he just threw out the idea of using dogs (pitbull represents the employer, poodle represents the artist or something like that). the site would use icons such as dog bones, pans etc for links. my head is about to pop. i'm convinced this is totally not what is needed. what is needed is a well designed site with a non-corporate feel that the users can use to quickly find a job. they shouldn't have to decipher silly icons and wade through a overly creative site to find information. they're selling information. not the company itself (the way i see it). i've been frustrated as hell the last few days because i'm being led in every which direction but where i think the design should go. i'm not really a fluff designer either, although i can do it if i have to, but like you said i've began to appreciate the simpler and less confusing sites recently. and i'm sure an unemployed designer trying to find a job would appreciate the information they're looking for delivered to them quickly and easily.
just say no to fluff.
Brian (http://www.litzdesigns.com)
Brian -
Do you think your client might be looking for something like Flipdog?
They've recently redesigned, so you might want to to a Wayback search, but they were doing the whole dog thing w/bones and all not too long ago.
Remember it's not the girl, but the idea of the girl.
Just a thought.
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
"idea of using dogs"
Did you lift your leg to his notes when he started outlining that? heh.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I generally start with one site that I like, then mash it to fit the content, then spend most of my time de-cluttering, re-organising, re-styling until it's very much my own design, even if traces of the original inspiration remain.
My style is minimalistic - but I gained an appreciation of that 'style' through my professional work where the minimalist approach hit home several years ago. It fits nicely with my love of Danish and Japanese architecture and design - smooth, simple, clean and spaced.
Every time I try and do a site that needs more graphics I always end up reducing the clutter. Force of habit.
So, I guess my creative identity comes from many places, a lot of them are NOT web based. Odd, never really thought about that before. Thanks.
Gordon (http://www.snowgoon.co.uk)
I've found that my creative identity seems to change as my influences change. When I was in college David Carson was all the rage and I was influenced very much by his "deconstruction" design and type treatments.
Then I wen through a "big type" phase where all the fonts had to be huge and the center of attention, the graphics came second.
Then there's been "small" design, where the type and graphics take up very little room, kind of minimalist.
Right now, I just want to do "clean" design. I want everything to look slick, nice and professional. Who knows, in a few months I might want to break away from that.
It all comes from what music I'm listenting to, from the websites that I frequent, the books i'm reading and the movies I'm watching. Everything bleeds into my subconcious and ideas seem to come together and from out of nowhere. I guess I would say it comes from everything.
Todd (http://www.monkeyhouselounge.com/loungeact/)
I think my creative identity always been there, but the more sites I look at the more I realize about my self and the more I'm able to recognize my identity.
Almost instantly I can make a determination of whether or not I will like the site. And if I don't like it, that doesn't mean its not a good site, it just means its not "my style".
Everyone has different styles and that's what makes the web a great place.
But I do understand where frustration comes in. It comes in when you are required to do something that goes against your style.
As designers we need to find that balance where we can meet or exceed the expectations of the project, but still feel like we "did it our way". There's a delicate balance.
My gripe is that alot of people think the more "fluff" you have, the more creative you are. I think it actually takes more creativity and skill to create clean, crisp, minimalist web sites that are user-centric.
Just my opinion.
cm (http://telerana.f2o.org)
Be carefull not to pigeonhole yourself as a minimalist designer. Design is about providing a mechanism that delivers the intended message in a clear and concise manner. It is not about creating solutions that you personally prefer. Sometimes it will be necessary to use lots of "fluff" to do this sometimes not.
If SONY contacted you to build a highly graphical website for a new high profile computer game aimed at children would you turn down the job?
Scott (http://www.unidentified-frequency.net)
I think my leanings toward minimalist design stem from my tech writing background.
I always tried to convey the correct meaning about a topic with the least amount of writing as possible.
And as designing Web Apps goes, minimalism is always good.
My answer to Scott's question is that I wouldn't turn down the Sony job because they would pay me heaping great wodges of cash. And I would like that. But through the project, I would still push user performance over preference with a task. At least I might be able to scale back the desired amount of animation.:)
I wouldn't call myself a minimalist designer per se, but I would say I am a Japanese Tea Ceremony-style designer; purposeful, elegant, respectful, balanced, harmonic.
Matthew Oliphant (http://usabilityworks.typepad.com)
My creative style is heavily influenced by art deco -- I can do modern and minimalistic, but I admit that when left to myself, everything starts looking retro-futuristic, with 2-3-7 length sequences and triplets of things everywhere :-) (My kingdom for a good brushed-metal texture!)
When I'm designing for clients, I tend to go with what I call "modernist" (which makes no sense in the context of such a young industry). It's basically simple and solid, with an emphasis on good use of colours, readability and easy navigation. I don't skimp on graphics, though -- sometimes I involve really big, slow centrepiece images. They're not essential to use the site, but they really improve first impressions.
As I said before the last time I posted here, design isn't one thing. Minimalist is what works sometimes, but sometimes a rich and graphical site is what is called for -- and that means you may not be the right person to develop the site. That's not a problem, or a fault -- just a fact. You wouldn't hire Mondrian to paint the Sistine Chapel.
Laurie (http://www.seldo.com/weblog/)
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#1
Creative identity, I believe, flows from one's personality. I too lean toward a minimalist approach, but I like a little fluff tossed in. Someone coined the phrase "understated elegance" to define my design ideal - I think that sums it up pretty well.
Regarding the client, I think that most clients tell designers that because they have seen a site where flash or some other gimmick worked well as one aspect within the overall user-experience. I don’t believe it’s really always the specific element they are looking for, but rather the total experience that they are trying to attain.
For example -
In high school, I (and most every other boys) had a crush on this particular girl. She was massively cute, popular and smart - she had it working on all levels. We all "loved" her and pictured ourselves being with her forever even though none of us really knew her personally.
In actuality, we loved the idea of the girl, she fit within the scope of our all / or part of our desire for a mate. We didn't actually love her specifically.
You could also look at it as being similar to referred pain. My knees hurt because I have a pinched nerve in my neck…or something.
The key, is learning to really listen to what the client is telling you, and developing a smart interviewing technique designed to get to the real meat of the matter.
Mark Fusco (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)