Respect and consideration

Our role as a designer is to use our creativity for a purpose, to transform experiences into one of function and beauty. We think and strategize about how people use our products and interact with experiences on the web. We make things beautiful and engaging while enabling users to focus on the task at hand. For our designs to function well and serve the needs of a business/person/user, it helps to understand the technology that underlie it.

Understanding the intricacies of the web, how it runs and how things are built allow us to understand what is and isn't possible and how to design the best experience given what we have. Designers and developers collaborate more now than ever before for this reason. We work together so we can rely on each other's expertise to inform our work and to better it.

There's a question as to whether a designer should learn how to code. I think it's not merely a matter of learning to code in order to code our designs but to understand the underlying technology that allows our designs to function. An ideal project may be one that begins from scratch, with a code base that is built based on the initial designs and iterated upon. But for designs that are revisited or complex products that evolve, it's not always possible to rewrite the code base. In product development, you build on the code that's already there and sometimes interactions are not possible without having to dedicate many resources (time, development and money) to overhaul it.

It can be a frustrating situation for both a designer and developer to be in. We want to design a certain experience but the back-end may need to be rewritten to do it and there's not enough time or budget to do it in. A designer who understands the underlying technology can appreciate the complexity that the developers are dealing with. That doesn't mean that the designs are impossible. It simply means that we need to weigh the design and development efforts for the project, consider alternatives, imagine scenarios - in short, have a dialogue and plan.

As a designer with a strong technology and development background, I'm able to have in-depth discussions with my developers on implementation issues. I trust in their expertise but I am able to understand their decisions and question them. I'm also able to question my design decisions and whether it's worth a code overhaul, for example. I can empathize with their experience building a design and ensure that I give them all the assets they need to implement my designs in a way that's easiest for them - that means slicing images and naming them properly, providing font files, labelling my psd files properly, providing ready made css styles, etc. 

This empathy shouldn't be one-sided either. Developers may not need to learn how to design or understand typography or grid systems to the point that designers do, but it's important that they respect the principles of design and rely on designers to make informed decisions that solve the needs of the project. It's extremely easy to pick on a design, but instead of criticizing it, critique it. Take some time to understand the design decisions and how the designer has come to it. Again, have a dialogue. There was considerable time and effort put into our designs and trust me, we've thought of the alternatives and came to our decisions thoughtfully. We're all approaching the same problem and trying to solve it. If there's some really important technical issues that our designs might introduce, then let's hear it out and work through them together. And when it comes to implementing the designs, respect the details - the typography, the spacing, the grid system. Think of them as your curly brackets, your comments, your file structure. We are as particular about them as you are with your code.

At the end of the day, it's about mutual respect and dialogue. I've worked within a team where we have mutual respect for each others craft and can battle it out on design and implementation details. And the result is always a better, more cohesive product.

Everyone on the team should be respectful of each other and their work. Be considerate of each other. That means sales people who understand the advantages and limitations of the product or service that the team builds or provides. That means managers who respects everyone's time and ability and schedules enough time to execute the work to the best of their abilities. It's not always easy especially if money trumps everything else. But the best work environments are the one's that respect the project, the client, the different roles on the team and provide resources for everyone to work to the best of their abilities. There's nothing worse than being disrespected for your time, effort, ability and/or talents.

Done

In art school I learned what I still consider to be a very valuable lesson: know when to stop. I can be an indecisive person and it was extremely difficult for me to stop finicking with my drawings. I learned by practice that sometimes the more I mess with something, the worse it becomes. Every stroke of my charcoal was permanent and I either liked it or I didn't. And if I didn't, I had to keep working it until I liked it again. This allowed for some serendipity but it can also be frustrating. As I continued to do more work I learned to make informed and conscious decisions as I developed a piece. It was a hard process for me at first. I can be a bit of a control freak (maybe more than I'd like to admit) and the thought of making permanent marks without knowing if I would be happy with the result scared the shit out of me. One of my art professors told me in first year, "Don't be afraid to make that mark, don't hesitate. Have conviction in your strokes". It was valuable advice and one that I still try to practice. Art school taught me to not be afraid to put pencil (or charcoal) to paper, that things are never perfect at first and you keep working at it until your gut tells you it's done.

So experience taught me when to stop. The more drawings I did the more I trusted my gut in knowing that was the last stroke, any more and it would be ruined for me. I knew when I was happy with a piece and that if I kept working on it I wouldn't be any happier, in fact I might just be miserable. It's that intuition and awareness that I still take with me in my life and in my work.

Then I started designing for the web.

The web changes, it's constantly evolving and design for the web can change and most probably will change at some point in time. That's true of anything in technology really. It's very different from working with your hands on something tangible like a drawing or a painting. On the web, what's done is done - for now.

For some of us, it's why we like the web. The web itself is changing and a website can change as you or your company evolves. It's exciting but also a bit uncomfortable. I like the freedom of changing things, improving things, but like I said I can be indecisive. And the web enables the indecisive part of me. I think that experience, age and wisdom should make you more decisive and give you more conviction and confidence in yourself and your decisions. So I don't like to humor my indecision. I respect decisiveness because it is so difficult for me. But the web gives me the freedom to change. I can change my mind every year or two. Heck I can redesign my website every month if I wanted to. Of course, it's easy to do this when it's your own personal project. Working on client work is different. You have a set amount of time to finish something and you do your best work in the time you're given and that's that. Sometimes the best indication of done is when your time is up. That I find comforting. So I try to keep my indecision in check and I think that's part of being a designer. You have difficult decisions to make and you have to outweigh the different paths to take and make the most informed decisions with the time you're given and that's it.

Don't get me wrong, I like designing for the web and I've learned to adapt myself to the flow of the web. We're all learning to embrace the changing nature of the web. We've moved beyond the strict guidelines in print design that made it's way to the web. Responsive design reminds us that the web is dynamic and fluid. Agile development tells us to release now and change often. Apps are updated all the time. The websites you've come to love: the facebooks, the twitters, are constantly being redesigned and re-imagined. New apps crop up that make the previous ones from six months ago feel dated. Apps constantly need updating. Devices are updated every year or so. We learn from our audience and we change things. But change can be good or it can be bad. We need to change for the better and that takes a lot of discipline. We need to ask ourselves, will this redesign help our audience and our business? And what helps our business may not help our audience, and vice versa.

As a professional in this field, I'm excited by this evolution. I find it empowering and challenging. As a creative person I find it both freeing and restricting. As a consumer and as a person, I'm exhausted by all this change.

Sometimes I just want something to be done, finished, in all it's shiny glory as a remnant of that particular point in time, never to be touched again.

Sometimes it would be nice to create something and be done.

Passion, Creativity, Fear and Burnout

Burnout happens to the best of us. No matter how many people warn you about it, you still experience it. When I started freelancing, I was quick to hit that burnout. I would have a lot of work and then work and work and work then reach a wall where I was so exhausted and felt the passion drain out of me. Then what would ultimately follow is days spent not wanting to do a thing and trying to calm my mind and cleanse my brain. It's hard to quiet the noise. But somehow I always found my way back. Many creatives say the key is time management and being able to say no. I'm still learning on both fronts. It's been helpful to return to a full-time work schedule because it forces me to get up at the same time every day (going to sleep at the same time and much earlier than I'm used to has been a challenge). But I still work with my freelance clients and love that work too so I don't want to give that up. On top of that I've found a tech and design community here in Toronto that I love to be involved in. So that's on my list too. It's difficult to say no to any one of these so for now I'm not going to. Instead I'm trying to work on my time management.

When I was freelancing it was my time management that screwed me but I would focus on one project at a time. But now, even though my time management is a bit better, it's just the shear volume of ideas and projects and interests. And I feel like I will get burned out soon if I don't check myself. It's almost as if I can feel it chasing me and one day it will get to me. The thing is I try to avoid it and even forced myself to spend a day or even a morning sitting on the couch and watching TV or going out or doing something that isn't at all related to my work. I used to do this easily and I'm sure I still can, but right now, I have so many ideas that I can't sit still. So I take it as my passion calling me and I have to take advantage of it. The difficulty happens when I sit at the computer or with my sketchbook in hand and I'm stuck with fear. Fear that what will come out won't resemble anything that I pictured in my head. Fear that it won't be as good as my contemporaries and I'll come to the realization that I am mediocre at what I do. Fear that I can't find my own voice, my own style and that I'll be nothing more than a joke. Gosh that's unnerving. It's also exhausting.

So here's what I realized: Fear contributes a lot to my exhaustion and even more than that, not putting pencil to paper, as they say, makes me so overwhelmed. I think that will lead me to burn out before I even get started! I'm working on it. I'm starting to file things in my head in 'do now or soon' or 'probably will never do therefore let it go'. Here's to avoiding burn out! *fingers crossed*

On SOPA/PIPA...

This being the day where the web community comes together in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) I would like to share with you all a video that explains so clearly and understandably the issues and implications that such a legislation would have on the web community and the internet as a whole. This explanation is provided by Sal Khan of the Khan Academy. If you are unaware of what SOPA/PIPA can do or have read a barrage of articles surrounding the issue but need some clearer explanation, please watch.

And to read more about SOPA/PIPA and today's protest:

The SOPA blackout: Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, Google, and many others protest proposed law

SOPA blackout: Bills lose three co-sponsors amid protests

Google Plans Home Page Protest Against U.S. Piracy Measures - Businessweek

And for Canadians, specifically: Black Wednesday: In Protest of SOPA, Darken the Web

Be True to Yourself

The one drawback about being a creative person is you have ideas running through your brain constantly and at warp speed. Actually, let me correct myself, that's not a drawback that's what makes creating fun! But the drawback is in trying to sort through all those ideas. I am constantly looking for inspiration and because my work is mainly digital I spend an awful lot of time on my iMac. So I surf the web. Constantly. Twitter, especially, makes it easy for me to follow people who inspire me and I see and am introduced to more and more things every day that inspire me. And as most creatives are, I am an avid note taker. I make notes, I bookmark links, I draw sketches, I buy books... anything and everything to try to jot down my thoughts for later reference. This is great but I'm constantly inundated with stimuli. The difficult task is to sift through everything and find something that truly means something to me and is inspirational in a way that allows me to be true to myself.

I admire a lot of designers in the web industry, in illustration, in graphic design, in fashion design, in art... there's so many! And I'm guilty of looking on in awe and failing to refine my style. I'm still trying to find it. I don't even know how to define my illustration style... accurate is the only word that comes to mind and that's such a boring description of something that should be so free and creative. I'm so OCD about my art that I stress over inaccurate details, which can be a good thing but also a hindrance to developing personal style. If art school taught me anything it was to make work that is you, there is no perfect in art, there is only true genuine reflection of you and what you perceive.

I guess more important than developing my personal style in my work is to be true to me. To be instinctual enough to make decisions based on what I like and what works for me - or, of course, my clients and their projects. Basically, what makes sense to the project at hand. There's always going to be designs and illustrations that you look at with envy because you admire them so much, but they may not be appropriate for the work you are producing and more importantly, they're not you.

It's also about being confident in your work to know when to stop. Art school also taught me that. You can constantly rework things, redesign things, redraw things, but the best artists are those who know when to stop. Take the abstract expressionists for example. To us looking on it seems that they haphazardly placed colours on the canvas until they got tired. But they made elaborate decisions on which would be the last brushstroke.

In my current efforts to redesign my website I am currently at the third iteration of my redesign. And yes, of course, experimentation is a part of design, but I can't keep changing my mind every time I think I've finally come to a decision. I need to stop looking at other people's websites and do what is true to me and when that happens I'll know to stop. I need to try to listen to my instincts and not try to emulate something I admire but let my ideas flow. I'm sure my struggle isn't a unique one. It's a constant struggle for creatives. And maybe the equivalent of a writer's block for artists is not just a lack of ideas and inspirations but also too many ideas clouding your own. The only thing I can think to do now is to stop looking at my favourite designs, stop looking at other websites, stop following links on twitter. Return to the sketchbook, clear my mind and try to hear my voice amidst the chaos.

I suspect that the process of sifting through one's ideas and finding one's voice doesn't end. It's there with every thing you create... in fact, it constantly happens through life. So I'll also try not to be so hard on myself and just let things go... Besides as artists and designers we hope to always do better and better work so the process is constant.