How many times have you looked at your website and wanted to do an complete redesign? And how many times you said, ok I do it next month when I’m less busier. The truth is, that we just keep postponing the redesign and don’t do anything. But maybe just a little evolution and some small tweaking would do the job and would improve the website. How to decide if you need a complete new design or just some improvement? Here some questions to ask yourself and if you answer the majority with yes you need a complete overhaul.
Is your webdesign “trendy”?
Design is like fashion, there are trends. And the bigger trends of the last couple of years have been grunge, comics, <insert other trend here>. The beauty of the internet is, that it’s evolving fast. But just like in fashion, your site can look old fashioned in a blast. So if you don’t plan to renew the site design every year or so don’t get too trendy on your next design. And if your design is trendy now, get on to the next trend – sustainable web design.
Are you changing (or need to change) your website technology?
You are on a self hosted wordpress installation and want to switch over to a tumblr blog or get over to squarespace to not have to deal with updates and servers any more? It’s a good time for a redesign. You spend as much time to recreate your website on the new services as redoing the whole design. It can be evolutionary at large but take this opportunity.
Is your website just in Flash?
While I’m not a Flash hater and I see many uses of Flash in the real world that make sense, I cannot see the point of having a complete site in Flash anymore. It’s not even ok for “business card” sites with no content and who don’t want to get found in the search engine except for your local pizzeria which name you know but not the telephone number. Many of this businesses want something “flashy” and don’t mind the technology. It’s easier for a designer to please them with a nice Flash animation – and often it’s also quicker to do a Flash site, but you will get in trouble when mobile gets more important and the sites won’t work correctly. So I hope that with the advent of HTML 5 we will get rid of these problems – but if you want to prepare yourself now, get rid of Flash.
Evolution is better
I just picked three questions for the revolution section because there are not many reasons to do complete redesigns. Many times small improvements can have a big impact and help your site. Big sites like Amazon and Wikipedia have gone a radical redesign if you compare them to 5 years ago, but the steps where small. One by one. Testing and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Is learning from nature – making a lot of small variations to experiment what works best costs less “energy” that redoing everything from scratch. The are some instances where your have to revolutionize – but more often than not, evolution beats revolution.
I’ve got an email from a reader of this blog with a common problem… how to get creativity started:
I am into graphic design, working as a finalizer for the last 10 years. I’m working in an Advertising Agency, I want to become an art director. I look at the ads on Ads of the world and get inspired. I found them very easy but when I’m trying to do something my mind doesn’t open. Is there any exercise where i can learn and fullfull my dream of becoming an art director.
Being creative is one part of being an art director – and for sure the most fun part. As you can see from the blog there are other activities (organizing, planning, guidance to people) involved in real art direction. But as for creativity there are now really good resources and tools.
1) The word Creativity is a misconception
In advertising and design you mostly don’t “create” but you “combine in a new and interesting way” – Don’t get fooled by the word creativity – you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just use the wheel in a new way. To read more about this – here is an extensive lesson about “Creativity on demand”
For example: A friend of mine “stitched” his book on fabric instead of printing it on paper.
2) Use the tools the right way
So many people think that they know how to brain storm – but they don’t. There are many creativity tools like leathering, brain storming, fishing etc. – but if you don’t use them correctly you will not get results. I covered brain storming in this blog post – so read this and storm on.
3) Creativity comes from having many interests
One of the best ways to “open” your mind to creative ideas ist by having a “open” mind all the time. Don’t just be interested in graphic design. I’m interested practically in everything (except passive sports = watching someone else doing sport). I want to know how the people lived 100 years ago in Siberia. I cook, hike, bike, run, go to museums about just everything. I listen to podcasts during work about the most desperate themes and from around the world. You don’t have to remember everything but sometimes there are things that remain in your mind. And by taking this things from around the world into a new context you are really creative.
An example: It’s quite usual here to collect stickers of soccer player for kids in Europe… everyone did this – I used the same principle for a firm. They made stickers from their employees and an album. Who finished the collection has received a price. And the benefit for the firm? All employees have finished the album and in the end everyone knew anyone in every department.
4) Creativity is Teamwork
The image of the lonely creative mind is still present in the minds of everyone. But actually the best creative ideas come from teams – small teams to be exact. Only by interacting and discussing your ideas you have the possibility to expand them and to iterate on them. A modern system for creative temawork is featured in my blog post on this site here.
5) Books and Cards that help
Here is a collection of books and Cards that can help you
There are beautiful portfolio sites out there in the web and I wanted to redo my portfolio site because like most of the websites of designers my site was:
Quite out of date
Not very compelling any more
The reasons because my site was like this are easy to find. If you are a busy designer you mostly don’t have time to update your site. In the last years I started a blog and used twitter to engage with my audience, so the time for the portfolio is even smaller. Maintaining a portfolio site is not as easy and there are many big sites where you can upload your portfolio. The question was, what should I do. …click here to continue…
Not many TV commercials try to break new visual grounds. Partly because the big budget campaigns tend to stay on the safe side. They have to be “different” but common enough to not frighten the audience.
In the last few years we have seen some fine photography experimenting with the look of miniatures, but the new tv spot from german Telecom uses a mix of animated miniatures as stage and actors and life actors. The spot aired only in Germany is integrated into a environmental campaign.
Very nice, I want to see more of this creative spots in the future.
In various posts around the web you can find opinions on the new identity of the tv channel SyFy – formerly known as Sci-Fi Channel. While I don’t want to go into the design details I want to express some thoughts why the probably made this change. At first it seems quite unusual to change a well established brand so radically. It seems even more radical as the new name is also a new term that sounds like the old name but doesn’t has the same meaning – it actually has no meaning.
This puzzled at first even me. Science fiction was born over 100 years ago and the abbreviation sci-fi has become wide spread. Everybody knows what sci-fi is and therefore naming a tv channel who broadcasts sci-fi shows should be called sci-fi. But here lies the big problem. The vast majority of people “thinks” the know what sci-fi is all about. Basically science fiction is all about ufo’s and space travel. Science fiction is obviously much more than that and actually most of the movies and shows on tv are some sort of science fiction. How can you break this misinformation of the general public?
There are two ways. One way is to educate the people, but this would cost much more that just do it the way SyFy has done it. They changed the name and claimed that SyFy is the tv channel where you could “imagine more”. The name sound familiar enough to sci-fi fans to recognize the term and is new enough to new viewers to just be a name.
How far SyFy is more than just space crafts and aliens shows the spot – well done and good luck to the “new channel”.
Update: As @Lazarus2000 on Twitter pointed out giving a brand a unique name has another advantage. You can trademark the brand.
Serj asked me in a mail if I could list some books about graphic design theory. The amount of books on the market is astounding these days and I understand that surfing through the internet, with its wast resources, tutorials and inspirational site, its good to have the foundation to build on. Most of the theoretical stuff is normally taught in design schools and most of the books I will recommend are used in this context. …click here to continue…
I have found today this video about a typical interview of a focus group in the stone age. First watch the video, then read my comments.
Ok, it’s a campaign of DraftFCB – an advertising holding. It’s ment against clients, who seem to be too stupid to understand the great idea. But this is the classic view of a creative department towards clients. The client doesn’t get it – but its the right solution for him.
Now you as a creative, an art director or agency have to ask yourself three questions:
Did I miss the point, misunderstand the briefing or my research on the market was wrong?
Do I have the right solution, but in the execution I’ve gone too far? Do only “creatives” get it this way?
Did I get it right, but my presentation was so weak, that the idea did not come across?
If you respond to any of this questions with yes, go ahead and start over.
If you fail on the first question you propably didn’t do a rebriefing.
If you fail on the second you probably applied too high standards on the “receiver” end – assuming that you understand the meaning does not imply that your client or his clients will get it. If you present to a focus group ask yourself if the focus group is the correct one.
If you didn’t present well you killed your idea by yourself.
And to switch sides another time If you are really sure about your idea and you client will not buy it, then try to sell it to its competitor. They will probably don’t buy it either, unless you tell him, that its competitor didn’t want it and if he takes it he will differentiate himself.
I stumbled across this advertising for a custom gift card producer. First watch it, then I tell you why I like it so much.
I like this spot, because it shows you what you can do with the product rather then braging about the technical aspects. To use the 3D-Card to show a before and after is not very creative (is ment to do that), but to tell a story where the twist is caused by the features the card has is very clever.
One small flaw is in the spot. How did the postman know that he is the right person? There was no stamp and no address on the back?
You want something more efficient than brain storming? The results of brain storming are not satisfying? You want alternatives where you can get great results with the least effort. Guerilla fighters are known for having a great impact without huge investments in humans or weaponry. I translated this concept into my guerilla alternatives to brain storming. …click here to continue…
People getting to work in the creative business often don’t are aware of how many times they must come up with an idea for a project. No matter how big or small a job is there is some creativity involved. Most people think that creativity is some magical thing that creative people have, and others don’t – the ideas come naturally from somewhere inside of their mind. But how can anyone relay on something magical to do business. And how can you avoid having a stall? Here some insights and tips. …click here to continue…
What is the job of an art director anyway. How is it like? And how to learn to do the things the right way in real life. I will present you here some insights and some tutorials about becomming an art director, not just a graphic designer. Tips & Tricks you won't learn in any school and normally you will have to figure them out yourself. So go ahead and start your lessons.
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If you are really sure about your idea and you client will not buy it, then try to sell it to its competitor. They will probably don’t buy it either, unless you tell him, that its competitor didn’t want it and if he takes it he will differentiate himself.
