Why you shouldn’t add ‘a little bit of you’ to your designs
When someone hires you to design a website, there first thing you say should never be ‘yes’. 9 times out of 10, you just screwed yourself. Don’t get excited because you can get a job, you have some questions to ask. You may be the right designer for the job, but is the client right for you?
First things first. When someone says “can you design a site for me?” they are likely going to be a troublesome client, unless you already know them and their site. They should be saying, “can you design a content driven tutorial based site? It’s been established for over a year and has dedicated traffic and needs to step up for the next version.” That my friends, readers and lurkers, is the perfect client.
They just told you exactly what you need to know. But if they don’t be sure to get this info:
- What kind of site?
- Niche?
- Content/Community/Paid Traffic/Whatever driven. What powers the site.
- (If they say users, they mean community)
- How long has it been established? Is it new?
- Is this a new design, face lift, realign, new version? What’s the purpose for this design?
- What are the community expectations? What kind of hype is surrounding this?
After you’ve managed to beat this info out of them (some clients like to stay secretive… don’t play with them, get the info) that’s when you can start talking about budget, process and ideas.
So now you’re at the design stage…
You’re now ready to start designing the site, have received a down payment, or the OK to start and you’re thinking: What is this going to look like? How should I start?
This is where my title comes in. Using the aforementioned example of a tutorial site, you need to design a tutorial site. No exceptions here. You need to do a little market research find out what works structure wise, and then design accordingly.
Someone specializing (everyone specializes in something) in slick, very graphic heavy hosting layouts will leave that mark on the design for a tutorial site, most of the time depending on the designer. Why should you not leave your own personal mark on the design? Well, if it’s not your personal blog, then you need to design for the client, the users and the community. Not you. YOU don’t actually matter.
Hopefully, you would design without your personality in mind. I’m not saying leave your style out of it, because thats why you were hired. But things you like, such as intense graphical designs, caps fonts or little swooshes that stop being style and start becoming things you always include as your own mark need to stay out. For example, the content driven tutorial site does not need a layout heavy in graphics, or even a navigation that would be done with images (still CSS though) .
Your ’style’ isn’t defined by the little swooshes you put on everything, but rather the big picture of the most recent work you have done.
Most of the time ‘a little bit of you’ is wrong for the design. Your designs will benefit from taking an educated view on the market that your design will enter in to eventually, but not a personal look at what you think it is.
And those little swooshes… Best stop them 
P.S. This may lack in any structure or flow, as it was a rant. Rant, now over.
Leave a comment
Ronald Huereca
April 25th, 2007 at 12:54 AM
Ranting is good for morale
I do agree with trying to limit your “you” being put into a style. My question is, can a web designer ever be equated to that of a fashion designer where a certain designer has a style that people like?
James
April 25th, 2007 at 3:04 AM
I like swooshes :/
Nice article, though.
Connor Wilson
April 25th, 2007 at 7:42 AM
Ron, a web designer can definitely be compared to a fashion designer. Both are hired for their unique style, but in the fashion industry leaving your personal mark is important. But in web, you don’t really want a ‘designer’ website. It doesn’t matter who did it per se, but the outcome.
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