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Design-isms: January 28, 2008

If you're spending all of your time explaining what you design, what do you say when they ask you why you design?

The process of designing something is a journey, never a destination.

A mantra for design critique: Not good. Not bad. Just better.

Just because you're in the service industry doesn't mean you have to be a servant.

Design-isms: January 15, 2008

We get so caught up in design thinking, we forget there's no such thing as design living.

A design won't be great until you stop wanting it to be good.

Taking refuge in your design process often runs counter to innovation.

Zapfino is the new Comic Sans. Someone make a virus that uninstalls it from every Macintosh in the universe. Yes, we can live without.

Design-isms: December 17, 2008

Would you rather be a better person or a better designer?

A project is over when you get paid and the work is delivered. Any other kind of finality is a convenient illusion.

Client feedback isn't good or bad. It's just how it is.

Being Mr. or Mrs. Practical will cut any brainstorm short.

Design is not an art form for self-validation.

When you cut corners on a proposal, they always grow back.

Design-isms: November 6, 2008

The longer a client makes you wait to do something, the more it will cost you. Always.

Humans may have dazzlingly malleable minds, but they are not conditioned to think or behave like a computer. This is the true litmus test regarding any decision about user flow. Each task needs to feel humane.

Every estimate you send to a client will always be wrong in some tiny way. Either they'll make you revise it in their favor or you'll find out halfway through the project what you forgot to include.

Transported. That's the feeling you get from design that rises above the mundane.

Designers: Let's band together and put brochureware out of its misery once and for all.

Design-isms: October 20, 2008

The number one killer of client relationships: not listening. Number two: not speaking your mind.

There are no perfect design projects, only perfect moments strung together by a thread of honest labor. The beautiful byproduct is icing on the cake.

They say opportunity is an open door that you walk through. If the door swings shut while you're trying to enter, though, it can smack you square in the nose.

If you're waiting for one opportunity, you're going to be let down. If you have twelve opportunities, through, you're going to have to let other people down. Which would you prefer?

Design-isms: September 10, 2008

Just because you have a creative job doesn't mean you get creative license.

There's no such thing as a total failure. Ideas have a way of recirculating until they find their proper home.

When does your rational mind get in the way of creating great design work? Always, I think.

Design-Isms: August 24, 2008

The work in your portfolio should show range, mastery, and intelligence. But if it lacks heart, it'll be much harder to land a job with it.

Even if you're the best graphic artist in the world, if you can't communicate an idea, you're toast.

There is no such thing as doing "informal user research," since it only leads to anecdotal results that lead to formally having no clue what your users want.

Clients can smell fear. It emboldens bad decisions for all parties involved.

Design-isms: August 14, 2008

Don't fall in love with your work until it's printed, gone live, and safely ensconced within your portfolio.

Having a well-considered point of view will always serve your best interests -- even if your clients don't agree with you.

Impeccable design can be like a bird: impossibly light, made of little more than a skeleton and some feathers, yet capable of taking flight.

At the start of a project, thinking and feeling will always trump Photoshop and Illustrator.

Waiting for the next big thing invariably leads to missing it.

Design-isms: August 6, 2008

Self-centered design is not user-centered design.

Or: Claiming a background in user-centered design when faced with a real user experience design need does not mean you have solely designed gorgeous user interfaces for a ton of Web sites. It means that you have a depth of expertise in listening to users using proven research methodologies, can then rapidly iterate ideas for the IA of an interactive experience that can then be tested by that same group of users in a prototypical -- meaning, via prototype -- fashion, and then design gorgeous user interfaces off that IA. It's easy to design a beautiful interface. It's very difficult to design a beautiful interface that also meets the expectations of your audience in every way. Those kinds of insights rarely emerge from client meetings about how the user experience should be presented for their customers.

Failure can be a negotiating tactic, if you lay bare your process on the table and show your client how much time is truly necessary to do stellar work.

Then again: explaining the economics of your company to a client, and that client using said knowledge to negotiate down your fees, is a sure sign that you'll be resigning their business. Without a respectful boundary between client and designer, neither party can earn something tangible from the arrangement.

This should be evident, but it always bears repeating: deadlines are always negotiable, as long as you don't wait until the last moment to ask for more time.

Design-isms: July, 2008

If you design a logo and everyone on your team tells you that it's perfect, you haven't shown it to your accountant.

If you do usability studies and your users say that everything makes perfect sense, then something still isn't quite right.

If you haven't failed at least once on every project, then you haven't succeeded... yet.