As I sit here, a good four day’s worth of work on the screen in the concise and almost insulting form of a site banner, I’m reminded at how frustrating inefficient and painstaking the design process can be. It’s awful repetitive, and you can tweak the smallest detail for days before you realize what you thought looked good in your head is a monstrosity when brought to life and would kindly ask for euthanasia.
I like to think of design as a trifecta of processes: creation, elimination, and consolidation; or, in non-corporate speak, the artist, the critic, and the editor. The artist serves as a factory of prototypes, taking ideas to reality; the critic’s job is to apply Sturgeon’s law and strip away all the bad ideas; the editor takes what’s left, combines the good ideas within each remaining design, and tweaks the result.
Then start again from the top.
A great designer, of course, would ideally possess all three qualities and in the process save some time by taking on all three roles at the same time. Whether it’s web design, music composition, or 20-page-English-paper-due-tomorrow, there some quality in a well-designed work that gives it additional polish and makes it stand out from just paint splattered on canvas…I just can’t put it into words.
So what it boils down to is that I spent a good number of days and coming up with something that looks a bit better than the four prototypes I posted earlier. Here’s a render of my results so far:
