incoherence.net

The holidays are always a great time for pictures. Me, armed with the iPhone’s 3MP teeny camera and a 12MP Sony TSC point-and-shoot, was ready to commemorate the occasion and maybe even get a few decent prints out. Hell, maybe I’ll actually learn to shoot bokeh or HDR or whatever.

Photography’s one of those hobbies guys flock to – along with cars and video games – after a certain stage in life; in this case, it’s usually right around having a kid and wanting to cherish the early years. It’s also one that’s been widely practiced since the advent of digital cameras and onboard image processing, rendering most shots into passable email material. Like most people, I approached the subject of picture-takin’ from a purely utilitarian perspective: I wanted to etch memories into physical being. My artistic side (admittedly, limited) hated how 90% of my shots weren’t even clear enough for a normal print, and those that were in focus looked aggressively ordinary. I knew there were lessons in composition, exposure, white balance, and depth of focus I had to learn, but every time I read an article and tried to replicate the results, I was met with disappointing quality.

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.