Designing with passion

One obvious and another less obvious steal or rip-off (as you wish to call it) came to my eyes recently. In article “Is this a rip-off?” I pointed obvious one, and in the comments to the article I pointed one less obvious. Both of them are inspired by this design. What’s wrong with those people? Do they know how to design a blog or what? Well, since these two are the first rip-offs of my blog design, I decided to write an article about designing with passion, maybe the guys will learn something :)
And yes, there is no easy way of designing a “killer website”. Here are few tips that help me design.

Experience and learn

You must never stop surfing and enjoying the web. When you have no idea, or if you are in need of inspiration visit showcase galleries, they often help. You could also create bookmarks of your favorite designs and group it thematically (clean and simple designs, grunge, blog designs etc.). You can also use del.icio.us or some other “bookmark service”.

When you come to a website for the first time you “sense it” in a way. Explore the fonts used, colors, and layout. I often revisit some sites that I find inspirational.

Find the right inspiration

Inspiration can be anything. If you wish to design a “grunge-like” site, than your inspiration can be found on the street (graffiti) or watching MTV (watch the music videos and intros). If you wish to design a clean and simple website, than you can find your inspiration in the showcase galleries, different portfolios, blogs or even newspapers (take a closer look to the commercials found there).

Listen to the music

When I’m in design process (this includes drawing board, Photoshop, Dreamweaver or testing) I often listen to the music. It helps me focus on design.

Listen to the music you personally like. Well, depending on the job you are working on. If you are working on a design for a Church, then you shouldn’t listen to Marilyn Manson. The music must be an inspiration. Listen to the music you find inspirational for the particular job. If you cannot concentrate when music is playing, than you should turn it off :).

Like what you are doing and share it with others

Like what you are doing and that is the best advice I can give you. The secret behind all the good sites are that the authors liked the job. And do not think of design as a business or a job. Think of designing websites as an opportunity to continue learning.

Share your ideas. Don’t be afraid that someone will “steal” your ideas or your knowledge. We all learned one from another and that is the way it should be. I like when people read the articles and tutorials I publish on my blog, and when I get e-mails with questions and thanks. That is encouraging for me. Since I started to write a blog, I learned a lot. Simple things we all take as granted. Writing a blog, sharing the ideas and knowledge was far the best experience that helped me to do better designs!

And when you are tired?

And last but not least. If you get tired in the process, take a rest. Talk to your girl (or boyfriend, or husband, or wife (strikethrough the words that don’t fit here:)), watch a movie or television, play a game, take a walk. Generally, do anything to free the mind. When you return to your “job”, you will be full of ideas ;).

Further reading (and watching)

A List Apart — typography (fonts used, colors and sizes)
UX Magazine — approach for linking articles from home page (go with mouse over it)
CSS Zen Garden — do I even need a word for this website (you can learn a lot from this one)
Folietto — usage of background pictures in design


Comments

2 responses to “Designing with passion”

  1. Concerning “Seo-study”:

    – This Russian chiefs haughty teach others – how-to protect your web-blog content from stealing:

    What’s a shame!

    You can translate it from Russian thanks to Google Language Tools:

  2. Hi Emanuel. Your first point brought me to your website. This was a great post and totally agree with you on design. Everyday on web, I am amazed. Yes, the learning never stops.

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