If you are, work with or want to be a professional designer, you MUST READ THIS…

I had a chat with MD, a professional designer friend of mine. I wanted to get an idea of what his design process is, as well as his thoughts on the current “Web 2.0″ situation and what it means for professional designers right now. He graciously agreed to allow me to post the conversation to the blog!

Justin@iswapyoublog: Who are you, and what do you do?

MD: I’ve been working in the field of web design for about 4 years. I’m currently the creative director for a web and software development company.

What softwares do you normally use for design, and which are your personal favorites?

Every website for me first starts on paper. I spend a lot of time coming up with the site structure as well as rough layout sketches. When I finally have something I think will work, I use Photoshop to design the layout. I used to slice the layouts in (Adobe) ImageReady but these days the way I design by slicing directly in Photoshop.

I try to recycle design elements and use more CSS than images to save bandwidth. This is especially important for the clients we deal with who are trying to create high traffic websites. To bring the web page together I use Dreamweaver. If I am working with a php or asp programmer, I use Dreamweaver for the integration into the web application. Recently, I’ve been working a lot with Ruby on Rails programmers so I use Textmate to do that integration. If necessary, I use flash to create rich media applications such as website MP3 players, FLV video players, etc. I used to use flash a lot to design fancy animations and intros, but focus on the web has shifted from the flashy moving websites to solid information design so beyond rich media stuff, flash has become outdated for everyday design.

I always check to make sure any layout I code up is W3C validated for xhtml strict. I usually do that with the built in functionality of Dreamweaver. My usual browser tests are in IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

You’ve been involved in many community building sites over the years. What do you think is the key to building a good online community?
From my experiences with the various clients websites and personal projects I’ve worked on, the key to building a strong online community is content. Whether it be created by the owners of the site or by its users, content is still king. The most successful websites put out content that is updated daily or at least a couple times a week. Fresh content is something that all successful community websites have in common.

I’ve also noticed that niche sites membership tends to grow exponentially faster than sites that initially aim to reach a broad demographic. When creating niche sites, you tend to have very passionate users that actively seek out their past time or hobby. This is important because the internet unlike television requires initiative on the part of the user/viewer. You can’t really channel surf the web and stumble upon something vaguely interesting. If you end up on a website, most of the time you got there by actively searching for something. Passionate users also tend to pass along website URLs to friends who share the same interests. By trying to do everything at once from the beginning you usually turn off the passionate users that are so essential to building a community. No one is passionate about everything.

Do you ever get a “designers block”, like a writer might get a “writers block” or a programmer might get a “coders block”? What do you do to overcome it?
This used to be a problem I’d run into frequently when I first got into the design field. I think its a problem a lot of beginning designers find themselves in. I’ve learned that the main reason I got stuck was lack of planning. As soon as I got the job, I’d open up Photoshop and try to come up with something. This usually led to me staring at a blank canvas for a while. There are some designers that can do that like David Carson but I’ve learned I can’t.

These days I spend a lot of time asking the client questions that will help the design. A big thing to remember is that you’re designing for your client. Most clients, when they want a website, already have a vague of a picture in their mind what they want their website to look like. It’s your job as a designer to pull out what exactly they want. Designers these days are lucky as most clients don’t want scrolling text, blinking backgrounds, and all text center aligned (I’ve actually had clients in the past ask for that)!

Asking questions like, “Can you explain to me your typical customer? Their age, gender, income level, hobbies, etc” helps. Try to create as clear a picture of who the client’s primary target customer is. Often times you’ll see that the client is describing him or herself. Another great question to ask is, “What are some websites that you really like?” This question gives you insight to what your client considers “nice”. If you can create a website with a similar feel to what he likes, chances are you’ll be doing very little revisions if any. Once you know who you are designing for, it answers a lot of questions like what fonts to use, what size to design, colors, etc.

It’s also your job as the design expert to clarify the objectives of the client. Most of the time business owners will want a website because they see that other companies have websites. It’s important to set expectations up front. Ask questions like, “What goals does a visitor of your website want to accomplish? Do they want to purchase something? Find information about your company?” You’ve already defined the user, now by defining what they want to accomplish when coming to the website, you can really nail down the information architecture as far as content layout and navigation. You can give precedence to things that the site owner feels the client will be more interested in clicking on.

After I get all the answers I need I sketch out on paper mini layouts for how the front page and the secondary pages will look. This step is crucial because it’s so much easier to scrap a sketch than it is to scrap a psd. I usually draw bout 10-20 sketches until I get something I like. The key is to just keep sketching. If you find yourself stuck for more than a minute or 2 on one sketch, start another one. Once I get a sketch I really like, I can usually bang out that photoshop design layout in a day or two. One of my previous bosses once told me, “If you find yourself getting stuck, that usually means you didn’t ask enough questions.” That is so true.

Design for web 2.0 is a hot topic these days. What are your favorite examples of web 2.0 design?

I honestly think web 2.0 is on it’s last legs. The whole web 2.0 craze was driven by the fact that VCs and Angel investors were willing to invest in web companies again. The exit strategy for these companies were different than the traditional .com model (acquisition rather than IPO), but I think a lot of these new web 2.0 startups will end up in the same place as those guys from the 90s.

The best thing that came out of the web 2.0 craze is the return of solid html design. In the earlier part of this decade design for the web was dominated by Flash websites. The main reason for this was that everyone’s browsers were so different, coding a good html website hardly made sense. It would look great on one computer but like total crap on another! A lot of these web 2.0 sites were coded using compliant xHTML and css and because of their popularity more people jumped on board and off Flash design. Also, javascript libraries like Prototype, jQuery, and dojo started coming out that allowed designers to create Flash like tweens on plain html pages which made Flash even more obsolete.

What are your favorite examples of Web 2.0 design?

It’s hard for me to say what my favorite examples are… I use digg a lot… I think facebook is doing good things… Usually the fancier sites with a lot of nice graphics aren’t the most functional so it depends who your audience is.

What in your opinion is the worst web 2.0 design(s)?

That’s really hard for me to say because most of these web 2.0 sites started off looking really bad. The first versions of digg and youtube looked like crap. It doesn’t really matter if you have a nice looking site these days as long as the idea behind it is solid.

Any final message for the aspiring designers out there?

I would recommend if you are serious about breaking into the web design industry, spend the time to hone your skills. There are A LOT of good designers out there gunning for the same jobs as you. Put together a solid portfolio when you’re in school. Always validate any webpage you create. Learn at least one server side programming language, at least enough where you can communicate effectively with programmers. It is a big advantage over other designers who don’t know anything about programming. Also, a lot of employers will put out ads saying you need that knowledge anyway. I would suggest learning PHP first because it is free and relatively simple. Learn how to administer a mySQL database. Once again it’s just another edge on the competition.

Don’t get discouraged if after your years at University you end up with a job paying minimum wage (or even lower like I did). Designers are not as sought after as programmers, but you’ll learn that if you can just break in there is a lot of work for you.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Communities, Design, HTML, community site building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.