Design rituals anyone?
I don’t know if your like me, but I definitely have a few design rituals that time after time you can guarantee I’ll go through before starting a design, or even do during the design. Your bound to develop habits when your working 8 hours a day right? Well, this weeks article isn’t really an article, more of a post, or question to you guys if you like. What rituals do you have before you start designing or whilst your designing? Please add a comment, even if you think its a silly ritual. I’d love to hear it.
A few ideas…
To get you thinking you can see a few questions below that you might ask yourself…
- What processes do you go through every time you start designing a brand new site?
- Do you have any habits when it comes down to arranging your tools?
- Or maybe even what size canvas you tend to start out with?
- Does your desk have to look a certain way before you begin?
- Do you have personalized / strange items on your desk?
- Do you always without fail create wireframes?
Some of my rituals/habits
Canvas size - No matter what I always start out with the same size canvas, and dam, its a big one at that! 1200 x 1200 pixels is my preference. Spacious I guess you could say? Well I like it that way. It means Ive got no restrictions and gives me a pretty free rein.
Organising / naming layers - This is a great habit and I would definitely recommend every designer do it. To begin with I never bothered with naming and grouping layers, but its crucial if your working with other designers, and will also save you so much time when you go to make amends to your design.
Inspiration - For inspiration I tend to browse lots of design galleries. Its not necessarily something I do before each new design, its something I do on a day to day basis. I try to be inspired by certain elements of say 3 to 4 sites, and then develop those into my own look and feel.
Offline inspiration is crucial too, especially I find for typography. Flyers through the post can really spark off some great ideas.
Pixel Perfect - If something in my design is a pixel out it really bothers me! I can spend a good 15-20mins deliberating over whether a logo should be 4 pixels to the left, or 4 to the right. Don’t tell my freelance clients that though!
Add your design rituals / habits in the comments
This week its over to you guys, so Im hoping for some insightful comments! … Please comment ;).
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November 30th, 2007 at 11:14 am
I’m about the same as you are when it comes to starting off a new design. Except I will typically start my canvas size as 1280×1024 just because I’m used to screen resolutions I guess. I won’t typically make a site that large but I like to see what it will look like on that screen resolution.
I also start browsing through CSS galleries to see if I can find some similar topic sites to see what the norm is for well-designed competitor sites to my client. A lot of times this is the best place I find inspiration, not from stealing a specific idea but usually from a specific way of designing.
Aside from that I usually just jump right on in to photoshop. I know a lot of people like to make thumbnails but I will typically only do thumbnails if I am working on a logo or branding.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Thanks for your response Dustin. When you say ‘thumbnails’ what do you mean exactly?
Jumping straight into Photoshop is the way to go as long as you know what your doing and have sufficient understanding of the brief etc. I like to just start messing around with ideas, throwing loads of things onto the canvas.
Sometimes I can go for over a hour doing this and then all of a sudden I see something that has potential and Im off. Does anyone else work like that?
November 30th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Thumbnail drawings on paper, where you sketch out a bunch of thumbnails for ideas you have on what you are about to do in photoshop/illustrator.
My design teachers were always adamant about doing them every time. But I will typically only do it for logos to sketch out ideas that I have.
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:59 am
My design teachers were adamant about it too.
However, I usually just run my brush around in Photoshop instead, usually quicker. I do though from time to time sketch out the design on paper. So I am used to the approach.
I usually “thumbnail” on paper for other medias. For web, I don’t go near thumbnailing at all in such a regard. But for other medias it might be okey sometimes. Dunno why I feel that way, guess it is cause I’ve made websites since I was 7, and for other medias just in the 3 last years.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Ah, another term for wireframing?
I’ll do wireframes if necessary. Sometimes they’re a good idea so you make sure the structures right and you’ve thought to include everything.
Using your brush in Photoshop to create a rough sketch is quite a good idea. Not heard of anyone do that before! I tend to use a piece of paper though.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Yes, wireframing. Sheez, I was tired yesterday. Couldn’t remember the term for the life of me ^^
Hehe, well. Both works well ^^ Depends on what mood I am in, when I sketch up things.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Lol. Is wireframing the correct term? Ive always used it, but Ive never heard thumbnailing before. Could that be an American thing?
Anyone have any more strange design habits? Im all into labeling my layers of late.
December 4th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I have this “write out what i want in plain englilsh” approach before i create a canvas i like to bullet point some ideas about features, layout and colours.
December 4th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for the comment Will.
I tend to get stuff down on paper in words to much more often than sketching a wireframe out. Do you find that then you can work from that list as your designing?
January 21st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I was just the other day thinking about using the same canvas size every time. This might pay off when it comes to presentation consistency.
Also i found your comments on layer naming interesting. I also start off not naming my layers.
I love the benefits of having order in my psd.
I bought 16 x 48″ sketch pad to be used for mock ups or wire frames or thumbnails lol. I have still never used it. Maybe because it was so expensive and I waiting for something good to use it on.
I love this blog BTW.
-JD