BlueHatDesign – Eugene, Oregon Web Design

The 10th anni­ver­sary of Web­Vi­sions, a nationally-recognized con­fe­rence that explo­res the future of Web design, tech­no­logy, user expe­rience and busi­ness stra­tegy was held in at the Port­land Con­fe­rence Cen­ter this past week. I have to con­gra­tu­late exe­cu­tive direc­tor Brad Smith, the great staff, and an ama­zing crew of volun­teers for put­ting on a fan­tas­tic conference.

The line up of spea­kers was top-notch as always. Topics ran­ged from Luke Williams’ “How to Spark Dis­rup­tive Inno­va­tion” (ope­ning key­note), to Shashi Bellamkonda’s “Per­so­nal Bran­ding”, to nuts and bolts stuff like “Desig­ning Our Way Through Web Forms” with Kim­berly Bles­sing and Chris­topher Schmitt.

I came away from this con­fe­rence smar­ter, more con­nec­ted and more ins­pi­red to keep lear­ning, and keep buil­ding awe­some stuff for the web!

(photo by Shashi Bellam­konda)

Mood boards are a way to get the client acti­vely invol­ved in the pro­cess early-on in a web pro­ject. This allows them to feel that they are being inc­lu­ded and kept in the loop. It even gives them a way to par­ti­ci­pate in the design process.

I am a fairly linear per­son, espe­cially con­si­de­ring that I’m a desig­ner (we tend to lean toward the crea­tive and quirky). It has been my habit to want to jump in on a new design pro­ject, open Pho­toshop and bang out the design tem­plate straight away. I have a pretty good idea up front what will work in HTML/CSS and what wont, so I usually feel con­fi­dent that I can come up with a good, usa­ble design on the first cou­ple of attempts. This approach has wor­ked well for me for the most part, up to this point.

There is that ine­vi­ta­ble moment howe­ver, when I’m finished with the draft of the tem­plate and I’m ready to post it for the client. I inva­riably think to myself, “What if they don’t like it? What if it’s not what they had in mind? Will I have to re-do this whole thing from scratch? Should I defend it? (I am the desig­ner after all.)” At this point, I’m already too far along in the pro­toty­ping pro­cess to afford star­ting over.

I rea­lize now that by kee­ping the client out of the pro­cess bet­ween the ini­tial mee­ting and the reveal of the first comp, I’m really doing both of us a dis­ser­vice. The client poten­tially can feel left out at this point and if the design is a depar­ture from their ini­tial vision, it can shake their con­fi­dence in me as a desig­ner. It also means that I am igno­ring some poten­tially great crea­tive input from the client.

I have always tried, in the early sta­ges of a pro­ject, to get as much input as I can from the client about the look and feel of a pro­ject, asking about other sites that they like or don’t like, tal­king about colors, logos, etc. But I’ve come to rea­lize that most clients don’t have a clear vision of what they want from the begin­ning. It’s all too com­mon to spend hours on a finished Pho­toshop comp only to have the client rea­lize that it’s not what they want (even though they may not know what they want in the beginning).

A mood board is a quickly thrown together collage of pho­tos, colors, typo­graphy ele­ments, scraps torn from maga­zi­nes, etc. that together, give an ove­rall feel for the visual direc­tion of a design.

Mood boards accom­plish seve­ral things all at once:

• They are a use­ful tool for the desig­ner to very quickly put down visual ideas for the design.
• They sepa­rate the ove­rall “mood” of the design from the inter­face ele­ments and con­tent. This effec­ti­vely remo­ves poten­tial dis­trac­tions for the client at this early stage.
• They allow the client to give crea­tive input very early in the pro­cess, the­reby avoi­ding back-tracking after the design comps are viewed.
• Mood boards speed up the visual pro­toty­ping pro­cess because the style has already been established.

I will defi­ni­tely be inc­lu­ding mood boards in my metho­do­logy for all future design projects.

It’s not always easy for free­lan­cers to get good qua­lity, cons­truc­tive cri­ti­cism on a new con­cept.  We can always ask friends and family mem­bers, but we’re not likely to get a cri­ti­que that is based on solid design prac­ti­ces and con­cepts. Asking in online com­mu­ni­ties can often lead to caus­tic, unhelp­ful com­ments.  Con­cept Feed­back is an online app that attempts to bridge that gap. Here’s what they say about their concept:

Desig­ned spe­ci­fi­cally for small and medium busi­ness mar­ke­ters, graphic desig­ners, and web deve­lo­pers, Con­cept Feed­back pro­vi­des a sim­ple tool to get qua­lity feed­back on mar­ke­ting con­cepts. Best of all, it’s 100% FREE!

There is a full review at Fuel Your Creativity.

We’ve all been there. You’re star­ting a brand new pro­ject. You’ve out­li­ned the requi­re­ments and lis­ted the fea­tu­res in various ways. You’re sit­ting and sta­ring at a blank docu­ment in Pho­toshop, or a blank page in your sketch­book, and your mind is also com­ple­tely blank.

Crea­tive bur­nout hap­pens to all of us. As a crea­ture of habit, I tend to get into a rou­tine and stick to it. After seve­ral weeks of sit­ting in the same chair in the same office day after day, I can feel the crea­ti­vity slowly ebb.

The ans­wer is to get out of the office (or whe­re­ver it is you usually work). It doesn’t mat­ter if it’s for a few hours or a few days, but a regu­lar change of envi­ron­ment is essen­tial to kee­ping your crea­tive edge.

Regu­larly get­ting away from your fami­liar rou­tine can pay big divi­dends by refreshing your pers­pec­tive. If you sit in the same chair every day, your eyes tend to rest on com­for­ta­ble, fami­liar objects. As soon as you move out to the back gar­den, or the cof­fee shop, your eyes will have a whole new palette of sti­mu­lus. It’s not only visual; that rose bush in the gar­den, or the low hum of con­ver­sa­tion and music in the cof­fee shop can give your nose and ears a fresh pers­pec­tive as well.

In the case of public spa­ces, you have the added advan­tage of pos­sibly mee­ting and tal­king with new peo­ple. Some­ti­mes, just being near enough to overhear some con­ver­sa­tion can give you new pers­pec­tive on a design problem.

I came into design from a pho­to­graphy back­ground, so one of my favo­rite things to do to spark crea­ti­vity is to take my camera out and seek out pat­terns, tex­tu­res, colors, inter­face ele­ments, or wha­te­ver stri­kes my fancy. Doing this in the real world ins­tead of on the web gives the whole pro­cess a much more orga­nic feel.

I like to plan seve­ral trips with my wife during the year where we go find a small town, stay in a bed and break­fast or hotel (an Inter­net con­nec­tion redu­ces stress for me on these trips). Then, we just spend two or three days either hiking local trails, or wal­king the streets and brow­sing shops in the town. During these trips, I always try to see things as much as pos­si­ble through  the lens of my camera. It narrows my focus and helps me iso­late inte­res­ting design ele­ments. Inva­riably, I return from a wee­kend trip with a fresh pers­pec­tive and a rechar­ged crea­tive battery.