Key to great design: Don’t be a pansy

The key to a great design: Don’t be a pansy. There’s usually only one thing that stands between a good design and a great design. It’s the artist getting in their own way. If you refuse to make a decision, that means one of two things. 1. You aren’t giving yourself options and options are essential to having something great, no matter what that thing is. Don’t forget – options are what drive creativity and innovation. 2. You can’t decide on one design so you’re sending the client too many options. Whether they’re all great or not, this can be overwhelming to a client and typically won’t result in the best outcome.

This article that I read talks about the very issues that I’ve been guilty of (I like to think who hasn’t?) for projects that I’ve worked on. Not everyone admits being wrong, but for creative people, it’s essential. It not only drives you to do more work to make up for it, it also drives you to do more things RIGHT to reach more people and to get vision heard. I’m guilty of one of the exact examples in the article: sending too many logo comps to a client. Of course you like a lot of your designs. The thing is, what works best for the company and what fits their brand? That’s why this was one of my favorite quotes from the article:

I respect designers with the guts to kill good designs in favor of chasing great ones. Sometimes you have ten really solid ideas that you can present to the client, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Try scrapping indecision and pare that down to one or two options.

Will this be a little scary? Yep. Will it hurt to scrap all those good ideas? Absolutely. Do it anyway, it’s your job.

That’s so true. It is our job and if we got attached to every design that we did, there’s not a bright future ahead. You never design one option and you’re done. Even if you know the first design is the right one, you still need another design to prove that. It takes options. It takes decisions. That’s what makes a great design.

I really enjoyed the part that talks about typography. During school, I was never really taught too many fundamentals of typography and I didn’t realize how big of a deal that was until my first day of work. School projects were mainly projects with a lot of free reign and I relied on a lot of graphic heavy designs. It showed when I first went to work. I went in and I was creating ads for the publishing industry. Each publication has their own font sets and there were more fonts than I could’ve imagined. With such subtleties to each font, how are you supposed to know which one to choose?

Making decisions about which fonts you’re going to use is difficult, especially when there are so many awesome options available. Just remember, the freedom of choice is not a license for excess!

You live and you learn. You focus on what you need to do to be the best you can be and to make great designs. You work at your weaknesses to try to have the unattainable goal of having none. It doesn’t hurt to try, right? So it all boils down to this quote:

Are you up for the challenge? Can you break free of indecision and embrace your instincts? It boils down to a matter of self confidence. Believe that you’re good enough to make the right decisions and you’ll find that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Know that you’re doing what you love and what you’re supposed to be doing. Have the confidence to make the right decision and make a great design.

This discussion comes from a blog post over at Design Shack and the full article can be read here.