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This becomes all the more apparent the moment you encounter something that is badly designed — have you ever gotten so frustrated by a link that was just impossible to click that it almost made you throw your keyboard out the window? Or that cheap charging cable that almost caught fire because it wasn’t insulated properly? Right? Bad design is literally everywhere. Thankfully, so is good design. But no matter the quality, it has all been designed.
Design’s intentions if applied right, are always focused on making our lives a little better — one (small) experience, product or service at a time. Some designers succeed in that, some don’t. Nonetheless, a good designer helps to increase the possibility of success. That’s why it’s important to know what design is, what it’s not, and what it can do for you.
Design comes in many different forms; sometimes small, sometimes big, and sometimes really out there. Many of our industry’s biggest thinkers have formulated it differently, but thankfully, there’s a clear overlapping message and it reads something like this: “design is executing and formulating a plan or process that increases the possibility of success”.
If you search hard enough you’ll probably find a hundred different interpretations. In the case of ‘design’, this is actually a good thing when you think about it. One of our core values is innovation, and the other is learning through iteration; we can’t really afford to stand still. As a field, we evolve as quickly as the solutions we design, resulting in a new definition every once in awhile.
To reach our goals, we utilise a variety of tools and deliverables. This can be anything from a website to a branding system, a logo all the way to one of those buttons we just talked about, or even a social media campaign. It can be a philosophy based on order and grids or one based on post-modernism. They all share a common goal: that at all times it needs to communicate and translate a message or function to its recipient. It needs to solve a problem that either meets or exceeds the expectations of the user, resulting in a better experience when using the product. If we achieve that, it’s design done right.
Design is, and always will be, a creative field (and we mean that in a good — not overly romantic — kind of way). More often than not, when it comes to design challenges, the solution is not neatly tucked away waiting to be found. It’s usually something unexpected that results from the creative work of a team or individual. The use of an uncommon technique such as the creative process is great for finding extraordinary ideas and concepts. Instead of going down the same old road, new ones are constantly being created. It’s an insightful process that is partly triggered by observing odd everyday practices.
Let us tell you a little secret that most designers don’t like to hear, but is as much a part of being a designer as using design software: “Design cannot happen without constraints”. At the beginning of every process, it’s essential to collaborate with a client to create a solid brief and establish clear goals, followed by a well-defined structure that includes a beginning, middle, and an end. Design thrives on restrictions. Those who tell you otherwise are lying or haven’t figured that out yet.
When we say that design has to have a clear timeline, we do not mean that design is linear. It’s everything but. A design process, in our eyes, is best represented by a cone. A process that through building, researching, thinking, creating, iterating, and testing will get closer and closer to a solution. All the while switching between research, strategy, design, and implementation as needed. The end point of this process is a metaphor for measuring success and knowing when to stop.
When you hire a design agency, you’re not just hiring a pair of hands. You’re hiring a team that is trained in creating solutions, defining problems, and researching through prototyping. A team that is used to building whilst learning and learning whilst building. Those that are trained to help you achieve your goals.
As previously mentioned; “design is executing and formulating a plan or process that increases the possibility of success”. It means that a designer is not someone you bring in at the end to give the website some bright colours and pretty typography. A designer is someone you bring in at the very beginning.
Unfortunately, it still happens too often that when clients build websites, apps, or brands, they wait too long before bringing in the designers, asking us to make it look and work great at the very end. Unfortunately, this is about as effective as giving a camper van a set of racing stripes and expecting it to go faster.
It’s pretty obvious that the camper van and the racing car have been built for completely different purposes. One has been built for speed, with every angle carefully considered to optimise performance. The other is pretty comfortable and is great for a short weekend away, but you can’t enter it into a Formula 1 race and expect it to win. Both objects, although undoubtedly vehicles, are different and made for different people with different needs in mind. For design to be great, the intention needs to be aligned with the project’s goals. To achieve this, design needs to be part of the project from the beginning.
If you’re having trouble understanding what a designer does and why you need them. The following is a handy paragraph to bookmark.
Designers should be the people that help shape the process of your project. They’re adaptive; trained to create and evaluate different possible solutions and think outside the box. Designers ask real, honest questions, starting with “why?”. Collaboration is key, and designers encourage active participation between themselves, clients, users, and consumers. They’re human-centred, recognising that the end user is always a person, and that person should be at the heart of every solution. Designers embrace prototyping, testing, and iteration because they know the world is always evolving and are ultimately accountable for the work they put into that world.
A designer is many things. And truthfully, sometimes a part of the job is just making things exciting to interact with and giving them that ‘wow’ factor. But that’s merely one small part of what we do. That doesn’t mean that making it ‘wow’ isn’t on our minds all the time!
In the last couple of years the term ‘Design Thinking’ has been heard more and more. Design thinking is a human-centred approach that encourages collaboration across different skill sets to uncover new ideas and insights. It helps anticipate challenges, create innovative experiences, and find solutions beyond the norm. While its possibilities are endless, it’s the implementation that counts. In the end, both designers and design thinkers are looking for solutions that create experiences that are better, smarter, more empathetic, healthier, easier to use, and even more profitable.
Close to everything is in some way or the other designed, from products to complete experiences. It’s clear that it affects our lives — mostly positively — on a daily basis. Even so, good design will never be noticed in a way that bad design will. That’s exactly why good design is good design. We’re not saying that good design is invisible or effortless, we’re saying that good design serves its function by enhancing or outperforming the expectations of the experience. That’s all.
What’s important for a potential client to know is that the benefits of good design can far outweigh the initial monetary investment. In return, bad design can cost you more than it’ll ever bring in. So you get our point when we say that it’s important to have a clear goal and the right intent. And hiring a great design agency, of course. 1 + 1 = 11 and all that.
Good design will set your business apart, or if you want to (we would be surprised) make it blend in. It can strengthen the bond with your customer or it can break it. It understands ethics and the power of deception. It can bring your business into the present and make it relevant again, or it can just as easily set you back ten years. It’s safe to say that as long as you know your goal and hire professionals that ask for a good design brief with clear constraints, your odds at getting a good result have just increased tenfold.
Can anyone promise you a great end result? No — just like a driving school can’t ever guarantee they’ll make you a great driver. Can the right circumstances, the right designer, experience, and the right client improve the odds tremendously? Yes! All we can promise you is that at some point you will need good design and a wonderful design agency to help you out. And we hope that when that time comes around, you’ll think of us.
If you, after reading this article, already suspect that you are in need of our services, feel free to reach out! We are always happy to help.