What’s so bad about the artist?

An artist creates works of art that are expressions of his thoughts and feelings. He is attached to his work emotionally as it is essentially part of him. While most designers are artists at some level, and artistic sensibilities play a huge role in crafting effective design, the artist must not be allowed to rule when it comes to work for clients. Why? Because the artist is too emotionally attached to the work. When a client, or colleague, criticizes the work, the artist takes it as a criticism of himself. And it’s understandable that he would. To the artist, this piece of design is representing his thoughts and feelings expressed in color, layout and type. He thought to himself during the process of designing, “Man wait until people see this, they’re going to be blown away!”. What he should have been thinking is, “Man, this is going to do exactly what the client wants to get done, in a creative way.”This mentality is focused on client needs and the solution to their problem and not a focus on self-gratification.

Killing my own artist

I have had to come to grips with this personally. And it wasn’t easy. There was a client that was great from the get go. They seemed flexible, they liked the work in my portfolio, they pointed out some sites that they liked and colors that they were looking to use. All good. So I got to work. I was pumped. The design was looking awesome. One of my personal best, in my opinion. I was so excited to show the client the first mockup and to hear them say “Wow, that is so incredible! Thanks for going the extra mile.” Boy was I surprised when I heard “I don’t get how you got the idea that this is what we were looking for. It looks nothing like the sites we showed you that we liked.” My heart sank. I couldn’t understand it. I put so much of myself into the design. And that was the problem. I was designing for me, not the client and their problem. In the end I had to start over and I got the job done for them in a way that pleased them and solved their problem. In my opinion the end product wasn’t as nice artistically than the first design, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that the client got what they paid for.

Conclusion

Now I’m not saying that you should not try to push yourself to create the best work you can, or that we shouldn’t use our artistic sensibilities in what we do. I’m just saying that maybe we need to redefine what “best” means to us as individuals. Is it great work if it solves the problem for the client but dosen’t get praise from your peers. I think so. Sometimes we have to bite the bullet and do things that we may not be fully on board with just to please our clients, because that is why we are in business.

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles being published these days on whether or not to use a graphics program, like Photoshop or Fireworks, to design mockup of a website. The new trend seems to be going towards designing in browser using mostly markup and skipping Photoshop all together. There have been lots of great articles written by some really good designers who subscribe to this technique (This one is especially good).

Some good points

At first the technique sounded like it could be a good idea. And for some projects I think it would be. A content-heavy site that would need to have a stiff structure to organize the content could be designed with mostly markup, as the graphic elements would be minimal. It would certainly be easier for the client to grasp what the site would look like in the browser, and it would also cut out a step in the process. These are all great points.

I still use Photoshop.

Most of the sites that I design are for small businesses. These clients needs a site that gives voice to their message through the design. Using Photoshop to create my mockups allows me, in my opinion, to be a bit more creative and push the boundaries. I get to let my artistic instincts guide me. Making revisions to the PSD is much simpler that messing with the code. Getting things lined up and approved before the coding part makes the whole thing go much more smoothly. Also, code is boxy. And when you start with code, I would imagine that it would be hard to get away from that square look. This article is a good counter point to the in-browser argument.

Like I said, I could see designing in-browser with mark-up as beneficial for some projects, but not all. I think that it would behoove (yes, behoove) any designer to adopt both techniques and apply them accordingly.