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How to Spot an Effective Design
-by Jason Amunwa
One of the hardest things to do as a client is objectively evaluate work submitted to you. After all, you’ve hired other people to do it for you because they’re the experts, right? Nowhere is this more true, in my humble opinion, than in the field of design. It’s easy to mistake design as the simple act of “making it pretty”, but a lot more goes into it than you’d think. Often, clients will make the mistake of allowing their personal preferences on colors, fonts, etc. to obscure what would otherwise be a logical and well-designed piece of communication.
Below, you’ll find a few tips on how to judge whether or not a design is objectively ‘good’ for your purposes – after all, you want to get the best design for your money, right?
Put yourself in your customers’/audience’s shoes
The very first thing you should do when looking at a design is forget about yourself. Unless you are the only person in the world who is intended to view this particular design, you need to empathize with the actual end-users: your customers. Only by viewing the work from your customers’ perspective will you be able to suggest changes that will make it better for them – which in turn will make the design more effective for you. Design is art with a purpose, so keep the ultimate goal of the work firmly in mind as you review it, and chances are it’ll be more effective.
What’s the black hole?
By this, I mean which single element within the design exerts the strongest pull on your eye? Is it the logo? The headline? The image? Once you’ve established this, consider whether this helps or harms the objective of the work as a whole. Do you want people to know who is communicating with them via this message, or is that a given? Do they need to take action (usually, yes, they do)? If so, what?
This doesn’t necessarily have to apply to one single item – there should be a clear hierarchy in the elements, with the most important attracting your eye more than the less important.
Ride the river
In keeping with the tip to empathize with your customer, try to watch yourself as you interact with this design, whether it’s reading a poster, looking through a website design, etc. Is there a natural progression in the information, or does it feel fragmented and disjointed? Is your eye able to easily scan the piece and retrieve the necessary information, or do you strain to concentrate?
A good design will have considered the needs of the audience, and structured the layout and information to enable the viewer to relax and be carried through the necessary information smoothly – almost like riding a river downstream. In an inner-tube. While the sun shines on your face. Ahhh…
A bad design makes you feel like you’re swimming upstream against a raging river, like salmon during mating season. Oh, and there are bears trying to catch you. Like this.
Trust your gut
I espouse this approach in my article Getting the Best out of Your Freelancers, but I’ll say it again: reviewing a piece of work can oftentimes be difficult, involving hours spent pondering over pro’s and cons, second-guessing and mind-changing. Solid decisions are frequently made in the blink of an eye, though – much like how your customers will when they see a piece of work for the first time. Therefore, when presented with a piece of work, take note of your gut reaction to it. Don’t block out other considerations, but don’t necessarily reject them outright, simply because they occurred to you in the first couple of seconds, either.
Is there a pattern?
No, I don’t mean checking for paisley (unless you’re into that kind of thing). What I mean is: humans are hard-wired for pattern recognition, and we spot them quickly and efficiently (sometimes even when they’re not really there – ever been cloud-watching?). Effective design creates a consistent and logical pattern – a language, if you will – which allows the user to become familiar with it over time, and therefore interact with it more efficiently. Example: everywhere on the web, you see certain words underlined and in blue – we all know they’re clickable links. Design, plus time and experience has taught us to have this expectation wherever we see them – a common visual language that needs no explanation.
Click here, then, to see this system completely break down.
Nothing happened, right? This is what happens when an inconsistent design is used – it’s not a link, just some blue, underlined text. Make sure the design isn’t setting up false expectations from your audience, which leads to confusion, frustration, and ultimately, missed opportunities.
Jason Amunwa is a marketing Macgyver, with experience creating innovative campaign strategies, designing creative executions across multiple channels, and most of the stuff that happens in-between, for brands big and small. He writes for marketing blog The Zest, loves talking tech and marketing strategy, and is suspicious of helicopters.
Jason, thanks for this great article. You have a great blog, and it’s always good meet another fan of Orange.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..How to be a six-brained blogger
Thanks for the opportunity, Dave! Hope you Website-in-a-Weekenders find it helpful.
What if two sections of a blog “fight” with each other over design identity…which do you serve…brand identity by staying consistent, or subject identity by styling for the general topic?
That was clear as mud. Let me clarify with an example:
My blog, http://www.JuicyMaters.com, has 5 general topics…food, yurts, homesteading, politics, and my weird mental wanderings (essentially a (hopefully) humerous life journal).
Stylistically, it caters to the homesteading/yurts/food readers and my mental wanderings slide in well. A nice, warm, homey, “let’s sit and talk” look, right down to my choice of font.
That clashes with the political section. It is intended to be hardhitting, call it like it is commentary…and “homey” doesn’t really fit.
So…does politics stay the same, going with the main branding of the other sections, or do I restyle that one section, breaking the branding continuity, in order to better fit the topic?
Bob
Hi Bob
There’s no reason why you can’t run more than one blog, if you wanted to dedicate the time to it. I’d say if you’re serious enough about the political blogging, just create a dedicated look for it, and host it under a different domain name (or just buy the domain name, and redirect visitors to the politics section).
Jason´s last post ..Tastes like checkin- How Foursquare can beat Facebook Places
Jason, beyond the ease of keeping up with one site vs two, I have specific reasons for wanting to keep the whole thing under the JuicyMaters.com umbrella. With that said, should the styling of the political topic section emulate the JuicyMaters look in a concession to branding, or should it be styled to more closely match the topic?
Bob
Hey Bob
If that’s the case then, I say style the political section differently. You say you want it to be a bit more hard-hitting, which is very different from the look and feel of the rest of your site, so go for it!
If you’re seeking other opinions, I’d also recommend you post a question on LinkedIn and see what the community there has to say.
Jason´s last post ..Tastes like checkin- How Foursquare can beat Facebook Places
Thanks for information, I just knew. For indeed I am a new blogger from Indonesia. Thanks! Hopefully I can take a valuable lesson from this blog.
I’m weak at designing and I only assess my site’s web design on how it looks coz that’s what only matters to me before. But when I read your post, I learned many things on its purpose and how things should be when trying to optimize a site in and out. Thanks Jason!
@Faisal & @Jay Cool, I’m glad it helped!
Jason´s last post ..Tastes like checkin- How Foursquare can beat Facebook Places
Great tips! As what you had mentioned, this is the hardest thing to do – to decide and to select for the best. You need to be a good critic. You need to weigh some essential things. What may be best to your eyes, may be worst for others. Sometimes, it’s good to ask the opinion of others so that you can decide the right thing.
Agreed, good point, Lyan!
It can also go too far the other way, if you ask too many other people for an opinion, and end up watering down a design to appease conflicting advice.
It’s all about striking a balance between catering to the needs of the end user, but also having the clarity of your own vision to know what’s right for your needs – takes patience and practice.
Jason´s last post ..Tastes like checkin- How Foursquare can beat Facebook Places
With knowledge of your particular industry or niche it shouldn’t be that difficult to determine the best layout. This site is a perfect example of a well executed layout, it is easy to read and in the information flow is natural.
Mark´s last post ..Time for Laundry Detergent Brands to Change Laundry Cups
Thanks! I quite like it myself. But I also really like Amanda (the designer), and I’m a fan of these colors… which I have been told put some people off.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..5 Tips for Social Media Efficiency
I couldn’t agree more, it’s all about your audience. Getting inside their heads and putting yourself in their shoes it is what makes a winning design.
There is no reason that a design can’t be attractive, even innovative, while still maintaining the highest standards in accessibility.
Blog Angel a.k.a. Joella´s last post ..As a Blogger- How Do You Measure Success
@Joella & @Mark: Exactly. It’s a pet peeve of mine when I hear a designer rail against the specific quirks of a given medium, simply because the beauty of their art is compromised. Great design has to function great, as well as be pretty. If it’s ugly but works well, there’s room for improvement. If it’s beautiful, but doesn’t function, it’s an abject failure.
Jason´s last post ..Tastes like checkin- How Foursquare can beat Facebook Places
Art can exist in any medium. People that say otherwise have another agenda.
99% of the clients do not think that much. They do not understand many things and they just like it or not. Even if it is perfect they will want to change some things, just because they need to be a part of it.
I hear ya, James.
I’m reminded of an anecdote about a company (can’t remember the name) that hired a consultant to help revive sales of their flagship instant cake mix product. After months of work and millions in fees, the consultant called the board of directors together to present his recommendations.
Once everyone was seated, the consultant pulled an egg out of his pocket and rolled it down the conference room table. He let everyone puzzle over this for a minute, then proceeded to explain that the reason people were turning away from the product was because simply adding water and heating the oven wasn’t enough involvement – customers wanted to feel like they contributed something to the process. So the answer was to change the instructions on the packet to have the customer add an egg. Sales lifted almost instantly.
For some reason, that story has always stuck with me, and I’m reminded of it when thinking about client management – they get understandably tense when they send money into the ether and have no input until the work is almost done. I’ve always viewed the ideal scenario as a partnership – the client knows their business better than anyone, and I’m there to provide the marketing smarts. Together, we win; divided, the work suffers.
Jason´s last post ..Tastes like checkin- How Foursquare can beat Facebook Places
For me, it’s not about what I like, it’s thinking about what the ‘customers’ will find more useful / interesting and converting.
Great article Jason
Matthew Needham´s last post ..How to handle the emotional turmoil of being a freelancer
Thanks Matthew!
Yes, ultimately a design is used by the viewer/visitor/customer, so they’re mostly the boss – but that doesn’t mean you can’t have any personal say in how you provide them what they want =)
Jason Amunwa´s last post ..Do you accept consumer influence as currency
the most website layout design I hate is Black’s one, I love white Website They are pretty and easy to read I hope Lot Of webmaster Start to change the Layout To white
gweb´s last post ..Promotion With Blogs For Rookies
Any website that has blue, red, pink and orange together will not work.
Lol trust me I have made this mistake before. I think nowadays when it comes to desiging a nice looking website less is more.
Chris@Gold Miners´s last post ..Is Gold Miners Stocks On The Verge Of Breaking Out
GPO (green/purple/orange) is also difficult, and it’s not for everyone. However, GPO does form a natural color triad.
I use http://colorschemedesigner.com for both generating an initial scheme, and tweaking existing.
Hey Chris
My thought is: not necessarily =)
For your consideration, I submit http://skittles.com/
Colors and interface all over the place, but I dare you not to spend at least 3 minutes looking around, all while looking like o_O …
When it comes to color scheme, it all depends on your goals.
Jason Amunwa´s last post ..Do you accept consumer influence as currency
My God.
Like it or lump it, http://skittles.com is definitely stupendous.
Haha, taste the rainbow! They command it!
Jason Amunwa´s last post ..Do you accept consumer influence as currency
I’ve run into some of those same dilemmas when trying to nail down my customer’s tastes. I usually always think I have a better design layout over there’s, but after joint discussions, we come to the middle and have a site that is as strong as it can be. Very nice article.
Kyle | Kansas City Marketing´s last post ..Lucky Number 13!
Thanks Kyle. Yep, what you described is the ideal scenario, even though it can feel like the client’s simply disregarding your advice at the time.
I always try to remind myself (and them) that I know how to market, but they know their business, and we can only succeed by listening to each other.
“Kum-by-yah!” =)
Thanks for information, I just knew. For indeed I am a new blogger from Vietnam. Thanks! Hopefully I can take a valuable lesson from this blog.
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