Throughout my life I learned a few important things. One of them that always has stuck with me is the idea of the importance of the process. No matter what you do, how you do it and how you get there is just as important as the end result. The process is just as important...
Good design comes with experience, but also revising and taking your time. Design isn’t about owning a tool on your computer or having a folder full of free fonts. Design is about taking an idea and creativity communicating it to your audience. This article will describe a few key steps that I take with every...
I believe that everything is designed. Whether intentionally, or by complete accident; everything designed is created by a series of decisions. Design is goals set into action. Goals are one of the foundational parts of design. Whether it’s a web, brand, print or apparel project – goals are the steps we take to execute on...
As a designer, it gets hard to become inspired. It’s one of those constant struggles where you look and search and seek to find inspiration in every place around you. This post is about how to find inspiration and what I do, personally, to become inspired. Hopefully this may, ahem, inspire you to find some...
Functionality without beauty is meaningless. Today I listened to S. Sagmeister shares his thoughts on a podcast about how Design without functionality will be embarrassing to us in the future and that he compared it to Soviet design following the collapse of the Bauhaus era. Beauty is a human element that is needed in all...
Driving decisions on dollars and conversion is half the battle – keeping design human centered is key. I sat in a room and listened to an executive describe design direction and his recommendation on color palettes based on his personal preference. This decision of a color battle had been ongoing at this company for years....
When I was a kid, I was sitting in my mothers old Ford Pinto at a gas station waiting for her to fill up the car. I found a yellow bottle under the seat – it looked promising so I took a sip. Little did my 5 year old self know, it was window washing...
While at Disney, I served as part of the weekly Style Guide Counsel. The goal was two-fold – 1. To present new work and ideas; then discuss how these fit into the overall brand strategy with the design platform (Note: when I say “design platform” I mean everything from development, ux, content and visual work)....
What’s stopping you from pursuing your dreams? Yourself. It’s perfectly okay to not know what you want to do, even though you want to do something different than what you’re doing now. Being stuck at a dead-end job, having uninspiring people in your life, or relationship problems can do that to a person. It’s totally...
One of the hardest things as a designer is to constantly have an eye for detail. It’s like a disease that every designer is cursed with. But, with the increase of responsive design, I believe that we, as designers, are forced to change our process and with this comes the changing of our focus. Do...