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....
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)....
With the ever increasing growth of technology, devices, responsive design, and a mobile-first content driven user experience on the web; it’s becoming clear that the face of web design is changing. There is an increasing gap within web design and other industries of design. The more we progress further into new technology, new capabilities and...
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...
Design is best served when you tear something completely apart to understand how it can best be put back together, finding all flaws and areas to improve along the way. Don’t be afraid to destroy something, only to rebuild it from the ground up to make it better than it was. You have to be...
Creativity isn’t some magical measuring stick to determine who’s “special” in society vs. who operates at a lesser level. Many times I find people referring to me as “the creative” or the “most creative” or something along those lines. To be completely honest, I am no more “creative” than any other human on earth. This...
Approaching responsive design requires more attention to detail than just scaling down images or text to fit within a certain screen size. It requires the art of understanding not only how a design will look at various viewports, but how it will be built in a way that will work flawlessly across any screen size....
This article focuses on delivering content to your audience based on the device they are using. Tell the same story in various ways. I am not a copywriter. But design without content on the web is meaningless and provides no value to your audience. Content and copy is what makes the web valuable. That being...
While I was in college I took a ton of art classes. One of my favorite courses was my oil painting course. The amount of technical skill I developed was incredible. It helped me to refocus how I approach art and my craft. One of the most valuable things I learned, and took away with...
I once worked with a designer who held a great disdain for creative reviews. They believed that there should be no single person providing feedback, comments or approvals for overall creative design strategies. The designer felt that this approach was authoritarian and dictates a single design vision that gives too much power to one person....