Design of a Funeral Programme

I make this post to outline the thinking process that I put into the design of my grandfather’s funeral program. Consider it something like the director’s comments that come with a movie: only interesting for those interested in how things are made. Apart from the obvious informational purpose of the funeral programme there were two further purposes; to connote something about my grandfather and to potentially last as a family history document. I made design decisions with this in mind.

The front cover and it’s inside front contain family history information. The inside back and back cover contain funeral service information. The programme can be cut down the middle if only one half is desired. The programme can be folded inside out to protect the photograph during transit.
Name and date information placed to allow framing in an A5 frame or to trim the name and frame closer to the photograph Three different photo choices attempt to provide a prompt for conversation at the service and act like a collectible series.

Family history information fits within the area of the photograph so that can be kept if the photograph is put into an album. This was more important than rigidly maintaining typographic rhythm with the opposite leaf.

Large typography so that it is comfortable to read at the funeral service and will better stand up to aging. Additional line-space added to group sections of the service, lighten the feel of the page and provide visual landmarks when glancing for information.

Consistent typographic hierarchy and a three column grid unifies the pages.

Production Notes

Budget and time considerations meant a larger run of about 80 programs on 120gsm glossy satin stock and a limited run of fancier programmes intended for close family.

Photographs are on archive paper, fixed with acid free photography squares. Bockingford paper is also acid free. It was a bit more expensive but should last for a few decades.

While printers have large catalogues of paper stock, most of it must be ordered in. The timeline for a funeral meant I could not wait. Bockingford felt like granddad; classy, solid, even if a bit rough. Garamond seemed to be a fitting typeface for the same reasons.

The guy at printing.com in Frankton was incredibly helpful. Get to know your printer and talk to them early about your job. Printing.com did the 120gsm satin gloss run of about 80 sheets.

Bockingford Watercolour came in artist pads – I separated the leaves, removed the adhesive and found somebody who would feed them through their machines. Thanks Warehouse Stationery!

I was concerned about how much toner drop out there’d be on the Bockingford. That meant an early test print of fancy tiny typefaces with stokes widths from the hairline to the bold. Less toner drop than I expected – just a very slight tasteful amount.

I’m don’t normally work much in print so I’m a bit unfamiliar with InDesign. I spent most of my design time trying to remember how to use the thing! I almost gave up to use something more familiar (Word *cough*) but InDesign’s beautiful text rendering made me perservere. Well worth it. Also, I’m not ashamed to admit I was saved by YouTube tutorials more than once.

Design Demons: The Demons at War

I received the following message from a reader:

I am the creative type. It is easy for me to focus on stuff but I find it hard to make myself disciplined. I am strict about the arts I produce though, I hate flaws and I am very detailed. But I tend to give up and tense up easily if I meet an obstacle. I start blaming myself and getting so stressed I get no work done. Is it still possible for me to pursue design? I am not a very productive person but I have concentration and passion for art. I just don't have the discipline and hard work to stick through it.

I think that the commenter can do well in design for this overriding reason: They are reflecting upon themselves and their projects. However, for now, they are probably over criticising.

The Design Demons are a good way to examine this situation. The Critic and Creative demons are fighting while the Pragmatic demon is ignored. This leads to feeling depressed and frustrated with projects.

In detail: The Creative demon has an amazing idea which the designer works on for a while but the Critic keeps saying that the work is not good enough yet. The project runs into rather normal problems and that further infuriates the Critic: “this isn’t good enough! Why can’t you do this?” The Creative demon becomes frustrated at the lack of exciting progress and so begins to interrupt with new ideas. Both the Creative and Critic are so noisy that neither pays attention to the Pragmatist demon. Eventually the project is abandoned out of frustration and the excitement of the new.

Here is a technique to strengthen the Pragmatist demon while taming the Creative and Critic demons.

1. Maintain a list of potential projects. Record new ideas but do not act on them immediately.
2. Set a deadline ahead of time: e.g. Today I have 3 hours to finish a project.
3. Choose a goal OUTPUT from the list of potential projects.
4. Execute.
5. Post OUTPUT online.
6. Repeat as necessary.

The focus of this exercise is on quantity of outputs with quality constrained by time. The deadline must be set before the project is decided and the deadline should be close. What tangible output can be completed before the deadline? The deadline limits the size of the idea but the designer can attempt a part of a larger idea provided that part is posted online by the deadline. The Pragmatic demon will learn to estimate project size better with practice.

The Creative demon may interrupt with new ideas so take two minutes to record the idea. Maybe the idea will be chosen later and maybe it will not. If the Creative demon stays too noisy then consider having a "No New Projects" week, or month. New projects can be recorded anytime but only projects listed at the start of the time period can be attempted. The Creative demon must learn when to be quiet.

The deadline will encourage the Pragmatic demon to challenge Critic demon: “We only have 30 minutes left, just how important is fixing this flaw?” The Pragmatist can work with the other demons to solve project problems: the Creative loves coming up with novel solutions while the Critic can iterate solutions quickly.

This article advises how the strong critical and creative designer can become a bit more pragmatic. More broadly, this article gives an example of how dysfunctional relationships between the Design demons are a useful model for examining designer psychology.

Design as Simple Complexity

In 1963 Buckminster Fuller introduced the Design Science movement. The movement was largely abandoned within a decade because science (as we know it) does not explain design well. Horst Rittel's explanation of "wicked problems" and the methods approaches of Bruce Archer are more useful explanations with better outcomes.

Our current scientific method (called hypothetico-deductivism) makes predictions and then tests those predictions. If a prediction is not disproved enough times then eventually it becomes theory. The problem is all those experiments take time and control over the variables.

The more time taken to research increases the likelihood of feedback where effects loop back and cause changes to the thing being studied. In an area like design, feedback loops can be extremely quick; an Internet Meme can rise and fall in a matter of days. Science cannot always move fast enough and even if it does the conclusions reached might no longer be applicable as the feedback loops increase. Once research is published then it too feeds back into the system - stimulating differentiating rebellions and copy-cat self-fulfilling prophecies.

Science can explain things like Universal Aesthetics because the feedback loops are less problematic. But there are only a few such areas of design with this property. Science can be like trying to explain boxing by examining the posts and ropes because they are not as complex as understanding events inside the ring.

Science typically assumes that a problem can be broken into small parts which can be solved individually (reductionism) and the conclusions reassembled. This works if the relationships between the parts is simple and well understood - the variables can therefore be easily controlled. But relationships between design elements is complex so that controlling variables too greatly results in studies with narrow conclusions.

What are narrow conclusions? Research seeks the simplest theory that explains the most. Narrow conclusions are where a study is so focused, the variables controlled so tightly, that conclusions are not easily generalizable. A very narrow study might examine just one design (e.g. one app or a website). The outcomes of narrow studies are probably useless to somebody who isn't facing a near identical problem.

Since hypothetico-deductivist science has problems explaining design due to feedback loops and narrow conclusions then what might be a good approach? Surely there has to be something more rigorous than connoisseurship, visual intelligence or intuition? It turns out that there might be; Complex Adaptive Systems Theory is improving techniques towards a Science of Complexity. This area fits quite well with what Rittel and Archer were articulating.

Complex systems have agents that signal each other via relationships. Feedback loops are just natural parts of the system. There is also the property of emergence - where very simple interactions create the appearance of complex behaviour by the whole system. A complex system is more than just the sum of its parts.

Designers know about the dangers of mindless deconstruction and that design is synergestic. The whole is greater than the parts. Here’s a word play; make deconstruction = reductivism and synergy is emergence. Complexity science seems to be a good fit.

Computer based tools for working with complexity are improving beyond what Rittel and Archer had available. Design could now be treated as an applied domain within complexity science. Complexity is not a silver bullet (or golden hammer) but it could produce insights with a rigor that our intuition-based methods alone cannot provide. What might we do with such understanding? How about better design education and better design software.

Design Demons: The Pragmatist Demon

An earlier post gave an overview of the design demons: Creative, Critic and Pragmatist. This post takes a closer look at the Pragmatist Demon. A designer should develop ability in each of the each of their demons so that the overall team is stronger.

The Pragmatist demon ensures that things gets done. The Pragmatist can be overly economical and un-ambitious in the quest to get things completed. When the Critic Demon is insisting on quality and the Creative demon is insisting on novelty, an overly strong pragmatist can overrule these to complete a solution that is too watered down. The Critic demon is most useful at the beginning of a project (feasibility) and at near the end (deadline crunch). The Pragmatist demon will stifle good ideas from the Creative demon if the Pragmatist is too loud during the concepting phase. The Pragmatist demon's favourite word is: trade-off.

The problem with trade-offs is that the value of a project can be deleteriously compromised if the novelty or quality is watered down.

The underdeveloped Pragmatist demon is unable to set and meet deadlines. The underdeveloped Pragmatist will allow the Creative demon too long to discover the perfect idea and allow the Critic demon to continually nitpick at problems in the design. A person with a weak Pragmatist demon may be full of good ideas and even have some projects started - but little is actually finished.

The strength of the Pragmatist demon can be improved through practice. Set clear constraints (budget, materials, deadlines) for projects and stick to them. Completing work is the life-force of this demon. Any study into process, workflow and project management will permanently strengthen this demon. Writing proposals and problem solving in constrained situations are the Pragmatic demon's gym workout.

The noisy pragmatist will unnecessarily hurry the Creative and Critic demons into doing substandard work. The noisy Pragmatist will discourage the Creative demon by saying the ideas are impractical. By prematurely constraining the Creative demons then concepts might be unnecessary weak. The noisy Pragmatist might overrule the quality decisions of the Critic and this could ruin the polish of the project. However, a noisy pragmatist that gets work out the door is probably the least worst noisy demon because getting stuff done matters most.

A noisy Pragmatist demon can be taught to speak only in turn. Force yourself to use a standard process for projects and do not deviate from the standard process without permission from a mentor. Allow the Creative and Critic demons space to speak before applying "practical" constraints.

A weak Pragmatist demon is best trained through the successful completion of many projects. One way to do this by setting constrained projects (time, budget, other) that must have an output. This will improve the Pragmatist's ability to estimate feasibility going into a project and the constraints will force the Pragmatist to balance priorities in the later stages.

A strong Pragmatist demon is important for a designer to select good projects and complete them on time and in budget. Working to improve the Critic demon will give long term benefit to the designer because completed projects are better than incomplete projects.

DPI & Compression Problems - demo PDF

Seasoned print designers know all about DPI, but it is difficult to convince design students unless they are shown an example as to what can go wrong. I made this sheet where the same image is shown at the same size except in 300dpi, 70dpi and 30dpi. I also included a badly compressed JPEG so that students will know what to look for.

The correct DPI to use will always depend on the printer that is being used so ask! If the DPI is too small then some blurring and pixellation will occur. This can be seen where the text is not clear and where there are square step blocks.

The poorly compressed JPEG shows how the textural detail in the wall and sky are flattened out and bruising artefacts appear where there is a change in contrast (e.g. around the text).

Having a poorly compressed JPEG and DPI that is too low is a double blow to the quality of the output image.

Feel free to share the document. Link: The DPI Problems PDF

Note
maximum_display_size_in_inches = pixel_size divided by the DPI
   (there are 2.5cm in an inch. So, approximately 4 inches in 10cm)

A Question of Professional Ethics and Friends

Professionalism and ethics questions between two parties are fairly cut and dried. However, things can very quickly get murky when muliple parties are involved. Justice asked me to advise on a situation.

Justice works for DesignStudio and they have a large client account BigClient. Recently BigClient employed an in-house designer called Riley. Coincidentally Justice and Riley happen to be friends who both move in the same active social circles. One day Justice overhears the DesignStudio execs wondering why they are now getting less work out of BigClient than before. They are discussing the latest design outputs of BigClient and wondering where they are coming from. Justice knows from social conversation with Riley that Riley turned out better than BigClient expected so BigClient is giving more work to Riley instead of taking it to DesignStudio.

Should Justice tell the DesignStudio bosses or not? I would say no.

Telling DesignStudio bosses might win some brownie points and demonstrate loyalty towards DesignStudio. But Riley probably did not intend the information about extra work to go any further than the social group. If DesignStudio bosses acted on this information and spoke with BigClient then that might make things difficult between BigClient and Riley.

One could think that Riley should be more careful with what they say but add in a couple of drinks and people toasting each other's accomplishments for the week and it's easy to let things slip. Telling the DesignStudio bosses is acting in the employer's best interests but loyalty between friends should count too.

There needs to be some leeway and forgiveness between friends. Firstly it would be a sad world where friends could not privately discuss some aspects of their work out of fear of being taken advantage of. People need safe places to vent their excess emotions; happy or sad. Secondly this time Riley let slip some information, next time it could be Justice innocently doing the same. Friendship is not about one-foot-wrong and you get taken advantage of. A good friendship will outlast a job.

For these reasons, if I was Justice, I would not tell my bosses about Riley. DesignStudio's Account Managers will probably be told if they contact BigClient directly and ask.

(Scenario based on a true story, real names not used)

“Should I study graphic design?” Jobs, Career, Money

Having a suitable personality is only one part of the decision to study design. In these economic times (Economic Crisis during 2012) students thinking going to design school need more certainty that there are jobs, careers and money after graduation.

There are jobs in graphic design in the skills NZ employers want. These are; advanced web, mobile, and cross-media design. There are some jobs in other media and the competition for these jobs is fierce.

In 2012 Web design is no longer a specialist role – it is now part of the overall package expected of an entry level designer. Many first jobs expect a cross-media designer who can apply a consistent visual look across many mediums. Specialist web design roles require advanced HTML/CSS with at least one of the following; mobile design, front-end development (such a jQuery), serverside skills or CMS skinning.

The NZ Government Careers advice section now says:

Number of design graduates increasing, which has created more competition for jobs. Because of the high numbers of design graduates, competition for most entry-level design jobs is high. Employers often prefer to hire people who have specialist knowledge and/or experience with design programs. People wanting to enter design jobs may have work on a short-term or freelance basis, or volunteer their time, before they can get full-time work.

Why is website gloomy? Their definition of graphic design is narrow and outdated. Print is seen as key and web only gets the barest mention. This does not reflect the reality of the job market.

Now entry level jobs pay less, expect more and require new hires to be immediately profitable. There is no time or patience to train because employers can be choosy. A new entrant designer might earn just over minimum wage until they have proven themselves. Employers now use word of mouth to fill entry-level positions because they do not want to deal with the hundreds of unsuitable applicants who apply to any and every design job ad. How does this affect the decision where to study design?

Does the design school have specific training in the skills, mediums and technology that are currently employing. One red-flag phrase you might hear is: “Technology changes but good design does not”. This view ignores the rising role of the aesthetics of time and interaction and neglects how a viewer's relationship with a medium affects communication. Each medium has its own peculiarities that require specific skill masteries. Furthermore, that red-flag line would be unaffected if the students were trained in more employable mediums. It is simply no longer enough to hope an overall strong aesthetic sense will be enough without employable media skills. Consider also how the school is working with future technology. Graphic design and technology have always gone hand in hand and big changes are coming.

A good design school will have a strong visual culture. Most will claim they do but check the work by attending their graduate exhibitions. Look at the typography. Look for a variety of work in different styles. Look for consistency of design across mediums. The work should be aesthetically rounded and conceptually pushing boundaries.

How successful are graduates of the school jobs in design? While finding you a job is not the design school's role, the percentages of graduates transitioning from study to jobs in graphic design within six months of graduation can be telling. Beware of the super-star stories; “Famous Person studied here”, "we have graduates working for Famous Company". A few super-stars is not a good indicator of an excellent course because some people will just succeed despite their education. Instead look at what happens to the average graduate. How are the B students doing?

There are far easier ways to make a living than graphic design but it is a very rewarding field full of change and challenge.

Read more articles about graphic design careers.

Design Demons: The Critic Demon

An earlier post gave an overview of the design demons: Creative, Critic and Pragmatist. This post takes a closer look at the Critic Demon. A designer should also seek to develop ability in each of the each of their demons so that the overall team is stronger.

The Critic Demon is more strongly related with the left side of the brain. It is the analytic thinker that evaluates and judges the ideas flowing from the Creative demon. The Critic demon can be overly picky and will have impossibly high standards. When the Critic demon is rejecting all ideas then perhaps trade-offs should be made in the design. The Critic demon is most suited to the development and refinement stages of the design process. The Critic demon will cripple the Creative demon if the Critic demon has influence during the Concepting phases. The Critic demon's favourite word is: Perfection.

The problem with perfection is that there is never a single solution and design is often a trade off between many competing factors.

The underdeveloped Critic demon will be unable to properly evaluate the ideas of the Creative demon. The underdeveloped Critic will allow poorly resolved and aesthetically unpolished work to progress. A person with a weak critic demon and good execution skills will make a high volume of rough work. They might be successful through volume alone.

The strength of the Critic demon can be improved through education, reflection and critique (see the critique section). Critical analysis and logical thought is the life-force of this demon. Any study into understanding of design theory, history and case studies will permanently strengthen this demon. The act of reviewing and thinking about design work - especially honest criticism confirmed by trusted peers - is the Critic demon's gym workout.

The noisy Critic will distract the Creative demon and may war with the Pragmatist demon during the later stages of the project. The Critic will discourage the Creative demon by saying how each idea of stupid and this will stop the Creative demon from leaping from idea to idea. The pragmatist will want to finish a project but the Critic demon will insist that it is completed properly before it can be released - even if this means expending more resources than allowed for the project. This can delay the delivery of a project.

A noisy Critic demon can be taught to speak only in turn. Use good conceptualizing procedures where the Creative is free to talk for a set period of time before the Critic can judge the ideas. Standard brainstorming technique is to simply record all ideas without judgment or editing for a set period of time and only then allow for the Critic to speak. Focusing on the resources allowed for a project (esp. the deadline) gives the Pragmatist demon enough power to overcome the Critic. A beginner design can delegate the critic function to a trusted and more experienced peer. This should eventually train the critic to influence at the most useful times.

A strong Critic demon is important for a designer to produce professionally polished works that are executed well. Working to improve the Critic demon will give long term benefit to the designer.

The “Temp” Designer

Many industries already use skilled pools of temporary workers. This allows employers to temporarily fill capacity or skill needs. There are many labourer pools that allow construction companies to have a more flexible workforce where they can scale capability where needed. New Zealand schools have shared pools of relief teachers. The IT industry contracts specialist workers into their customer companies. There is a business opportunity here for design studios.

The default answer for a flexible workforce in graphic design is to employ freelancers. But freelancers can be a risky hit and miss affair for companies who are less able to judge the abilities of freelancers. One solution could be for studios to provide contracted “temp” designers to their client companies. Instead of contracting by project the contract covers a temp in-house designer for set hours who works at the client premises. The designer remains an employee of the studio (not the client).

This enables a client to add capability or skills to an existing in-house design team or to have the advantages of an in-house designer with few of the downsides. The general advantages of in-house designers include; set budget, low overheads per project and quicker communication.

There are benefits for the clients that are unique to the temp. The first is that the studio provides a guarantee to the skill and ability level of the placement designer. This eliminates the risky hit and miss of hiring an in-house designer or engaging directly with freelancers. The temporary designer contract can also include some oversight; the designer is mentored by senior members of the studio. This gives experienced insight without much additional cost.

There are other benefits: the temp designer can be in the client placement part-time so that they are working alongside other designers some of the time. This will help in keeping their creative and technical skills sharp. The temp designer maintains access to advice from specialist colleagues. The studio also takes care of cover during holidays.

Where a client has an on-going need for graphic design work but cannot necessarily afford a fulltime designer then a temp designer can fill this need. Because the temp designer is probably a fulltime employee of their studio then the churn common with part-time employees is less of a risk.

Small design jobs can accumulate within a client organisation. Unfortunately the overheads in setting these up as projects under the usual studio-client relationship can be prohibitive relative to the size of the job. A temp in-house designer has much lower per-project overheads so can clear away these accumulated jobs quickly.

The temp designer is another service that a design studio can offer their clients. When used in the right situations then it can provide good value to the client and simplify the studio-client relationship for collections of small jobs. Temp designers can become another tool for the studio to keep their clients happy.

Scope Creep is your Friend

We all have those clients – the ones that have a huge idea but only a tiny budget. It is impossible to deliver on their grand vision but maybe you can help them with a first step. And then there is the “just had a cool idea” client who creates scope creep.

As design projects get larger with more deliverables and much more coding scope creep becomes a real issue. The default answer is to contract tightly so scope creep is prohibited. But without some scope creep the project risks becoming irrelevant to the client. The unhappy client then might look elsewhere for the next job.

Both these clients can be dealt with in much the same way. Project management techniques currently being explored in software development (Agile and Lean) have direct parallels to design projects. We can start with some fuzzy overall goals and then iterate towards them learning as we go. This means that what was once evil scope creep is now considered a vital part of thinking and learning about the needs of the project.

Some of the commercial designers I have spoken to recently have started doing something similar though the iteration was more driven by a sales need to generate more income from previous customers. The subtle shift in iterative design projects is to treat every customer as a relationship where you are both journeying together. Each small project is another step closer to the goal.

The sales script goes like this: Keep selling the customer on their enthusiasm for their big idea. Talk universe conquering stuff. Then get the client talking about a small first step. Make it something of real value but requiring little risk/effort by either side. Fit within the tiny budget.

Completing that first step project is like dating. Each party gets to see if things with the other will work out without having wasted too much energy. There is an implied expectation that further work will arise but client or designer are both free to depart at this point. That is the sales advantage of this approach – the client is already thinking about the next small job to do with your design company.

After that first step hold a "retrospective"/reflection both within the design studio and with the client. Were their processes that could be improved? What worked well? What could be improved? What did we learn from this project? What are the new ideas we have for the next small project? – see no longer evil scope creep but friendly extra business.

As small tasks are completed (and presumably you’ve been paid) momentum and energy begin to build around the project. Listen to the client and together agree on “next steps” that will bring value to their business.

For the free-lancer a few tasks will tell you if the client is worth building a relationship with. If the client has complex needs then consider offering to go on retainer so that they (and you) have greater control over the budget.

Working in small iterative projects with retrospection before quickly iterating helps to build stronger relationships and should result in projects that are more relevant. Treating scope creep as a positive thing will eliminate a source of negativity in the client-designer relationship. Scope creep is then your friend because it brings repeat business to you.

Responsive Web Design: Design Theory's Experimental Frontier

Some questions to ponder while reading:

• How does our understanding of grids change if the page size is no longer fixed?
• How does our understanding of typographic layout change if column sizes are no longer fixed?
• How does our understanding of visual hierarchy change if layouts are no longer fixed?

Important advances in simplifying the understanding of aesthetic formalism have often come about by quantifying design in mathematical terms. From the Greek golden section, to Müller-Brockmann's grids, the photographer's rule of thirds, the typographic scale, W3C colour contrast algorithms and Donald Knuth's work in computer typesetting - these all distil aesthetic ideas into formulas.

Traditionally the output mediums were of limited fixed sizes and so a sensible designer could redesign for a different size without much needed to quantify layout in response to weird output sizes. A few general rules of thumb and a good sense of aesthetics was all that was necessary.

Things have changed; Websites are now displayed on a wide variety of devices with different screen sizes and proportions. It used to be that a designer would simply ignore anything but desktop or design a second site for mobile. For over fifteen years web designers have been able to largely ignore increasing desktop screen-resolution by fixing their designs at a certain size within the browser window - effectively ignoring the live resizing of browser windows. This meant no difficult decisions regarding text-line lengths and image sizes relative to column sizes because this could all be fixed at design time. But as the number of devices increase (and thus variety of screen size) many web designers are realising that they should design responsively.

The gateway drug for responsive web design is the flexible grid. Designers are forced to think in terms of ratios (expressed in percentages) instead of pixels. Further to this as the web browser window size is moved into previously nonsensical proportions, the responsive web designer is faced with unique challenges to preserve "design integrity". Solving these challenges via flexible grids, media queries, typographic hacks and even changes to the visual hierarchy are forcing designers to express these visual relationships in code.

Responsive web design at its highest craft is about flexing within specified constraints then having alternative plans when those constraints are violated. How narrow can the browser window get before a column is dropped? How small can the logo go? How wide can a line of text be? All these decisions made by the responsive web designer and codified in CSS and JavaScript provide a living source of data for new understandings in layout and proportion.

Web designers are pragmatic people and don't like doing things twice. So as the body of aesthetic approaches in responsive web design grows many of these heuristics are becoming encoded into behaviours in JavaScript frameworks that are freely shared. Here, JavaScript and CSS code provide good documentation of the ratios and formulas at work. So while web designers pragmatically solve the problems of non-constant screen sizes, their experimentation leads to a new way to look at layout, proportion and hierarchy and this will lead to a greater understanding of mathematics of layout aesthetics.

Designer Work Style.

Nearly 20 years ago I was in a management paper and learned that workers exist on a continuum between the consistent 9-5er and the inconsistent burst worker. It is no surprise that creatives are burst workers. A person whose natural tendency is to work in bursts but who has learned to fit into the 9-5 paradigm will have significant swings in productivity and motivation during the workday. It's almost axiomatic that the more creative a person the less consistent they are.

Designers rise to the challenge of completing deadlines but can become easily exhausted. Much of our training of designers instils into them the primacy of the deadline above all else and this reinforces the burst personality. For the industry this is helpful in that it helps "get projects out the door" and the downtime is necessary for rest, recovery and reflection. The danger is that overwork is much more difficult to detect and burnout is a real risk.

Burst work is fine when project are of generally short duration (i.e. not months or years) and deadlines are not daily. But as our deadlines extend (larger projects particularly web and development) then burst working is less desirable. IT has the "deathmarch project" where the deadline is far away but everybody is pushed into overwork to make it and larger design projects carry the same risks.

My own experience is that there are very few designers who find the consistency of 9-5 easy who are also great visual creatives. The consistent 9-5ers are normally competent and reliable but lack that creative spark or flair. They may be great technically and/or quite good visually but they're likely never going to win a creative award.

Don't knock them because their consistent workers are an important part of a design team. Not only do they handle the routine jobs more accurately and with less frustration, they also provide a yardstick of "normalcy" to their peers. They remind people that families are waiting, the sun goes up and down and the tides go in and out. They are living examples that despite our obsessive tendencies towards our projects and deadlines that there are more important things.

Burst work could be why we place so much emphasis on professionalism - particularly punctuality and attendance. Just to try and counter-act the tendency towards relying on burst work instead of proper planning. Perhaps this is the Confucian balance to the natural tendency of designers. The Confucian education principle here is that education often involves strategies for handling imbalanced tendencies. "Be more aggressive" a passive person and "Be more passive" to an aggressive person. In this aspect design is pragmatic: we need to work together at overlapping times in a team and we should do that when our clients are active (i.e. the working day). It helps our socialisation to even loosely fit a working pattern common in our culture.

There is a danger: if we do successfully turn these normally naturally burst workers into consistent 9-5ers then we may kill what it is that gives them the creative spark. Mindless consistency is the enemy of creativity. Therefore a mixed burst-consistent approach might provide a compromise; the creative bursters are allowed an equivalent but more irregular schedule provided they meet deadlines.

This is just another of those things that makes design hard: the right amounts of consistency and burst, unbounded creativity and creative pragmatism, obssessiveness but with perspective maintained. And this provides important decisions for employers building a team: it's often not just about the skill set, but how their work-style fits the work you do.

Say Hello to Your Design Demons

Based upon more than a decade in graphic design education I have a working theory called “Design demons” to explain the psychology behind the design process. In a previous post I looked at how design schools grades matched particular designers. Design demons more specifically looks at how the personality of the designer relates to the design process and therefore acts as a basis for giving individualised advice for designers to develop themselves.

There are three primary demons in the designer’s mind that each battle for attention. These are the Creative, the Critic and the Pragmatist. The label demon was chosen because these are powerful forces that can both help and overwhelm. Each demon has a different level of loudness, ability and affinity for a stage of the design process.

The Creative demon is the divergent thinker. Full of enthusiasm, curiosity and ideas this demon always has a positive attitude: “Wouldn’t it be cool if .... “ The Creative demon is the wellspring of new ideas. The Creative demon is at their best during the early “Concepting” stages of the design process though the Creative demon can have a role to play in later stages for problem solving. However, if the Creative demon is always coming up with new ideas then the project will neither be polished nor finished on time.

The Critic demon evaluates ideas and judges them. A strong Critic demon enables the designer to choose their best concepts and refine them further. The Critic demon decides when an idea is good enough to pursue further. Therefore the Critic demon relates to the Development and Refinement stages of the design process. An overly negative Critic demon will trap a designer into constantly going back to the drawing board. A poorly developed critic is unable to make decisions.

The Pragmatist demon is the taskmaster. This demon watches the clock, the budget, the ability of the designer and other available resources. The demon tells the Critic demon to stop being so picky and to move on because the deadline is looming. A weak Pragmatist demon will miss milestones. An overly safe Pragmatist demon will only allow easy to produce, safe ideas to progress. The Pragmatist is most useful in the feasibility and production stages of the design process.

Developing ability in each demon is part of a good design education. For beginning designers they will learn to listen to each demon in turn as they progress through the design process. More experienced designers can allow all the demons to speak at once.

Example of Design Demons 1: Often highly creative people struggle in graphic design programs because their Critic demon is too weak to rank concepts and the Pragmatist demon is not strong enough to keep an eye on the clock. Right up to the last minute their loud Creative demon will be feeding them with crazy off-the-wall and impractical ideas. These people can become successful designers by reigning in the Creative demon and allowing the other demons room to develop.

Example of Design Demons 2: Sometimes a designer can get stuck in a loop where the Creative demon cannot come up with anything to satisfy the Critic demon. This is either a sign that the Critic demon is too loud and the Pragmatist demon needs to make the Critic demon choose something that is “good enough”. Or, it could be a sign that the designer needs additional help in developing ability in the Creative demon.

My hope is that thinking in terms of Design Demons helps educating designers and gives a framework for designers to self-evaluate their strengths.

Future Design Careers: Getting started in Infographics

This article follows up the post on Information Visualization Design careers with some practical tips to get started. Some of you gave feedback that this was an area of design that interested you and wanted to know how to get started.

Like any area of design a portfolio is everything. Start by building up a infographic pieces and add these to the general design portfolio. Use some publically available statistics on an interesting topic – perhaps something that is currently in the news. Approach a charity and pitch to do an info graphic for them pro bono. Once the portfolio contains a few infographic pieces then the designer can add infographic to their list of skills.

At present there are few jobs that are infographic only positions. Most will be design jobs where you may get the opportunity for infographic work. For now, an in-house designer in a progressive communications department probably has more opportunity to create infographics than a studio designer. An in-house designer could approach the Information System department an offer to work with them to produce infographics.

While infographics will be a big part of our future, the current state of affairs means that infographic designers must create opportunities for themselves by selling the idea of infographics to their clients. Current clients just do not understand what an infographic is or how it can be useful in decision making.

Current infographics are flat 2d pieces that are generally posters. There is opportunity to produce data visualizations that are in other formats like on web sites or large displays. However these will require some coding ability on the part of the designer. A designer who already has ability to code could utilize their skills to produce live data visualization graphics.

Finally, aspiring infographic designers should participate in the growing infographic community in order to stay up with latest trends, get inspiration and build an understanding of what good infographics are. Some website links follow.

• http://infosthetics.com
• http://www.coolinfographics.com
• http://submitinfographics.com
• http://thedailywh.at/tag/infographic
• http://infographicworld.com

Future Design Software: The ExerciseUI

Recent research (see Men’s Health, NPR & NYTimes) has shown that sedentary office jobs, like those of designers, shorten lives, increase heart disease and increase weight. Since the research is conclusive and given the numbers of sedentary computer users about to enter their 50’s in the next decade the risk of Health and Safety lawsuits for employers increases. Designers are particularly at risk due to the addition of deadline hyper-focus and overstress. Sedentary jobs could become the next biggest wave of health lawsuits since the OOS/RSI lawsuits of the 1990s. If this happens then work place computer usage will need to change to be less sedentary.

At first employers will provide subsidized gym memberships, but these will be of limited use because gym attendance needs extra hours in the day. Employers will mandate exercise breaks but stressed users will not take these when under deadline pressure. The solution will be to include more movement in the actual everyday usage of computers.

There already is a growing awareness of the fitness potential of gesture based user interfaces. Nintendo already sell exercise related games that are entirely gesture based under the Wii Fit name. PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect are Sony's and Microsoft’s answers to gesture based gaming. Since the exercise potential of gestural user interfaces is obvious then it will make sense to build exercise into the office computer user interfaces of the future. Imagine controlling your computer and getting a work-out at the same time. An ExerciseUI is the cross over between gestural user interfaces and physical fitness.

Since we already have widely available consumer gestural technology then the only barrier to adoption is social and cultural.

Widespread adoption of ExerciseUIs will cause gym memberships to fall. However, personal trainers can find new roles on user interface design teams where they will consult on safe and good mixtures of movement for users. Since exercise is a very individualized thing, offices will have consultant personal trainers who will work with users to customize their ExerciseUIs for their health and ability needs.

At first people will complain about the extra physical effort needed to drive the ExerciseUI but their fitness levels will gradually increase. Short-term productivity may decrease compared to current mouse GUIs but longer term productivity and morale should increase for many tasks. The reason is that more exercise will improve physical health, mental health and give happy endorphin boosts.

During periods of deadline stress the extra physical movements and speed to drive the computer faster will help burn off deadly overstress hormones. Stressful periods that overwork the body into anaerobic stiffness will physically force users to rest between tasks. This will help them mentally balance stressful work better as they learn to take breaks when their body forces them and rest their brains.

Workplaces will need to change dress codes to allow for more exercise friendly clothing. Showering facilities will also be needed. ExerciseUIs will also require a bit more space per user compared to current office cubicles.

Provided ExerciseUIs give good productivity for common office computing tasks then there are few downsides and many benefits to adopting them. Lawsuit pressure might force this to occur sooner rather than later.

(Read more articles in the Future Design Software series.)
(Read about the first ExerciseUI project: WorkOut Poker Episode 1

Body Care for Designers: Design Makes You Fat

Previous Body Care for Designers articles discussed the importance of exercise and good nutrition for designers from the point of view of controlling OOS. Despite having access to this information many designers find exercise and nutrition difficult to control. Weight becomes an issue for designers and the effects are more than just from lack of exercise. The health of designers is at risk from self-reinforcing factors the spiral health downwards. This article explores those factors.

Designers typically work long hours in fixed positions over computers with little physical activity. There is the ever present pressure of the deadline and sleep is often seen as weakness. Designers also tend to be perfectionists and design generally has no clear measurements for success. This means that designers create a constant performance anxiety stress for themselves.

The right amount of stress is good for active humans needing a temporary boost in physical performance. Stress releases hormones; adrenaline which increases heart-rate to supply fuel to the body and cortisol which increases blood sugar for fuel, increases brain consumption of glucose prepares the body for healing. Adrenaline and cortisol are very useful for humans about to face a physical confrontation but potentially dangerous to a sedentary desk jockey. Stress hormones naturally flush from the body over about three days once stress has passed.

Over stress is very bad – this happens when stress occurs more often and with greater intensity than the body has the ability to flush the stress hormones. Prolonged over stress can cause many problems such as: Heart disease, insomnia, digestive problems, weight gain, memory issues, skin problems, depression and ADD. The consequent loss in performance from overstress can have a compounding effect as the designer gets more concerned about not meeting deadlines.

The hyperfocus on deadlines means that designers often neglect healthy routines and the circadian rhythms that government healthy sleep-wake-alertness cycles can get out of kilter. Pushing aside everything for the deadline means that designers will often forget to exercise. Exercise is important to help flush stress hormones to prevent over stress.

Focus on deadlines will have designers forget to keep good eating patterns. Mental fatigue tends to make the body crave easy calories like sugars and processed carbohydrates. Sleep deprivation can have much the same effect on craving. For some designers snacking will working can become compulsive. Stress does stop digestion so stress for prolonged periods starves the body of fuel so it begins to crave the sugars and carbohydrates to provide a quick energy boost. Stressed and sleep deprived people tend to consume more calories.

All this contributes to a spiraling worsening of designer health. The most telling sign for most will be weight gain. All the extra calories combined with little exercise means the risk of obesity is high. Other effects will be insomnia. Extreme cases will suffer depression, ADD and have severely impacted mental performance. These health effects all feed upon each other.

Designers must learn to manage stress. Everybody responds differently to stress and it is often about personal attitude towards a situation. Changing the attitude can go a long way towards lowering stress levels. Be more realistic about deadlines and if one might slip then talk to the client – often it might not be such a problem. Above all, maintain good sleep-wake-meal routines, eat good food, avoid energy dense snacks and exercise regularly. The more stressed, the more exercise is needed. Staying healthy and at good weights is just going to be that much harder for designers.

Body Care for Designers – Exercise

Designers spend long hours at their computers in fixed positions. Their overall workload is sedentary and involves no great strenuous physical effort. The mental loads of designers tend to have them crave sugars and carbohydrates to feed their brains. Designers often have poor posture. A previous eturnerx article explored how to avoid OOS in these situations. In addition to exercise breaks, that article also suggested background fitness and exercise. This article discusses what form those exercises should take. Disclaimer: consult your healthcare professional – their advice trumps mine.

Consult the professionals before beginning any new exercise routine. This starts with a quick check up from your doctor then talk to a personal trainer. Many gyms will include a personal trainer consultation with any new membership – but it pays to ask. Let the personal trainer know that you work long hours at a computer, any areas of pain you have and what goals you have for your exercise regime. If you already have particular areas of pain then a doctor might suggest consulting a physio (physical therapist) who will prescribe remedial exercises.

In general, designers need a well rounded fitness routine – one that does not rely too much on just one of strength, flexibility, speed or cardio-vascular exercises. The exercises should be tailored to improving how the designer handles their daily work tasks.

One issue with sedentary lifestyles like design is that metabolic rate can slow and thus reduce the rate at which toxins are eliminated from the body. The static workloads of designers mean that lactic acid builds in muscles – particularly in the neck, shoulders, arms and hands. Most exercise routines will boost metabolism and a faster metabolism helps the body eliminate lactic acid quicker.

Cardio-vascular exercise gets the heart pumping for at least 20 minutes three to five times per week. This form of exercise is important to promote good blood circulation which will help flush lactic acid from the muscles where it may cause damage. Cardio also produces endorphins that helps combat the nervous stress of working to deadlines. Too much deadline stress builds up adrenaline in the system which can ultimately disturb sleep and shorten life expectancy. Strenuous cardio exercise can work off that adrenalin.

Designers should avoid too much anaerobic exercise – particularly in the arms and shoulders – because anaerobic exercise builds up lactic acid. Designers already have problems with lactic build up so anaerobic exercise should only be done if extensive warm up and warm down exercises are done to fully flush any lactic build up.

Stretching is an important part of the designer’s exercise regime. The daily static workloads mean that joints are rarely moved through a full range of motion so flexibility will be lost over time. Incorporating stretches into the exercise routine will help combat the loss of flexibility and promote better mobility as the designer ages.

Strength training to build (or maintain) muscle mass is important. Muscles are necessary to support the weight of the body and also have a background calorie burning effect. There is no need to become an body builder but do some strength training. A particular area to focus on is the core abdominal muscles that hold the upper body erect. A strong core can promote good posture and avoid back pain. Exercise systems like Pilates can promote good core strength.

Take care of those bodies designers, they need to last a career well enough to have a long and enjoyable retirement.

(The article on OOS discusses why lactic acid build up is such a problem for designers)

Productivity in User Interfaces

A recent poll on Lifehacker asked if an intuitive user interface was more important than functionality. The default answer is that content is king – therefore functionality wins. An intuitive user interface that does nothing useful serves little purpose. However the question is too short-sighted because it does not examine the relationship between intuitive and functional.

Firstly the question implies that there is a tradeoff between functionality and intuitive. This is not true because an interface can be both intuitive and functional at the same time. The two attributes are only rarely mutually exclusive. Good knowledge of the target audience (users) enables a designer to create user interfaces that are intuitively tuned to that audience in ways that provide the most functionality in the simplest possible way.

Consider productivity which is calculated as outputs divided by inputs. An interface’s outputs are the functionality it enables. The inputs are the costs of achieving those outputs which in interface terms is crudely the human time taken to achieve the outputs. This means that an intuitive user interface has higher productivity because outputs can be achieved in less time than with a less intuitive interface.

User Experience designers also consider the connotative side of productivity. They consider the feelings that the experience of using the interface will produce. These emotions are an important part of the overall message of the interface and should be support the brand message of the user interface’s creator. Feelings such as a sense of control, delight, ease, efficiency are all things that an interface can engender. Interaction is therefore must be considered strongly for its semiotic content alongside the traditional static visual communication based on composition that designers are used to. In static compositions perhaps color carries the most connotative meaning, but in a user interface interaction can surpass color in terms of the amount of meaning carried.

Accuracy is an important part of productivity. Even trained users make fewer mistakes when using an intuitive interface. Each mistake reduces productivity because it either takes time to fix when noticed or creates a negative output when not noticed.

Technological progress goes hand in hand with productivity. Functionality alone is not a good measure of progress because while functionality dictates what technology makes possible, productivity dictates what technology makes pragmatically probable. For example much of what jQuery does today for web designers has been functionally possible for over a decade however it took toolkits like jQuery to simplify things so that the time (and skill level) required to produce those outputs was reduced enough to tip the productivity equation in favor of more interaction on web pages. Also, computers have become cheap enough, fast enough and capable enough that they have almost completely surpassed traditional forms of doing graphic design in terms of productivity.

There are many more examples where convenience (reduced input) of technology has tipped the productivity equation in favor of greater adoption of that technology. As we expand our use of technology we see gain the view from a new creative horizon so therefore can look for even more ways to improve productivity.

If a user interface is just too difficult to use then the productivity equation swings away from convenient usage of the interface because the outputs are not worth the inputs. Therefore a user interface that has high productivity i.e. both functional and intuitive is more likely to achieve greater usage.

Future Design Software: Design Anywhere, Anytime

Mobile computing and cloud computing are big trends in computing at the moment. Mobile computing (and tablet computing) is the push for smaller devices that travel with us. Cloud computing is the push for computing to happen in large data centers connected to over the internet instead of on local machines. Graphic design has resisted these trends because it requires flexible and powerful workstations but it is undeniable that these two trends will have an impact on future design software.

There is an saying that “The best camera is the one that’s with you” (Chase Jarvis). This could also be applied to the idea that the best computing device is the one that’s with you. As mobile devices increase in capability it is inevitable that we will be doing more and more design work on them. Today, capable mobile devices can update websites, color correct photographs, edit videos and sketch concepts. While the productivity does not yet match desktop computers with more powerful processors and larger screens, it might be quicker to just do something on a mobile device in the moment than travel back to a more capable computer.

This is highlights an inherent weakness with desktop workstations – they are not easily portable and thus remain fixed in location. The trend is for people to spend less time at a personal non-portable computer and get out and about more. This means that personal computing becomes less important and mobile computing increases in importance.

Laptop computers are not really ideal. They are somewhat portable but battery charge life is still too short, the device too heavy for casual just-in-case carrying and the screen and trackpad combination not ideal for interaction. Laptops lack the always-on property of other mobile devices. Laptops will live on as slightly more portable versions of personal desktop computers but will generally lose out to other mobile devices like tablets.

At present most cloud based services work on data-storage with a web-application front end and maybe some custom software installed on local machines. In the future more applications with better interaction than current web-application silos will live in the cloud also. Computing will also be pushed into the cloud. This means that when the local device encounters a task that overwhelms it then that processing task can be seamlessly performed on the cloud. Seamless means with no user intervention required. Imagine if videos and complex 3D material rendered faster than realtime because of the economies of scale that large cloud computing datacenters can achieve.

The future will have more public kiosk computers and less laptops. When a mobile device is not enough then a designer can login to another other computer (such as a kiosk) and have their data, applications and processing power immediately available in a secure fashion. This can happen on a computer borrowed in a client company or a kiosk computer in a coffee shop/library. Desktops and laptops will become less numerous as more portable mobile devices become more prevalent and designers can rely on access to convenient access to computing kiosks.

Designers will then be freed to travel more – networking, visiting clients, getting in touch with their inspiration, discovering their target audiences. Journeys like this will enrich the design process rather than be seen as unwelcome distractions from productivity. Design might become more human again.

(Read more articles in the Future Design Software series.)

Designer Loyalty is Compromised

Ideally designers should create works that best suit the needs of communicating a message to a target audience. The reality is that the target audience is never a paying member so the designer’s loyalty is compromised by contractual relationships to act in the best interests of their employer or client. How does a designer resolve the tension between the competing interests of employer, client and audience?

In the long-term, the best interests of the employer are best met by serving the interests of clients. Clients whose needs are met show positive business results and can afford to become repeat customers. Repeat clients are cheaper for the employer so retaining clients and helping clients thrive is good for the employer. However, sometimes an employer will not necessarily act in the best interest of a client, for example by scheduling too much work, or knowingly taking on work that will not add much value to the client’s business. The employed designer is contracted to their employer not the client so may not always be able to act in their client’s best interests.

Freelance designers have the luxury of no employer relationship to complicate matters. By contracting directly with clients the freelancer need only resolve the tensions between the client and the target audience.

In the long-term, the best interests of the client are best met when the client’s offerings add benefit to their target audience. The role of the designer is to communicate the client’s message to this audience. Often though, in the interest of keeping the client happy and retaining their business, the designer will accept instructions from the client that run counter to their best interests.

So, to describe the chain of responsibility, the designer acts in the best interests of their employer by acting in the best interests of employer’s clients. The designer acts in the best interests of the clients by acting in the interest of the client’s target audience. This means that by satisfying the needs of the target audience both the client and employer’s long-term interests are met.

There are two problems with this chain. The designer has no contractual responsibilities to the target audience and thus can act for short-term gain at the expense of the audience. Secondly each link in the chain introduces a political element where the interests of the audience can become forgotten.

The way to resolve the tension is for the designer to advocate for the target audience to the client, and advocate for the client to their employer. In situations where the client gives instructions that run counter to their best interests then it is the designer’s duty to inform the client but the client still has the right to decide. In situations where client’s best interests are being compromised by employer actions the designer should inform their employer but recognize that the designer is contracted to their employer first so the employer gets the right to decide.