Following Through with Design
As an addendum to my previous post (“Paying for Design”), a key part of getting a good design is following through.
Many organizations start down the path to good design, but then get scared, back off and revert to the same old bad designs that have worked in the past. This is fine, but it’s also the path to mediocrity.
Looking at my Apple ibook, I’m always impressed by how completely simple it is. There was no corporate marketing person saying, hey, don’t you think we need some more fins, lines or alien faces?
Producing great design (like compelling blog posts) requires you or your organization to step out and let a design simply be. No second guessing here.
Again, this isn’t to discourage iterations and feedback. That’s necessary. But we need to figure out the right way to get the feedback we need – the feedback that makes the design better, not the feedback that dumbs it down.