FINCH
This is a collection of thoughts of designer Francisco Inchauste. Here you will find writing about adventures in design, user experience, and other ephemera of interest.
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The Design Sickness
It’s that time of year. I start feeling a bit of the shakes and sort of feeling ill. It all begins when I go back and look at my site. It honestly makes me crazy to look at it. I can pick out about five new things I see wrong with it every time I look at it.
Being a designer is sort of a curse in a way, you can never stop looking at the world around in you in terms of color, typography, etc. It gets worse when it’s something that is supposed to be designed like an advertisement or a restaurant menu. It becomes unbearable when you have control over it, like your website.
There are little things I do daily to sort of curb this “design sickness”. There are no shortage of places to find inspiration online. I have grown a bit bored of the millions of galleries and lists of what people deem to be a great site though. Sometimes those are nice, but really diving into design and UX theory does the trick and calms the creative monster inside me.
For my own creative sanity I’ve decided to make a conscious effort to get ahead of things. It’s been about six months since the last redesign for my site. I went ahead and redesigned the blog portion this week. It’s been good to give it some time. I now know how much I am able to post (hopefully more frequent side) so I’ve set up the blog for that. The key is knowing yourself and what you can commit to.
I think that having a creative checkup for personal projects a few times a year is a good thing for designers. Anyone else get the design sickness?
Definitely know what you’re saying. I’ve designed the same site about 5 times even before it’s gone live. I call the whole process “the flip” and it strikes when something new and pretty comes along and you just can’t help yourself.
Would love to know more about how UX theory helps. What in particular do you look for?
agreed & good post. as a designer i always try to keep getting inspired by things all around me. it’s also important to be observant & to catch the very little details that may spark a great idea for our work.
Welcome to my world.
YES! I’m starting my my own web design freelancing service. I can whip up a design for a client in about 30 minutes and be satisfied with it but I find it most difficult to make my own service site! I re-designed it over 10 times and ongoing. I feel stuck.. I’m actually considering buying a design from someone else. What do you think?
I can relate to this feeling, if not treated it can drive one insane. Anyway nice redesign, more people should try light text on a dark background.
I know I do for sure, I find myself looking at something horribly designed and have a very hard time not saying everything I would do differently. But (like you said) it’s almost worse when it IS in your control and you know it isn’t good but you don’t know what would make it better.
Frustrating, but ah well.
So thats what they call this condition huh? When designing a site, the key for me is to get it mocked up as quickly as possible and rolled out so that I don’t get sick of looking at it before delivery.
I know what you are saying too about finding new things that are wrong with your site. Maybe not even wrong, just, wow I could use Jquery to make that so much better 
I used to get the design sickness so bad that I stopped having a portfolio or personal site. The concerns of trying to brand personal, professional and artistic undertakings on the internet in a mutually-reinforcing manner was more than I wanted to deal with, and I decided to be the web guy without a site. It didn’t seem to impact my bottom line or my personal life, but what it did have some effects. The opportunity to do something 100% my way is intimidating, but I want to take another crack at formulating what “my way” really is. Perhaps a site-less period helped me better understand designing for myself, and also the role of websites in general.
My design sickness is constant. I only slightly pacify it with some recognition that clients do not necessarily care how cool it is, as long as it looks good. It still kills me to not be able to spend 1,000 hours on every page to make it awesome.
Heh, I don’t have a site of my own work because of “design sickness.” As a designer, being your own client IS a curse—I can’t make a final decision on ~anything~.
Hi Francisco,
just stopped by your website ( from thecssawards.com). And first thing that came up to me reading this article is: “Yeah! That is exactly how think about it”.
I do like to check the {css} galleries once in a while, don’t get me wrong, but 90% is based on making revenue. Knowing this, lists may be better as they are written and compiled by good/acknowledged bloggers who know what they are talking about and did some effort.
UX is a very important when it comes to designing an application or project. And that is what most so called “css galleries” lack, where only the design(ex: UI) takes the spotlight and the css /UX/ {x}Html/ Usability/ Typo used does not even get mentioned!?
So these days to help me get rid of the designer sickness or when in need of inspiration, I don’t only toggle between website. I also take a look at the css behind the design or module, the js/ajax and html. You might be surprised about how much more you learn about the intentions and ideas of the designer/coder. In some rare cases you sometimes find the indirect remote correspondence between designers/coders hidden in the comment fields within a .css, .js or. html file.
Good luck with ‘your’ designers sickness and redesigning your blog.
Ciao
Robert
Thanksgiving for the fresh air/voice of this piece/peace.
Cloud-breaking indeed.
I definitely understand! I fell into that “Top 40 Minimalist Designs!” “20 Creative WordPress Themes!” & etc. I’ve found that these blur my visions and all of a sudden I’m subconsciously ripping off these sites or I feel that I need to conform to something that individual said or does.
I think the best thing to do is just disconnect and focus on an idea and use your surroundings to add small inspiration.
I think that if your inner voice is telling you what you’re doing is different and unlike all those “Best of” lists you must be doing something right and on the verge of something fresh and unique.
true i get it too
Tell me about it…
I actually do get sick, as if being a nit picky woman wasn’t a curse all it’s own already.
You’ve been plagued with that design sickness for as long as I’ve known you. We’d be working on a project, well down a path with one particular theme/campaign/look and just when I’d be close to being down with copy, you’d bring me a new look! AAAHHHHHhhh! :D
Honestly, I love your creativity and am envious of it. I just wonder where it all comes from! Whew.